an intelligent and level-headed look at the great promise and the
great problems associated with the Park Service's Mission 66
program. (Ken Burns, filmmaker)Winner Elisabeth Blair MacDougall
Book Award, Society of Architectural Historians Winner J. B.
Jackson Book Prize, Foundation for Landscape StudiesIn the years
following World War II, Americans visited the national parks in
unprecedented numbers, yet Congress held funding at prewar levels
and park conditions steadily declined. Elimination of the Civilian
Conservation Corps and other New Deal programs further reduced the
ability of the federal government to keep pace with the wear and
tear on park facilities.To address the problem, in 1956 a ten-year,
billion-dollar initiative titled "Mission 66" was launched, timed
to be completed in 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the National
Park Service. The program covered more than one hundred visitor
centers (a building type invented by Mission 66 planners), expanded
campgrounds, innumerable comfort stations and other public
facilities, new and wider roads, parking lots, maintenance
buildings, and hundreds of employee residences. During this
transformation, the park system also acquired new seashores,
recreation areas, and historical parks, agency uniforms were
modernized, and the arrowhead logo became a ubiquitous symbol. To a
significant degree, the national park system and the National Park
Service as we know them today are products of the Mission 66
era.Mission 66 was controversial at the time, and it continues to
incite debate over the policies it represented. Hastening the
advent of the modern environmental movement, it transformed the
Sierra Club from a regional mountaineering club into a national
advocacy organization. But Mission 66 was also the last systemwide,
planned development campaign to accommodate increased numbers of
automotive tourists. Whatever our judgment of Mission 66, we still
use the roads, visitor centers, and other facilities the program
built.Ethan Carr's book examines the significance of the Mission 66
program and explores the influence of midcentury modernism on
landscape design and park planning. Environmental and park
historians, architectural and landscape historians, and all who
care about our national parks will enjoy this copiously illustrated
history of a critical period in the development of the national
park system.
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