Anything. Comcast along these Television Companies support cspan2 as a public service. If you are enjoying American History to be sent for our newsletter is in the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures in history, the presidency and more present for the American History tv newsletter today for sure to watch American History tv or any time online at cspan. Org history. Two years ago at the covid19 pandemic closed down businesses and schools people across edition turn to parks and other open spaces but urban spark some sprawling National Parks with withouttraces or we could sociay distance and let nature. We enjoyed public lands but often taken for granted. I do came about and how they had been used over time and riches are overall understanding of them. Here the National Archives we have preserve the records of the four federal agencies most i involved in the management of our nations public lands. The bureau of Land Management, u. S. Forest service, u. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park service. The written records, photographs and Motion Pictures contain the stories of the beddings of federal stewardship. In his book, making americas public lands, takes us to the history of these lands and examines changing priorities and challenges concerning them. A professor of history at the university of idaho. The author of United States west coast and environmentalnd histo. The environmentalce justice and the american conservation. And visible from the moon. Michelle knaus as project editor of the atlantic she hundreds futures who plotted section a series called lifo right writings appeared in publications in the near times utmagazine. Shes the author of beloved beast, fighting for life in an age of extinction lets hear from adam and michelle. Thank you for joining us today. Hi everyone. It is such ait pleasure to be wh you today. I am michelle i am here with adam. To talk about his a wonderful new book making americas public lands of you are tuning in today it is likely youve spent at least some time and what adam calls the publics lands for our National Parks, wildlife refugees, National Forests or any one of the other landscapes that make up our public land system. Items history one of the many things i appreciate about adams book is that its both very nuanced, but also wonderfully accessible. It is in addition very alert to the role of the public lands today. Not only as valuable conservation lands but as a source of some very deep rooted myths, concepts and traditions in our national politics. But not national politics. Adam begins the book and away you might not expect. He invokes about Henry David Thoreau and the political philosopher hannah. I know if it were possible to eavesdrop on a conversation between those two human beings out give up the lots in order to do so. Adam invokes that had a very idea that could be held in common for the public good. The metaphor of the table make a metaphor for the public sphere. A table being a place where citizens can gather and find something approaching common ground. Think adam we will start the short reading from the introduction that elaborates on the second metaphor. Think it michelle. This will be a very short reading. This cable metaphor works to guide us to the history of American Public lands. It helps us think about the public lands as part of the democratic experiment that is the United States. It takes a great leap of insight to find faultsng and failures ad immediately promises of democracy. Where the nation is rooted in the dispossession of indigenous improvement of africans. They history public lands include democratic shortcomings and exclusions just like every other partt of the u. S. Politicl history. That is partly white thinking about public lands as an element in the democratic experiment is helpful. We can see who defines the nation and for what purposes. How do new ideas planted old wounds and how novel understanding complicated traditional views. As the common object equals attention. We learn quintessentiallss systm like the nation itself is full of experiments, successes and failures and promises made, broken, redefined. Throughout this history the table and those gathered around it changed and multiplied guided by evolving laws and science. Not to mention shifting political interests. Like a growing family at a holiday dinner incorporating new entrees and unfamiliar it appeared to those who had been gathering there for generations. This book is an account of how the table changed which is to say it is a history not philosophical. The book attempts to explain how the system came to be and why as well as how and why it changed over time. The consequences of this system on the land itself are people who relied on it for whatever purpose they remain central to the account that follows project special attention to constraints and boundaries were redrawn and new political and legal traditions initiated. Ns these moments of transition draw attention to novel arrangements frankly if not always the processes that governs them matter to americans who relied on them. Such are inevitable and healthy participants are allowed to be involved. Some were barely perceived their exclusions att time. Thank you for setting the table for us. [laughter] one of the things about this book we have reported on public land politics for a long time very complicated is very long longer than its written history. You have managed to fit a lot of complexity into a graceful volume that is, just a little over 200 pages. And my experience of written history the Conservation Movement how do you find a path to capture the nuance of a manageable length. Got it reads that way to you. Can use every example in every story you uncover. We think about the book a little bit like a key. It unlocks the larger history so that if you readr it doesnt include your favorite park or your favorite forests in your state you go too. The context in which they exist. I dont know that its