America's National Park Roads and Parkways: Drawings from the Historic American Engineering Record

Timothy Davis, Todd A. Croteau, and Christopher H. Marston, Foreword by Eric DeLony.

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005; cloth

Review by Robert Pavlik

Drawings from Crater Lake National Park: a plate from the book

When one thinks of national parks one rarely considers the network of roads and bridges that have been designed and built to provide maximum scenic accessibility while minimizing environmental degradation. This remarkable accomplishment came about through the coordinated efforts of engineers and landscape architects, working with park managers and naturalists to achieve contradictory yet complementary goals.

This volume catalogs the impressive, exhaustive, and detailed work of National Park Service Historic American Engineering Record teams who, since 1969, have fanned out across the country to record our nation's most significant engineering developments. In this book the authors present the drawings of some of the most beautiful roads and parkways in the United States. Here, one can study the construction details, the physical characteristics, and the design aesthetics of not only roadways but also their appurtenant bridges, viaducts, and tunnels. This is the first time such a collection has been amassed, and it's an outstanding achievement.

The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) is the companion program to the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), which was established in 1933 as one of the New Deal's federal relief programs. HABS employed architects, draftsmen, and photographers to identify and record the nation's significant historical properties. A HABS record includes measured drawings, large-format photographs, and historical narrative reports. These comprehensive records are housed in the Library of Congress, where they are available to the public in both print and electronic formats. In 1969 the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the American Society of Civil Engineers created HAER to document America's technological and industrial resources. These include everything from grist mills to steel mills, power plants and public works, granaries and the Golden Gate bridge. The most recent recordation program created is the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS). HABS, HAER, and HALS provide important documentary material concerning our country's human environment and the history of its physical development, and makes these images and records available to everyone.

The book begins with an introductory essay on the Historic American Engineering Record and the National Park Roads and Parkways project. The authors include the measured drawings, as well as explanatory materials, of numerous roads and parkways across the United States. One might reasonably expect that the plan sheets would quickly appear repetitious. It's a pleasant surprise to see that every park recording project is as unique as its subject. There is a remarkable amount of creativity and originality in the presentation of each set that serves to highlight not only the park's unique transportation features but the skills of the HAER team, which is made up of engineers, photographers, delineators, and historians. Many of the "crown jewels" are represented here-Yosemite, Yellowstone, Mt. Rainier, Glacier, and Shenendoah, as well as some smaller, precious gems: Natchez Trace, Scotts Bluff, Crater Lake, and three Civil War parks.

Rounding out the historical context of these roadways, the authors included two "park road precedents": Bronx River Parkway and the Columbia River Parkway, which serve as continental bookends on a timeline continuum.