Customer Reviews

Stealing the National Parks: The Destruction of Concessions and Park Access

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This book combines a history of some of the concessions in the Western national parks, a polemic against environmentalists, and a personal memoir. Don Hummel was a seasonal ranger at Grand Canyon and Lassen Volcanic national parks while a college student. When he got his law degree, he tried to set up a law practice back home in Tucson when an opportunity appeared to open up lodging and stores in Lassen Volcanic. He spent many years running that concession in summer and a law practice in winter. He eventually added concessions in Mount McKinley and Glacier national parks, and became the head of the Yosemite concession under a larger company. For over a dozen years he was also the president of the main trade group for the park concessioners. His law practice seemed to thrive, too, and became a political career. He was mayor of Tucson, member of various advisory committees and boards, and ultimately Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. under Lyndon Johnson.

All in all, then, Hummel was a remarkable man with diverse interests and talents. He's also a pretty good writer and this is an interesting, easy to read book. His main purpose is to complain about environmentalists who want to lock up land as wilderness, keeping most Americans out. He believes the environmentalists have taken over the National Park Service, which is systematically removing concessions from the national parks - - including the lodgings that he built with his own hands in Lassen.

That last fact tells you that there's a lot of emotion in this battle of his. It also seems from the book that Hummel was a very energetic and passionate man, and those emotions certainly come through. Even so, his calmer, rational lawyer-businessman side dominates the story and makes it a good read.

The book has a nice introduction by Rep. Mo Udall, one of the leading environmental politicians of the West, and a long-time associate of Hummel. Udall says that he doesn't agree with everything Hummel says but that his perspective is important and needs to be heard. That's exactly right.

In this engaging memoir Hummel does a great job putting a human face on the "corporations" that run the businesses in our parks. Anyone interested in how the park service manages our parks will learn a lot from the book.