unique for the systems at large but many writers or historians have taken a single park or taken on the Forest Service. There are some that look at all theth public lands. When you look at those many organized as a section on and i wanted to try to see if i could tell it as a history more of a stream of time. Ge looking for trends that cross all of the agencies in the same sort of decades. Maybe use examples that time tie multiple things together. Or if i had gone a bit by bit, agency by agency it wouldve been a much much longer book. [laughter] i can see that. You brought out some scenes that were maybe not news to me but had not grappled with directly. They were so big that i could not see them i was on the weeds of individual agencies or places. I found those big scenes to be especially fascinating. Now you make clear the history of the public lands does not of course begin with the founding of the Forest Service. Does not begin with the signing of the constitution. As i mentioned its longer than the history of the public lands where it is the history of the public lands truly begin . Is a great question. As with so many things sadly in American History, i think the history of the public lands begins with the dispossession of Indigenous People who lived on this continent to claim and memorial the forces of colonization that populated much of the continents and change the political military dynamicsna here. Let sets the stage for all that comes after. It is that clash of colonization that precipitates or at least the public land system we see emerging a little later. I do want to return to that later in our discussion. That history of course is still very much with us. There are some moderate responses to it than a very interesting sources of hope for all of us. But let me move forward in time a little bit in the context of the dispossession. Their wares in a very interesting and complementary role played by Founding Fathers jefferson and madison. I was actually not aware of madisons role which is his his visionwas mostly ignored i. It was influential in the formation of the public lands. Could you say a little bit about their effects on the publicec system . I would be glad too. The effect is somewhat indirect. Sometimes they called the agrarian philosopher famously sees the virtue embedded in farming and the practices of the labor of the lambs. That in part explains why he was enthusiastic to gain the Louisiana Purchase to increase the size of the nation expecting independent farmers can move and move the west. I course the land is the process of dispossession happening with the westward movement. Independently with their labor matransformed into good producte labor. Good productive products that we might sell and have sustenance for. The challenge with this is theres a lot of land in north america became very easy to cut and run as you would imagine in a forest. But madison, along with others in the early part of the republic. There is a need to slow down there is a need to improve our land and not is it so extensively. So stay rather than move and treat the land more sustainably which was in some ways antislavery position as well. And not keep moving west and there are so many paradoxes we could spend the rest of the hour talking about them. Both of these men did not live there ideal as we write about them. But ill stop with that. Those were slave owners we should acknowledge. So really, for a long time that vision that led to the public lands was a commercial vision. Conservation did not come in until much later. It is interesting to me what comes up rick on the land itself and the reality of the western claimant. The public land system, i think it could be said in a very broad sense it resulted from a collision between the jeffersonian vision of an agrarian republic on the harsh reality of the western claimant. Can you tell us what happened when those two visions met are r those two realities met . Tw even before the constitution was signed, the system that was in place was all land held in common by the state, the ultimate goal is to become owned. Ly the government under the articles of confederation and under the constitution developed a various means to get that land into private hands. The most famous example of course is the homestead act of the 1860s. But there were predecessors to that. That worked reasonably well paid 160 acres you can make a selfsufficient farm in many places like that. But is more a white farmers moved to the west they found 16r way too much. It was too dry or also to mountainous was also something the homestead act is not sustainable for. And so congress tried adapting these laws for this if you plant some trees you could have more land for putting irrigation you can have more land. These just kept not working. 160 acres on a steep slope in the Rocky Mountains is not going to lead you to a selfsufficient livelihood. Many places in the west were too high or too cold to have an agricultural economy as these founders had expected request to matter how many trees you plant. [laughter] exactly. Andd so in 1870s and 1880s and increasing in the area a number of people said we want to do things differently. Some of that was b maybe the lad need to be taken away or given needed to be smaller. Bring in irrigation and manage a smaller amounts of land or you need a bigger you need a lot of acreage to run cattle in different parts of colorado for example. Soom we could make adjustments there. Whats in those conversations were the ideas that emerges is maybe these big mountain ranges with all of these trees should notec be owned by individuals. One to 60 acres of trees is not going to last for long. Maybe they should be controlled by the federal government. So these ideas start percolating 1860s or 1870s. It took a while before they decided in 1891 the president could have the right to reserve some of those lands so they would not be cut. They would not be owned by individual people or companies. Theyll be kept