TV Series · 2009
The National Parks: America's Best Idea
120 min · Documentary · Ended
Composite
7.6
IMDb
8.6 / 10
2,175 votes
TMDB
7.9 / 10
23 votes
Local
— / 10
No votes
Synopsis
Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales – from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska - “The National Parks: America's Best Idea” is nonetheless a story of people: people from every conceivable background – rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy.
Streaming availability
buy
Amazon Video
Apple TV Store
Google Play Movies
Fandango At Home
flatrate
PBS Documentaries Amazon Channel
Thirteen
WETA+
ads
KQED
Streaming data provided by JustWatch.
Cast
Crew
Directing
- Ken Burns Director
Production
- Ken Burns Producer
- Julie A. Dunfey Producer
Writing
- Dayton Duncan Writer
Seasons & episodes
Miniseries (1 ep)
-
6. The Morning of Creation (1946 – 1980)
Oct 2, 2009 · 114 min
Following World War II, the parks are overwhelmed as visitation reaches 62 million people a year. A new billion-dollar campaign – Mission 66 – is created to build facilities and infrastructure that can accommodate the flood of visitors. A biologist named Adolph Murie introduces the revolutionary notion that predatory animals, which are still hunted, deserve the same protection as other wildlife. In Florida, Lancelot Jones, the grandson of a slave, refuses to sell to developers his family's property on a string of unspoiled islands in Biscayne Bay and instead sells it to the federal government to be protected as a national monument. In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter creates an uproar in Alaska when he sets aside 56 million acres of land for preservation – the largest expansion of protected land in history. In 1995, wolves are re-established in Yellowstone, making the world's first national park a little more like what it once was.
