"TRAINS OF DISCOVERY: Railroads and the Legacy of Our National Parks," by Alfred Runte, Roberts Reinhart Publishers, $24.95, 172 pages (nf)
“The most enchanting vacationland is Zion National Park,” the advertisement reads, with “tremendous colored canyons, colossal buttes, prismatic plains, vast virgin forests, wild horses, countless deer and mysterious cliff dwellings.”
This 1927 copy was written by:
A) Utah’s Department of Tourism.
B) John Muir or another like-minded conservationist.
C) The Union Pacific Railroad.
In his beautifully illustrated “Trains of Discovery: Railroads and the Legacy of Our National Parks,” Alfred Runte, a former Yosemite Park ranger, explains the significant role railroad commerce played in the establishment and expansion of our national parks.
“Without the railroads, Congress was not about to establish national parks just on the conviction of preservationists,” he writes. The business of the railroads is “nature’s forgotten ally.”
But this is not a stuffy, politics-influenced book. It’s a lavish ode to the romanticizing of the breathtaking beauty preserved in our national parks. Readers are transported to the era of Americans’ introduction to our preserved wilderness splendors.
Full of industry-commissioned paintings, archival photos, and colorful period posters and brochures, many from Runte’s own collection, this fifth edition includes the protected landscapes and historical sites east of the Mississippi.
A noted environmental historian and lecturer on national parks, Runte was an adviser to Ken Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” and appeared in each of the six PBS episodes.
Like the Emmy-winning documentary, “Trains of Discovery” presents the educational information in an engaging manner. He reminds readers of the heavy price Americans paid, both socially and environmentally, in the love affair with the automobile.