BY BRIAN KEVIN
When the Interior Department decided a few months ago to allow loaded, concealed weapons into national parks, heat-packin’ groups like the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms hailed the decision as a victory for public safety. They cited, among other things, “the inability of park officials to provide adequate law enforcement services” due to slim budgets and staff. But our trigger-happy pals might not be giving the Boys in Green enough credit. Where law enforcement is concerned, national park rangers have historically displayed a consistent knack for doing more with less. Check out these four examples.
1. Poachers Do the Walk of Shame
Back in the 1880s, poachers roamed Yellowstone like it was their own personal shooting gallery. Because the National Park Service wasn’t formed until 1916, a ragtag company of U.S. Cavalrymen served as the park’s first rangers. Unfortunately, they lacked the legal authority to punish poachers in any real way other than booting them from the park and temporarily seizing their gear. So in order to give their rule some teeth, soldiers got creative with logistics. After marching ornery hide hunters to Yellowstone’s south entrance, rangers let the poachers know they could retrieve their sleep roll, gun, and supplies from the desk at park headquarters . . . seventy-five wilderness miles away at the park’s north entrance!
Of course, that wasn’t the only time early rangers relied on the technique. They resorted to similar measures when Basque shepherds were caught illegally grazing on park lands. While the hapless sheepherders got kicked out via the park’s north gate, their sheep were graciously escorted east.
2. Smoking Out the Squatters
When Congress formally chartered Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934, the crown jewel of the Eastern parks wasn’t exactly a pristine wilderness — in fact, there were still a few hundred people living in it. While many Appalachian residents had accepted buyouts in the years leading up to the park’s formation, others were too poor or too stubborn to relocate. What’s more, the hundreds of empty cabins tucked away inside the park lured hordes of Depression-era squatters. Park rangers made a mission of evicting the unwelcome guests, but when the wily mountaineers wouldn’t stay ejected, they simply began burning down any abandoned or temporarily vacated cabins. Not entirely without empathy, the park’s first superintendent J. Ross Eakin noted that preventing squatters by torching ancestral homesteads tended to raise “considerable ire among residents.”
3. Strong-arming the Kolorado Klan
In the mid-1920s, Colorado was a bastion of influence for the Ku Klux Klan– a state where the governor, the mayor of Denver, and U.S. Senator Rice Means all openly accepted Klan support. After Senator Means made a publicity tour through southwestern Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park in 1926, local Klansmen sought to convince park superintendent Jesse Nusbaum to grab a white sheet and join the club. When he declined, the Klan showed up with plans to hold a torchlight parade in front of one of the park’s most recognized Anasazi ruins. The upright Nusbaum told the Klan they weren’t wanted in Mesa Verde, and to show that he meant business, visibly armed the small park staff with pick-ax handles and other improvised weapons. The Klansmen got the message and left the park without incident.
4. Taking Out Snowmobiles, Execution-style
Glacier National Park ranger Art Sedlack was getting pretty fed-up with snowmobilers cutting through the park along a snow-smothered stretch of Montana’s Highway 2. He was pretty clear about this point when he apprehended four sledders one night in December of 1974, warning them not to return by the same route unless they wanted a ticket. When he heard the whine of approaching snowmobiles an hour later, Sedlack hopped on his 4×4 and chased down the repeat offenders. Fearing they’d try to bolt, he reached in to yank out the one of the lead vehicle’s spark plugs, but when it proved tricky to remove, he opted to improvise. Drawing his park-issued .38 caliber pistol, Sedlack fired point-blank into the snowmobiles’ still-cooling engine. Man 1, machine 0.
The trespassers paid $25 fines, and Sedlack got a stern reprimand, along with the secret admiration of every ranger who’s ever wanted to go Scarface on an exhaust-spewing snowmobile. For years, the Montana Wilderness Association even issued a “Sedlack Award” for creativity in defense of public lands.
