The celebration last weekend of the 25th birthday of southern Utah's largest national park inevitably turned out to be as much a memorial to the late Bates Wilson as a commemoration of the creation of Canyonlands.
The first superintendent assigned to Canyonlands on Oct. 25, 1964, Wilson received generous tribute on the occasion of the park's rededication not only for the conservationist crusade that earned him title as the "father of Canyonlands," but also as a model of charm, dedication and diplomacy.Reflecting his personal manner, references to Wilson from start to finish were of a light-hearted and humorous nature, including the closing tribute - a presentation of one of his large campfire coffeepots to Lorraine Mintzmyer, director of the Rocky Mountain Region of the National Park Service, from former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall.
Mintzmyer promptly turned around and handed the coffeepot to Harvey Wickware, superintendent of the Southeast Utah Group of National Park Service units, as a donation to the first Canyonlands visitor center.
Opening speaker in a formal dedication program at the Needles District Squaw Flat Campground, Mintzmyer noted that a Senate subcommittee has voted to spend $5 million to finally build a visitor center, which Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, is pushing to fund in 1990.
Mintzmyer was not directly involved in the birth of Canyonlands in 1964, but she remembers Wilson and the amount of effort he put into establishing the park and making it functional.
Wilson died in 1983, three years after Mintzmyer was named regional director. Addressing Wilson as though he might be listening, she said he is always on her mind when she makes decisions affecting Canyonlands.
"I really feel Bates will be happy when he looks down. Hopefully . . . his angel wings are flapping around me when I make those decisions," she said.
"Bates, if you can hear me, I hope you're happy with what we've done."
Several of the Wilson family members attended the rededication and were asked to stand for recognition, including his widow Robin Wilson, daughter Julie Beck and son Alan "Tug" Wilson, who frequently loaned his jeep to his father to take yet another writer or photographer or elected official on an exploration of the canyon country.
Udall accompanied Wilson on one of his Canyonlands tours in 1961 and said he finally identified just what it was Wilson did that made converts of everybody. He made his way into people's hearts through their stomachs, employing a "campfire conservationist diplomacy," Udall said.
"As an office superintendent, he wasn't much good, but if anybody important - a photographer for Life Magazine or a crazy politician - showed up, he disappeared for several days," Udall said.
"He loved the out-of-doors; he loved this region. On our '61 trip, he put on the show. Much discussion took place around campfires. The most wonderful Dutch-oven dinners and cowboy coffee came out of those."
In literature and memory, Wilson receives greatest credit for making the public aware of the scenic beauty of Canyonlands. He first explored the area by horse in 1951, riding to the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers, then up Salt Creek.
At the time superintendent of Arches National Monument (now a national park), Wilson immediately began pressing for official National Park Service investigation of the canyons area as a potential park on what were Bureau of Land Management lands.
In 1957 he recommended creating a "Grand View National Park" and by 1961 was joined in his campaign by Udall. Sept. 12, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill establishing the park, which currently encompasses 337,570 acres in four southern Utah counties.