In 2022, I spent the summer in America’s hottest, lowest, and continentally most massive park, Death Valley National Park. Death Valley is unlike anywhere else in the world. It has towering mountains at 11,000 feet and basins at -300 feet. It has climatic systems that initiate intensely hot and windy conditions. Death Valley also hosts unusual natural phenomena such as the Death Valley Racetrack, Tecopa Hot Springs, and Badwater Basin that draw people from across the globe. Death Valley is not only physically and environmentally valuable, but also boasts histories of longstanding Indigenous culture, westward expansion, mining booms and busts, murderers, myths, and a name as intriguing as all the rest.
Of course, the National Park Service would be interested in a place with such mystique. Located on the southern California border with Nevada, Death Valley seemingly has massive future possibilities. Its borders encompass over 3.5 million acres, making it the largest park in the continental United States, and it keeps growing. The most recent addition to the park boundaries was in 2019 under the Dingell Act, transferring land from nearby BLM into the northwestern park boundary.
Not only is Death Valley a park continually growing in its boundaries, but it is also one of the parks that can sustain further visitation. During an oral history that I conducted with the Death Valley Natural History Association Director, David Blacker, he said that Death Valley has expanded from about 800,000 visitors per year to 1.6 million visitors per year and that he believes that Death Valley could potentially hold the capacity of up to five million visitors per year.[1] Having the ability to grow their visitation is a rarity among park entities and may remain in the park’s favor.
However, many issues plague the excitement of a growing park. For one, financial burdens have already been limiting positions in Death Valley. For instance, in oral histories I conducted with Gretchen Voeks, former curator of Scotty’s Castle, and Abby Wines, former head of Scotty’s Castle interpretation, they stated that as of 2023, there was no plan to replace their roles after the Scotty’s Castle flood. [2] Furthermore, Death Valley has begun to rely heavily on its volunteers to do many projects necessary for the park to run smoothly. [3] Death Valley is fortunate enough to have a full-time historian on staff, Kim Selinske, who has taken great initiative in documenting unheard histories, which helps park management now and potentially will in the future. Other parks are not as fortunate as Death Valley in having a designated full-time historian, though, with an increasing number of parks and a decreasing annual budget. [4]
A major implication and dangerous position in the loss of positions and financial burden is the increased climate disasters seen in Death Valley. Over the last ten years, Death Valley had at least three major floods that washed out major roads and buildings. In 2015, Scotty’s Castle endured a flood that destroyed or severely damaged its infrastructure and many buildings on the property. They created a cohesive renovation plan, including storing all the items in the collection at a facility in Los Angeles, restoring the various buildings with significant damage on the property, and completely rehabbing the infrastructure.[5] They pushed an aggressive plan to get it done by 2018. However, with tight budgets, deliverables were delayed. Especially since in 2021, there was a fire in one of the buildings being renovated, resulting in a loss of resources and requiring further mitigation towards rebuilding. The project was delayed further when, in 2022, there was a significant flood on the main roadway into Death Valley, and many of Death Valley’s funds potentially geared towards some of Scotty’s renovations had to be allocated to restoring the roadway. Then, in 2023, Hurricane Hilary flooded the same road, and park managers had to allocate funds to fix the roadway again. Today, nearly ten years later, Scotty’s Castle is still being renovated with a continually delayed opening date due to the tight budget.
While these are issues specifically facing Death Valley, they highlight two critical points. Firstly, the urgency of climate change requires preparation for what will inevitably come. Scotty’s Castle is an unfortunate example of the devastation that a small, unexpected climate disaster can cause on historical sites. The impact of a larger storm, such as Hurricane Helene, and its effect on Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway are unimaginable for unprepared parks. As climate disasters increase in frequency and velocity, there must be cohesive movements in protecting parks’ natural and cultural resources.
The second point Death Valley highlights is the importance of oral history. For Death Valley, oral histories have become crucial when considering how testimonies inform their historical record and allow the voices of many to be heard. Although the parks keep detailed bureaucratic records of their history, we also need to collect the human testimonies that guided that management, stories that can be best related through oral history. The 2011 report Imperiled Promise urged the National Park Service (NPS) to improve its historical interpretation.[6] Among the recommendations was that the NPS should treat history as always unfinished. Another was that the NPS should recognize that its history has a role in shaping every park. To interpret ongoing, unfinished history, we need to capture the accounts of people who helped create it because all stories have value. Every day that goes by, memories fade, personnel move to other jobs, and people depart from us. We need to document their stories now.
While climate change is a looming and devastating issue that public historians, unfortunately, do not have the means to solve directly, we have a crucial role in documenting climatic changes within the environments in which we work and interact. Furthermore, with the exponentially growing climatic issue, it is essential to collaborate with other departments to understand the past, present, and future. For public historians working in and with park entities, creating new and following previous best practices in documenting, displaying, and advocating for the changes seen within their landscapes will become critically important in maintaining the health of land and culture in parks. Understanding climatic systems and environments through collaboration with environmental scientists will help historians make the best-informed decision when deciding how to protect their resources from climate disasters. By taking on a collaborative nature, historians can be holistically prepared for climate disasters, have additional constituents, and be able to knowingly advocate for the longstanding preservation of cultural and natural resources.
As more oral histories are collected throughout parks, park staff will better understand the impacts caused by climate change. Through gaining knowledge through oral histories and collaboration with other disciplines, historians can make well-informed decisions when addressing park climate change. In doing so, public historians, scientists, and national park constituents will continue to advocate for protecting national park resources. Now is the time to advocate for further climate change legislation, and the public historian’s role has become ever more important in that fight.
[1] David Blacker. Oral History. January 2023
[2] Gretchen Voeks. Oral History. January 2023. and Abby Wines. Oral History. January 2023.
[3] Gary Krajnik. Oral History. January 2023.
[4] David Blacker. Oral History. January 2023. and J.T. Reynolds. Oral History. July 2022.
[5] Gretchen Voeks. Oral History. January 2023.
[6]Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Marla R. Miller, Gary B. Nash, David Paul Thelen, Organization of American Historians, and United States National Park Service. Imperiled Promise The State of History in the National Park Service, 2011.
Bibliography
Blacker, David. Oral History. January 2023.
Krajnik, Gary. Oral History. January 2023.
Reynolds, J.T. Oral History. July 2022.
Whisnant, Anne Mitchell, Marla R. Miller, Gary B. Nash, David Paul Thelen, Organization of American Historians, and United States National Park Service. Imperiled Promise The State of History in the National Park Service, 2011.
Wines, Abby. Oral History. January 2023.
Voeks, Gretchen. Oral History. January 2023.