An Interview with Robert M. Utley on the History of Historic Preservation in the National Park Service—1947-1980

AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT M. UTLEY ON THE HISTORY OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE—1947-1980
by Richard W. Sellars and Melody Webb
September 24, 1985 - December 27, 1985

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Dick: This is tape 7 of the interview with Bob Utley. September 26, 1985.

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Bob: I don't think I could have persuaded Julia Butler Hanson of the inadvisability of the Fort Vancouver project. Perhaps with Hartzog's active participation something might have been done, but I think that was a lost cause.

Now subsequently, I got in exactly the same situation at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Senator John McClellan wanted it reconstructed in the same way that Fort Vancouver had been reconstructed. I never dealt directly with Senator McClellan, but I dealt with his administrative assistant, who was a very powerful man. McClellan was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and he could have got the money for it just by putting it in the budget. I did manage to convey to the administrative assistant (I can't remember his name) that this oughtn't to be done and why. He was persuaded, as were the staff people representing Senator Bumpers. But in order to make it stick, I then had to go out to Fort Smith and persuade the constituents that it shouldn't be done. So in a public meeting I did in fact make the case, and Fort Smith, for that as well as other reasons, never materialized as a serious proposition.

Dick: What was the reaction of the constituency at Fort Smith?

Bob: I believe they were basically persuaded. They wanted their log stockade, but I succeeded in making them feel that what they wanted would be a fraud on the public, would be a waste of the taxpayer's money, and could not be accomplished on the basis of what was known, and so therefore it would be simply a Hollywood movie set and nothing more. They resisted up to a point and then the support collapsed.

Dick: Bob, let's go back briefly to the Ohio congressman and the McGuffy Landmark.......

Bob: Mike Kirwin.

Dick: Ok, I can see why Julia Butler Hansen and Senator McClellan would want reconstructions in their own districts because they had a lot of public appeal and so forth, but a National Historic Landmark, what real political difference did that make to Congressman Kirwin?

Bob: It made a difference. I guess we had done such a good job of selling the importance of the landmark designations in terms of something that a community could be proud of that, that was appealing to him, and of course in addition the landmark presentation is a format within which you can get together politicians and others to make public appearances before the constituency, and this was early on recognized as a big benefit of the landmark program. We just had presentation ceremonies all over the place to give exposure to members of Congress.

There was another tricky issue that confronted me late in my career. First I should say that there were basic issues that I regarded as matters of principle that arose in connection with properties within the National Park System. How to care for them, or projects for their utilization or destruction, made for constant battles with park management, regional management, and even Washington management. We had one issue up in New England involving the Narbonne House, where the Region insisted on converting it for park quarters. Well this was a dwelling that had been built in the 17th century.

Dick: In Salem, Massachusetts.

Bob: Yes it was in Salem. And I suppose you can number on the fingers of two hands the 17th-century buildings still standing in the United States. Our contention was that you don't take a structure going back that far, of which there are so few, and adapt it to modern use. The Regional Director was adamant, and so we had a standoff between the professional division in Washington and the Region. And one of the tricky things always is to decide whether the issue, the principle, is so important that you want to accept the fallout in terms of subsequent dealing with a subordinate manager by going over his head. This was an instance where we felt that the principle was so valid that it was important to get the Regional Director overruled. We went to the Director and he overruled the Regional Director. Of course, then, the Regional Director didn't have any great love for me for a long time to come because I had got him overruled by the Director. So this is the kind of decision you always had to make.

Dick: Who was the Regional Director?

Bob: I think it must have been Chet Brooks. This was before the North Atlantic Region was created.

