From Management to Stewardship: The Making and Remaking of the

he establishment of Shenandoah National Park in the Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains sparked a spirited debate among friends of the fledgling U.S. National Park Service in the early 1920s over whether eastern parks would spoil the integrity of a what was then primarily a system based in the western states. Robert Sterling Yard, a former national park publicist and subsequent founder of the National Park Association, warned against “the fatal belief that different standards can be maintained in the same system without the destruction of all standards ” (Runte 1997). In Yard’s opinion, the glaciated Blue Ridge Mountains did not measure up to splendor of the Teton Range, and the second-growth eastern woodlands were not comparable to the primeval forests of King’s Canyon. Today no one would give Yard’s argument about east-ern national parks a second thought. Parks such as She-nandoah, Great Smokies, and Acadia are considered among the grand dames of the system, which has grown to nearly 400 units. The context and criteria for park making may have changed with the times, but the larger debate on what should or should not be part of our system of national parks continues unabated. National parks, by definition, are created as an expression of national values and aspirations. Setting aside any land for perpetual preservation or protection reflects a fundamental judgment at the highest levels in the land