What happened to Yellowstone surveyor Truman Everts, in the Ken Burns documentary about Americas national parks?”
This 12-hour documentary, which debuted Sunday, is the real deal, a stupendous achievement. It’s another Ken Burns epic, and it’s my choice for the most beautiful program ever put on American television. The land is the star, and Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades and other parks register with breathtaking force. Burns and writer Dayton Duncan explain how John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, Stephen Mather and many others fought to preserve the lands and the wildlife. These personal stories are told dramatically, eliciting tears and gratitude. The National Parks is more compact than some other Burns epics (Baseball, Jazz). And it is less remote than other Burns histories. When Burns’ The Civil War debuted in 1990, it was a national sensation. In a new, splintered media environment, The National Parks will have a hard time duplicating that achievement. Still, the new documentary lifts spirits and teaches patriotism by reminding people of what is timeless and transcendent.
A Blackfoot Indian at St. Mary Lake at Glacier National Park. The Blackfeet were pressured to give up part of their reservation in Montana to create a national forest that eventually became Glacier National Park. Then the Great Northern Railway used many of them as tourist attractions in the company’s advertising. Ken Burns’ six-part series “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” will make you want to swoop like an egret in the Everglades or romp like a young gray wolf over lichen-covered rocks in Yellowstone. This gorgeous 12-hour series — a project that took six years to film — will air on public television at 8 p.m. on six consecutive nights beginning today. Tonight it tells the stories that hatched the national parks movement, focusing on Yellowstone and Yosemite. Monday’s installment explores the perennial tussle between land use and land protection and Theodore Roosevelt’s role in advancing the mission of preservation. The last episode, from 1946 to 1980, shows us that, like