Of course, my own Waterloo arose over the same sort of collision. This was with the Director himself, then Gary Everhardt. And the issue concerned a district of historic buildings on the south rim of Grand Canyon. Back at that time the great goal was to try to clear all of the buildings off the south rim of Grand Canyon—all the Fred Harvey hotels and so forth and a brand new luxury motel. These last, of course, really weren't at jeopardy. Nobody was going to tear down El Tovar or force the demolition of that luxury motel or any of the others. And yet Gary was ready to wipe out a district of fine residential properties and the big electric plant which the architects had said was significant. I had said from the beginning, I can join in your effort to clear the south rim of Grand Canyon if indeed you are going to approach it indiscriminately. Tear everything down and I probably can justify this on the grounds of the dominant values of the natural area. Personally I felt that the south rim didn't suffer that much from the buildings that were there. And the railroad station, the electric plant, and other structures were fairly significant in terms of how we viewed our national parks two generations ago. But okay, if you will take everything out I probably can get the demolition of the historic structures through the Advisory Council and the 106 process. But you can't select out just the historic and demolish them. I rapidly found myself squared off directly against the Director. We had a severe collision one Friday evening in which I was, if not shouted down, at least overruled by the Director, and it was that issue, exemplifying others of a like nature, that led to my decision to leave the Park Service. If I couldn't loyally serve the Director, I didn't want to serve him at all. So I left.

Dick: Bob, this goes back to what we were talking about a few minutes ago: the learning process that began when you got to Washington and your relationship with George Hartzog. Both you and Hartzog, I gather from what you say, were learning a good bit about finesse and diplomacy within the bureaucratic framework. And I think some of these things that you've just mentioned might help answer the question that was asked day before yesterday about why you are remembered by the rank and file of the Park Service more than Ernest Allen Connally. I gather you were the one, not Dr. Connally, who was at the forefront of these battles that we have discussed here.

Bob: Insofar as they involve park resources, that's true, because Ernest and I had a division of responsibility. He concentrated on external and I internal. And so I was the one who knew the internal. I was the one who could articulate the issues and present the arguments pro or con. It wasn't all con, either. There were instances where George wanted something positive and I was able to provide something positive that was also justifiable from the professional standpoint.

Dick: Perhaps the fact that you were spokesman and could articulate these matters is one of the reasons why a kind of a cult developed regarding you. Which I have observed from my various stations in the Park Service. Would you comment on that?

Bob: Well, Melody and I argued about this yesterday, and I'm not persuaded that there is an Utley cult out there or ever was, but I had, I think, some enthusiastic and loyal supporters scattered throughout the professional ranks of the Park Service. In fairness, I had plenty of detractors, too, who thought I was the worst thing that ever hit the professional arm of the Park Service. So you have to balance the one with the other. But I guess I would concede a certain validity to the thought that the ability to articulate professional issues and concerns to a nonprofessional and political and bureaucratic audience may have been one reason for my supporters. Another may be that I always took pains to relate to the field, and if not make sure the field supported me at least make sure the field had its opportunity to have its say—regional historians, park historians, and all. Another explanation may be that I had a dual career. I was a relatively successful bureaucrat inside, but I had enough of a publication record that I was accepted by the professional

world outside, which not many people have done in the Park Service. I think there was, if not a lot of admiration for it, at least it was looked upon as an example that many would liked to have emulated.

Melody: Well I might also add Bob that I think that because the outside world perceives you as the spokesperson for the Park Service, those people in the Park Service also fell behind that recognition and saw you as speaking for the Park Service. For example, WHA still sees you as the spokesperson for the Park Service even though you've been out of the Park Service for 10 years.

Bob: I think that is a dimension of it. I would agree to that.

Dick: We're digressing a good bit from the 1966 Act, but I want to bring this up again. We discussed it the other day briefly. That is the matter of why more people in the National Park Service rank and file remember you than remember Dr. Connally. Perhaps if the question were asked of people who were in the National Register or external programs, would they remember Connally more than you? Do you think?

Bob: That is a hard one to call for a couple of reasons. Connally's activities may have been in part not visible to the rank and file, because he was out there on the firing line representing them in the bureaucracy, on the Hill, and to the outside profession. By contrast, I and Bill Murtaugh, Russ Keune, and others related more to the rank and file than he did. When you add to that the fact that I succeeded him as Director of the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation and held that post for a couple of years, and so then was directly responsible for them, I am not sure what kind of an answer you get. I am pretty sure that you would get a much higher name and reputation recognition of Ernest from that group than you do from the internal group, but I am not sure that they fully appreciate all that he did in their behalf.