in trust by the federal government. Theres a variety of ways around the 20th century into what we think of as conservation. Yes. Just to emphasize these lands that could not be homesteaded were still being exploited both by individual landowners and by corporations who saw them as free trees, free pasture. Tell us a little bit about what was happening on the landscape . Before these measures go into effect, it is free and open for whoever can get to it. There are large herds of cattle and sheep moving up the mountains and sometimes they are competing with the other. That led to pretty bad overgrazing and lots of cases. There is a lot of concern about timber itra being stolen from te federal lands as well. The first four straight reserves were created they were relatively few regulations. Then the concerns are going to run out of lumber for this is the age of wood. Provided fuel as well as building material. Hadd unmetered and quickly in te last for the 19th century there is a great concern that cannot be allowed to happen in the sierras in the cascades in the rockies we would not have enough wood no one paid anything. They are taking from the public land valuable resources and turning a profit from it. Thats the concern that develops around as we move into the 20th century. This was in part these people who were incensed echoing a wee afrequent use of the soil they say were going to use of these trees. The early conservation sentiments. There is alsoo a federal government is losing money or passively giving away these resources. Rate. The federall government has control over the public lands did create mens bitterness. I read stories was like to be the first forest rangers to ride into town as a representative of this force service and unhappy ranchers who for the first time going to have to pay grazing fees are going to have to Pay Management cattle in certain ways. And generations later and know from reporting and living in the real west its not unusual to hear presence in the last and im sure in other parts of the country ass well referred to a set the second record straight. Its not a landgrant but was it . Hook is not a land grab ill have to think about what it was. The vast unclaimed once the land have been dispossessed from native people all the unclaimed land is what was known as the public demands. Territories in utah, idaho wyoming whatever, theyd be entered into the union for it all or almost everyone theres just a couple of exceptions. Explicitly gave claim to all the Public Domain land. Those are the federal governments. You will often these states should get the land back. It was never there is to have so it could not be taken back. The Forest Service pry the best example of this it finally created just a quick note theres no agency in charge of them on theres a gap there and how things are going to be managed. Real quickly i would say some regulations get imposed fairly small grazing fees get imposed. But if you are a rancher who had grown accustomed over a decade or two decades or r three decads of not paying anything the grazing fees seemed like they are taking money from you. They were taking your rights away. Great deal of controversy around that. They push back against it. The Supreme Court said absolutely the First Service at the force service has the right to do that and administer these sorts of fees. In many places the records show the initial creation of these places generate a lot of resentment and a lot of uncertainty. In a little bit of time it becameec okay. The Forest Service is going to help put out fires. Made it an okay thing to be around now. Many of the restrictions are on the larger context for all the changes happening in the first part of the 20th century hole, not that big of a deal. There is this suddenly in process were locals get accustomed to. What the public land agencies are doing, because quite frankly they are not doing a lot. Theyre doing more than existed before, but not real restrictive measures quite yet. The Agency Settles into its place fishermen of court metaphorical table. The people are sitting at the table had set themselves at the table the use of their presence. Is a good way to describe it. The conflicts did continue parade there was acceptance of the presence of the Forest Service. But of course arguments continue between the agency and land users per there were also arguments between land users themselves between the cattle ranchers and the sheep which got quite they are legendary and negative sense in the region. Can you tell me a little bit why that so passionately thought . I was a real complicated story. Depends upon the location where you are. Part of it hazardous scarce resources. When the forage declines and theres a lotan of animals tryig to eat that scarcity if you have animals you move them is called does not work super well with private property. That could generate challenges as well. Labor that ran many of these animals across the mountain ridges and valleys in wyoming or in the southwest were not always a white. That could be associated with conflict as well. Associations regarding who is a legitimate homebuilder which was a term that was used often at the turn of the 20th century. Many of those economic conflicts emerge. Theres also the conflict between someone who runs thousands of cattle and someones just got a small homestead is trying to make it work. They are more powerful interest cant really run what you might call the little guy out. People were killed. Theyre not divorce from the land. Theyre not doors from cultural preferences and issues like that either. Will sometimes hear them referred to the cattle and sheep wars. They might not have been on the scale we usually think of as wars but they did as you say they were riddled in violence. That is a good point is not simply a conflict between two waves of using the public lands. It is economic perhaps racial and cultural conflict as well. So, as this is happening certainly would call them customary use