Introduction

INTRODUCTION

269.
269 is the number (in millions) of visitors who spent one or several days in 1995 visiting the 369 units that form the National Park System in the U.S.A.
That's almost 10 visitors every second, entering a National Park, a National Monument, a National Preserve, a National Military Park, a National Historic Site, a National Historic Park, a National Memorial, a National Battlefield, a National Cemetery, a National Recreation Area, a National Seashore, a National River, a National Wild and Scenic River, a National Lakeshore, a National Parkway, a National Trail or even the White House.
Wow.
What is left to say ?
By its size, by the growing interest of people all over the world, by its relative novelty, by its landscapes coming from a time immemorial, the National Park Syndrome deserves a closer look.
We'll give it one.
Before studying the National Parks (that would have been too easy, just dealing with the subject) we will try to analyze how and why the idea appeared during the second half of the XIXth century ; we will travel from England's Lake District to Fontainebleau, with a few pit-stops in Dakota, Arkansas and California, before having a good supper around a campfire on a warm fall night in the state of Wyoming.
This will allow us to understand the evolutions in mentality that were implied by the conservation of Nature.
We will then study how this air-du-temps evolved into a legislative-addict, conservationist-akin pressure group that transformed the poetic and visionary National Park Idea into a rigorous National Park Service.
Finally, behind the barriers of political correctness, hidden by the metaphors of the lyric-loving poets, we will find the intangible, the essential but unsubstantial²...

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