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Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma Ethan Carr. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007

Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma Ethan Carr. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.Leisure and recreation have rich histories that can provide a critical basis for understanding current and future issues in the field. Yet for whatever reasons, evidence of a significant commitment to historical scholarship within the leisure and recreation field is hard to find. This is certainly not the case in landscape architecture, forestry, geography, and planning. Each of these allied fields has developed a community of scholars, journals, and book publishers interested in history, and within the past two decades the sub-discipline of environmental history has come into full blossom. All have contributed work relevant to leisure and recreation history in recent years, of which Ethan Carr's book, Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma, stands out as an excellent example. Published in association with the non-profit Library of American Landscape History, the press and its author have their footing in landscape architecture, yet the focus of the book places it squarely within the purview of leisure researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners. Carr demonstrates rigorous historical scholarship and his engaging narrative and generous use of period photographs and other illustrations make it an enjoyable as well as informative lesson in recreation history.The book addresses a critical period of outdoor recreation planning in the United States when the pastoral ideals of park design and use crashed head on with the post World War II baby boom. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted's 1865 report on Yosemite Valley established the early philosophical basis for national parks, a populist conception further codified by son Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.'s wording of the National Park Service Act of 1916 that tied preservation and public enjoyment of the nations foremost natural and historic wonders together as a singular idea. Preservation/or public enjoyment became the operative concept of Stephen Mather and others who directed national park system development in its formative years, and conflict between providing for both preservation and use in a way that would, in the Act's language, leave parks "unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations" was not yet apparent. Rustic, "country place" architecture and primitive road developments proliferated through the massive public works programs of the Depression years, but it wasn't until after World War II that park directors looked up to see what was coming down the road. It was people in their cars and plenty of them, and the National Park Service (NPS) had neither the program nor the funding to handle them.This "National Park Dilemma," voiced first by NPS Director Newton Drury in the mid-1940s, would become the chief problem faced by succeeding Director Conrad Wirth. And while Mission 66 is ostensibly about Wirth's solution to the problem, Carr's engaging story is as much a portrait of the man driven to succeed in a changing world as it is a description and critical analysis of the program itself. Carr divides the book's ten chapters into three sections concerned with Mission 66 planning, design, and construction. To me, these headings do not accurately capture the content of the chapters therein, and those considering the book for reference might pass over important material about and beyond the program itself, including national park philosophy, the history of outdoor recreation planning, and the politics of wilderness preservation. For example, Chapter 6 in the section on design presents a fascinating description of the innovations made in historical preservation policy and environmental interpretation, achievements Carr rightly concludes maybe more significant than the physical legacy of development most associate with Mission 66.Section I describes the main events and actors who influenced national park development from its origins up to the rollout of the Mission 66 program in 1956. …