Dick: Because as you said much of it wasn't quite.......

Bob: Wasn't visible to them. But it was visible to me, because I would go with him, for example to sit down with Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton, and I would see how effectively he got Morton behind our program. I accompanied him to Chicago for all of those delicate and volatile negotiations with Mayor Daley's henchmen over the proposed Chicago Architectural Theme Historic Site, in which I saw him pitted against the quintessential development mentality. I saw how effectively he represented our interests. So I suppose I am in a better position than almost anyone to have an appreciation of his performance. My visibility with the rank and file was greater, and they probably thought that much of the success was due to my leadership, when in fact I was simply following him.

Dick: You mention detractors. Would you discuss that just a little bit who they were and so forth?

Bob: I suppose the ones I had mostly in mind were not within our own professional discipline, but the most vocal were in interpretation, and many of them were historians in planning and in the design and construction end of things.

But there were several. We all remember the celebrated case of George Svejda. Svejda was on my staff at one time and came out of that close-knit historical organization that Tommy Pitkin put together in New York City. George Svejda tried to organize a vendetta against me that would have eliminated me altogether if he had his way.

A more constructive opposition came from Sidney Bradford, with whom I had been associated since the beginning of the Historic Sites Survey. Sid Bradford ran the Historic Sites Survey under me for a time and then became one of the key officials in the new National Register Program of the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Sid was the person responsible for grants-in-aid. After we started getting money for grants to the states, that became a crucial position. There was some organizational change that Ernest and I had jointly decided on when I was Director of OAHP that involved Sidney surrendering some of his responsibility to another unit. I don't even remember what it was. But Sidney was a dogmatic and rigid person, totally resistant if he disagreed, and we confronted the situation in which the subordinate refused to carry out the orders of his superior—me. And so to finesse the whole thing with a minimum of embarrassment I was instrumental in getting him a position in the Philadelphia office, which subsequently became, if it wasn't initially, an assistant regional director. Bradford, almost always with the Regional Director's support, could be expected to take the opposing side on any issue, and there was just constant war between my office and the Philadelphia Region. Sidney was behind a lot of that, but I think beyond that this Region in the corporate sense always has been and to this day remains a power unto itself that goes its own way without regard for what the rest of the Park Service is doing.

Dick: What other detractors come to mind?

Bob: When I assembled the research unit on the Washington level in 1965, I took on a lot of people. It was put together through a process of transferring positions, money, and incumbents identified with research on the park level onto the Washington level. I picked up more than a dozen historians who then became research historians. George Svejda was one of those who came that way, and he was, as I have mentioned, one of my most bitter detractors.

Another one who came in that way was George Olshevski. He had done the research (such as it was) on the Ford's theater restoration and thought highly of himself. And maybe it's significant that both Svejda and Olshevski were proud possessors of a Ph.D and felt that no one who did not have one could pretend to any kind of professional attainment, and here they were reporting to two people—Roy Appleman and myself—who lacked the terminal degree.

Another who came in at that time was John Platt. He turned out not to be very successful and finally went back to where he had come from, in Philadelphia, and I have a suspicion that he was not among my admirers. There were historians, as I have indicated, who were not in the history end of the Park Service but in interpretation, and I suspect you might find that most of the historians who worked for interpretation were not among my admirers or supporters, probably because of my stand on so many interpretive issues. The names of so many of these people slip away from me.

I think I mentioned Murray Nelligan earlier. He was one of those who found it difficult to accommodate to a young unknown from out West coming in and taking over the top history position of the Park Service. I guess I should say at the same time, though, that the ones most affected, Charlie Porter and Rogers Young, for whom it must have been a very bitter pill indeed, swallowed the pill. I have no reason to believe that they or others—John Littleton, Harold Peterson—ever did other than give me the most loyal and conscientious support, even though every one of them thought he ought to be Chief Historian.