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Good Article, your photo shows Yosemite Falls, but at the top is says Yellowstone, as a long time NPS Ranger and past resident of Yosemite, you really might get some Rangers knocking at your door!
posted by Mark on 3-3-2009 at 2:48 pm
Go park Rangers! Those stories made me happy, thanks for sharing.
posted by Kristine on 3-3-2009 at 3:11 pm
Great point, Mark! And apologies… I was just looking for good photos of what early rangers looked like, and there were slim pickings. We’ve re-posted with just an early tourism poster. Thanks for the web vigilance.
posted by Mangesh Hattikudur on 3-3-2009 at 3:27 pm
“heat-packin’”
“trigger-happy”
Have we got a job for you!
posted by CBS News on 3-3-2009 at 10:09 pm
Here in Canada, we have a different view of guns, especially in National Parks. A couple of years ago, I did a 1200km hike thru the spine of the Cdn Rockies, the Great Divide. I also have a few decades of back-country hiking under my belt, and live in the mountains in the midst of bear country. Inevitably, when discussing these journeys with Americans, they ask how I could possibly feel safe amongst bears in the wilderness without a gun. My response is that I know bears, and how to behave around them, and it’s never been an issue; I would rather take my chances with wild predators, than every other human armed to the teeth. Knowing that concealed weapons are permitted in US parks definitely makes me feel far less safe, and less likely to choose American parks as a destination for my next wilderness adventure.
posted by Paula on 3-4-2009 at 2:48 am
“Trigger Happy”? Those of us who have received permits to carry concealed firearms have been thoroughly investigated by the FBI. We are among the safest people in the world.
We don’t cary for any other reason than to be prepared to defend ourselves and others in the event that lives are imperiled.
Carrying weapons in parks just makes sense. Fairly recently, Meredith Emerson was abducted on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, raped over the course of four days, and eventually decapitated. She fought her attacker the whole way. I wonder if, during her ordeal, she ever wanted the right to carry a firearm in a National Park.
posted by B-Doc on 3-4-2009 at 3:39 am
You tell ‘em B-Doc!
posted by Vickey on 3-4-2009 at 6:22 am
We have a saying in Southern Oregon that if you yank the lollypop from a spoiled brat’s mouth everyone can see their rotten teeth. When you have angry park rangers who’ve lived under country justice rules their entire lives, you’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’ with no brakes there hot rod… My uncle Rocky was a park ranger on Mt. Hood for 35 years and told me many times about towing distructive Quads out of the woods with his truck going a liiittle too fast… and turning a liiittle too hard… hehehe
posted by Kate on 3-4-2009 at 7:03 am
I never carried my gun into a National Park, never really saw the need. Now when I had to go to Gary, IN it stayed under my leg the whole time I was driving.
posted by Lorelei on 3-4-2009 at 8:28 am
Paula! Good job in turning an interesting yet neutral article into a forum in which to vomit your myopic “all guns are bad” bovine excrement. Keep it Canada and keep it to yourself. I keep my opinions of Canada to myself and suggest you do the same about my country. Remember- we have guns; You don’t.
posted by Scott-O on 3-4-2009 at 2:21 pm
Having a concealed weapons permit give you the impression that this statemnt is true? “We are among the safest people in the world” ! Wow thanks I really needed something to amuse me today. and I even like the ability to have a weapon, but that was either just an extrmemly naive statement to make or boy am I glad I’m not your neighbor.
posted by Bob on 3-5-2009 at 3:57 pm
Canada is like a loft apartment above a Kick ASS Party…
posted by PA Hunter on 3-6-2009 at 2:49 pm
PA Hunter – but if the loft has great pot and far superior beer, which one is actually the great party?
posted by Bert on 3-18-2009 at 1:33 pm
We shouldn’t be praising Rangers for burning down homes in Appalachia.
Rangers do great things, but to me, that completely uncalled for. Burning down homes.
Sure it happened, but we shouldn’t be praising it as a “creative law enforcement technique”.
posted by Mike on 11-10-2010 at 12:06 pm
@Mike – You missed the point of that story. The squatters were not welcome! How else do you roll up the welcome mat?
Burning down temporarily vacated cabins (shacks or huts) are not “homes”, but illegal dwellings. Now I’m not for displacing people from their ancestral homes, but we have empowered our government to acquire land and create natural wildlife reserves. If you don’t like it, fight it – in court.
posted by Smash on 4-7-2011 at 8:24 am