This authoritative and stirring assessment of our public lands - the first book ever published to give the history and propose the future of each unit of a federal trust that today accounts for approximately one-third of America's landmass - begins with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872. The national park concept, which the historian Lord Bryce called the best idea to come out of the New World, was the first attempt by a national government to preserve land for future generations. Since then, hundreds of additional parks, monuments, historic sites, wilderness areas, and wildlife refuges have been added to a vast system of public lands that also includes national forest and Bureau of Land Management holdings. The preservation of our nation's natural heritage has become a model throughout the world, but the fight to keep public land unspoiled - from the Everglades to Alaskan mountain ranges - is never-ending, as this lively and dramatic history of America reveals. This preservationist idea did not come naturally: the myth of the land's superabundance dominated the thinking of Americans even after the frontier was officially closed one hundred years ago. Frontier greed and carelessness, combined with business and political pressures for local control, continue to threaten our parks, forests, and wilderness lands today. The battles over these lands, especially as their outcomes determine present and future patterns of land use, will continue to define our civilization. These American Lands assesses management policy within each unit and demonstrates why the citizen's vigilance is necessary today if future Americans are to look upon our natural legacy as the crowningachievement of the twentieth century.