Roger G. Kennedy, who served as Director of the National Park Service from 1993-1997 (and has authored 17 books), expounds upon his support that he announced this month for the Valles Caldera to be managed by the National Park Service in a in a lengthy and detailed memorandum on the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees web site: “Toward a Valles Caldera National Park as a Landscape for Learning.” Click here to read Kennedy’s essay.
Earlier this month, Kennedy first revealed his support for the NPS taking over management of the Caldera (formerly known as the “Baca Ranch”) in a brief op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. In his most recent essay, Kennedy opines:
The Valles Caldera of New Mexico, the centerpiece of the Jemez Massif, is worthy of national park status for its astonishing natural beauty, for its geological and archaeological wonders, for its wildlife, for the history that was played out upon it or near it, and for the military and geopolitical saga inherent in its title deeds…
The times are ripe for the Valles Caldera to become a national park, one that is the core of a larger landscape for learning… The Valles Caldera National Park should become the nucleus of a cooperative educational mission of preservation and education with the neighboring Pueblos and villages, the National Laboratory and city of Los Alamos, the National Forests, and Bandelier National Monument…
A comprehensive vision for the Valles Caldera and Massif as a landscape for learning would include geothermal science, industrial, agricultural and grazing history, archaeology, geopolitics, ethnography, and conservation.
Kennedy declares that, upon creation of the Valles Caldera National Preserve in 2000, “the Valles Caldera trustees were instructed, however, not to attribute any value to it as a learning landscape,” but rather, the Preserve became “subject to the requirement that it become self-supporting without further overgrazing and over-timbering.” He notes that a template for how to run the Preserve as a self-supporting entity was found at the Presidio Trust in San Francisco, “though the situations in the city on the bay and the Valles Caldera had little in common. The Presidio already had 790 buildings, including three hospitals, a movie theater, and several churches on 1491 acres, and [the Presidio Trust] was expected to build many more. The Baca has 90,000-acres of open space, and (counting barns and sheds) less than forty buildings, of which barely a dozen would be habitable.”
With this in mind, Kennedy concludes his piece as such:
This paper is written to urge that the National Preserve be revalued as a national asset, which, like all national parks, cannot be expected to pay for itself. The Preserve can be as “self-supporting” as Independence Hall or Yellowstone Park, with their money costs balanced by their educational benefits. The Valles Caldera should be placed within the responsibilities of the National Park Service, with provision for active participation by the neighboring Pueblos and communities, as an example of a park that includes the neighbors in its deliberations about educational programs and management policies.
Today it is an inhabited landscape with nuclear scientists next door and cows competing with elk, situated among neighbors having many appropriate interests to reconcile. For teaching and learning purposes, these complexities are advantages rather than impediments. The Bicentennial Commission now in the final stages of making its report on the National Park System is urging that the National Park Service fulfill its mission of preservation and education in cooperation with others. The Valles Caldera should be made a National Park exemplifying that cooperative style, with a broad mission and message.
Kennedy asserts that the National Park Service “has been devoted to public education as well as landscape protection since Franklin Roosevelt consolidated the national parks into a single National Park System and provided that system with a Service that included educators, historians, and scientists trained by the CCC.”
He also introduces specific curriculum ideas for how the Valles Caldera could become “the core of a larger landscape for learning.” In addition to “sustained and sustainable grazing,” and “scrupulous forestry,” he lays out five particular themes for an educational focus, which are detailed in the essay, including:
- Recapitulating the First Sight of the Great Plains and Other Environmental Lessons
- From Megafauna to Superpowers
- Living on the Edge – Agriculture, Architecture, and Climate
- 1851-1863 – Garrisoning the Frontier – Grants, Titles, and Surnames
- 1899-2000 – Toward An Inhabited and Working Landscape as the Core of a New Kind of Park