Dick: Bob, let's go back to the 1966 Act. Did that act fail to do or inadequately provide for things that you wanted addressed, and then would you discuss the 1980 amendments, if they addressed anything that you wanted addressed?

Bob: As I mentioned, I wasn't leading the pack. I was running to catch up in the period when this was going through the Congress. It was only after the enactment that I began to have any opinions about it and I don't remember that they were independent opinions. We accepted the given of what the experts had said had to go in that law and then tried to translate it into an administrative system that worked. I came to have definite opinions as we acquired experience under it. The biggest thing that we needed was money. The law was an authorization to seek funds to do certain things, and I don't believe it was until 1969 that we got our first money to activate the grants program, and then it was only $300,000, which had to be split among the 50 states. So long as we didn't have any money, the states weren't particularly interested in building up their machinery, so funding was the concentration of everybody in those first two or three years.

I think otherwise, in creating a National Register, the classes and categories to be looked on as worthy of preservation, and the criteria of evaluation, were all sound. The protective mechanism, Section 106, was sound and I think a sensitive product of our own particular republican form of government: it was fine-tuned to public and private responsibilities and prerogatives. It was a good thing.

The one place that we began to develop some real problems was how to apply it to properties in Federal custody. The Park Service itself had a rude awakening when all of a sudden the Superintendent of Yellowstone found a representative of the State of Wyoming identifying properties within park boundaries that were worthy of preservation, to be put in the National Register and therefore protected by Section 106. The Superintendent was Jack Anderson and he was not of a temperament to suffer anyone inside or outside the Park Service to encroach in the slightest on his territory. So he got on the telephone to Hartzog and Hartzog had the rude awakening. He was not about to have any state official coming into the parks to identify what was worthy of preservation. So we had a few years of delicate negotiations between our own hierarchy and our constituency in the states. It was essential to our survival. We were not going to get a dollar unless the state people told their congressional delegations that this was something important to the state. And yet inside we had the hierarchy telling us to keep those people out of the parks. This eventually got resolved.

The other Federal agencies were doing an even worse job. They didn't conceive of the Register as applying to them at all. We finally worked out arrangements whereby Federal agency officials would consult with state officials, and between them they would decide what went on the National Register. But still there was tremendous stonewalling by Federal agencies against putting things in the Register, because they didn't want to have to deal with Section 106.

We presented ourselves to the Defense Department and pointed to all of the incontestably significant properties in the jurisdiction of the Army and the Navy and the Air Force and pointed to the new law. Their housing official flatly informed me that the Defense Department had only one mission and that was national defense. I said you've got another mission now, it's historic preservation. But they did not accept my interpretation. So this situation and the dissatisfaction it aroused among the state people led to the promulgation of Nixon's Executive Order 11593, directing all of the Federal agencies to survey properties under their jurisdiction and put them in the National Register. So we then acquired Federal agency representatives, who did the same things for their agencies that the State Historic Preservation Officers did for their states. And when it came to properties under Federal jurisdiction, the two officials theoretically got together. The Executive Order also, I believe for the first time, used the language "properties in or eligible for the National Register," which instantly created the requirement to evaluate all properties not in the National Register that might qualify for the Register before doing anything that might harm them. It created a requirement for a system of survey and identification on the part of every Federal agency. And as you know, that was embedded into the 1976 legislation, which also freed the Advisory Council from the Park Service, and then into the 1980 Amendments. That in my recollection is the only really rough spot in that external program. I think philosophically and practically, it all went together in a symmetrical way.

Dick: You would identify the executive order by Nixon as the key turning point in the bringing around the Federal agencies.

Bob: Well it helped a lot. It wasn't decisive. But it laid a substantial foundation for subsequently inserting those requirements in the law. It was only after they were enacted into law that agencies began to take them even half-way seriously.

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