Of land with locations in every state. More than 325 Million People visited these sites last year. Over the next 90 minutes, well feature a mixture of Natural Beauty and history at eight different parks around the country. We begin outside of cleveland. Well learn how the canal plays a major role in western expansion. The ohio canal is part of a twocanal system that was put in place in the early years of america, built between 1825 and 1832. And basically its a water transportation route that connected lake erie with the ohio river which is part of a large idea, a National Water transportation route. In the early days of america, we had 13 colonies all situated along the atlantic seaboard. And our leaders at that time saw a problem. That problem was we needed that country to expand westward. However, there was a big obstacle. The appalachian mountains. Our first president , george washington, happened to be a canal engineer, had an idea. That idea was to create a transcontinental water transportation route using two canals, the erie canal that would connect hudson river, lake erie, ohio river, mississippi, all the way to the gulf of mexico. In the early days of america, we didnt have a big federal government. In terms of funding and implementing the canal depended on the states. So fortunately the state of new york had a champion there, de witt clinton, who became their commissioner and got the job done through the state of new york. He rose to become the governor of the state of new york. Ohio facing a similar challenge in terms of funding, et cetera, you find its on the verge of bankruptcy. The canal project is worth more than the value of ohio. The state of new york backed the bonds and it was de witt clinton who came to ohio for the groundbreaking. Why . Guess what, it made a lot of beneficial difference to the state of new york including the fact that new york city became the only port that would export and import goods making it the Financial Capital of the america. In ohio, we had a fellow by the name of alfred kelly who became the commissioner and took it on as his lifelong legacy, if you will, to make sure that canal got built on time and under budget. Its 309 miles in length. It goes from cleveland to port smith, ohio, on the ohio river. The construction began in 1825. By 1827, july 4th, the first boat from akron to cleveland docked through the canal port in cleveland. By 1832, the entire system was complete. It made a tremendous difference. For the nation, it allowed us to start to rationalize our economy. It allowed us to have internal trade. Prior to that, all of the seaboard states depended on exporting in order in terms of making money and delivering goods and services. This helped america expand westward. By doing so, i mentioned new york city became the Financial Capital of the country. Ohio rises from a wilderness to be the third most populous and the third richest state in the union by the 1860s. Canal life was a slowpaced life. Canals, boats, went 4, 5 miles per hour. Were standing next to a lock right now. And there would have been numerous locks to allow those boats to basically navigate the terrain and topography. These became elevators that lifted and lowered the boats as they made their journey. It was cramped quarters. Oftentimes, you would find cattle and people sleeping in the same boat. Some were travelers, some were goods being delivered. It was a hectic life but at a slow place. The goods that were moved along the canal from ohio eastward were grain, wheats, things of this nature. Things that were farmed here. We became the bread basket of america for a reason. This was a good place to grow things. And new england became a good place to make things. So basically we had this barter trade system that was part of our National Economy growing that had one hand food, on the other hand, services, goods, machines, et cetera. The canal in ohio paid for itself. What is significant, in cleveland, we had our way lock. The way lock was how you made money with the canal. The difference between its original weight and what was docked in at the port of cleveland, that where you got your taxes, thats where you made your money. In 1874 when the railroads bought the mile of canal land in the city of cleveland to put a railroad track, we took that weigh cancal. We still use the weigh canal in 1874. We were still making money on that canal. Railroads arrived in cleveland in 1854. The guy who helps bring the railroads to slooecleveland, the guy who championed the canal. The railroads had an Immediate Impact on canal. The canal did stay in use all the way up until 1913. It had a different use. It started to become a place where people would go on a weekend, they would have a boat, they would travel up and down the canals. Many times, canals, when they were put in place, would have General Stores or taverns and people would i guess in their day go pub crawling, if you will, using a canal boat on a sunday afternoon. One permanent legacy of the canal was the fact that in cleveland, especially, the river valley became the center of storage, it became a port, it became a Manufacturing Center of the city itself. So thats where the wealth of cleveland grew. It was all based upon the fact that you had that canal as clevelands first port there. As time went on and manufacturing obviously rose, city of cleveland grew. We became the fifth largest city in the country. We had major, major steel mills and oil refineries, thanks to John Rockefeller. And there was a consequence environmentally to those uses. Prior to the Environmental Protection agency and regulations for water and what you can put in water and rivers, et cetera, there were no regulations. And so, you know, in cleveland, you had situations where, for instance, standard oil and John Rockefeller basically refined oil along the banks of the river, when they did so, there were certain byproducts that he could not find a use for and therefore they ended up in the river. It was told and reported that at one time we had a fire in 1957. They went and measured the gunk that was on the top of the river and it was more than 8 inches deep of oil and other byproduct that is were flammable. But the story itself, although its bad, it really had tremendously positive outcomes. It inspires earth day. It helps pass legislation that creates the United States epa. It helps pass the clean water bill, the clean air bill. If you look at all of the consequences of that particular river fire, the positive far outweighs the negative of that. And cleveland, due to that river fire and due to the exposure it got, we pretty much are the beginning of the environmental movement. In 1974, Congress Passed legislation that created the Cuyahoga Valley National park. And it became the central feature of the National Park. Were still whats called an area of concern. Theres still work to be done in terms of completing the job of cleaning up the river. But the needle has gone dramaically to the positive end. Were just about through the area of concern. In fact, in 2000 then president bill clinton introduced a program called the American HeritageRivers Program and he basically put the invitation out to anyone who thought their river was significant enough to the story of america to compete for this new designation, we did. We competed for the Cuyahoga River as part of that. And the story was told to choose what was going to be the first ten rivers to be nominated for American River status. He read through the list and said, where is the cuyahoga . Didnt they apply . And the answer was, no, they did apply. However, they didnt make the cut. He goes, this program is all about the Cuyahoga River. And the reason he said that was, its the comeback of the cuyahoga that is the story today. This area that were in right now, became Cuyahoga National Recreation Area in december of 1974. It became Cuyahoga Valley National park in the year 2000. With that comes a new idea for bringing National Parks to people. Most of us arent going to get to the gates of the wildlife refuge, but if we have National Parks nearby, we can get to those. They started making National Parks in urban areas. We have a backbone thats a braided backbone with the ohio and erie canal, a braided backbone with the cuyahoga City Railroad and the Cuyahoga River. This was created out of land that had been used in some instances abused, left in ruin, because it was a wasteland in some places that people didnt see any potential for. And yet we cleaned it up, we let nature do what nature does, and now were the 11th most visit National Park. Theres a huge story here, a story of can i say redemption . If we allow nature to do what it does best, if we give it the chance to do what it does best and not interfere and help it, then the land cant recover with environmental legislation and laws and with things that we have in place. Now we have a river that is coming back to life. The environment has recovered. Yes, it was degraded because of man. But it was also helped by man and it has allowed us with that helped, it has recovered to recreate this great green area we have now. From the Cuyahoga River in ohio we now travel to the banks of the Mississippi River and gateway arch National Park in st. Louis where a monument to americas westward expansion has become a recognizable symbol for the city who played a vital role in it. Most people, just like i was when i first saw it, when you see it from a distance, you think, oh, thats kind of interesting. Its kind of cool. And then the closer you get to it, you realize how really massive it is. And getting up to the base of it and touching it, looking up the 630 feet to the top, it really is very, very impressive. I think the closer you get to it, the more impressed you become. Right now were standing close to the famous gateway arch in st. Louis. 630foot tall stainless steel structure that was designed back in 1947. But not built until the mid1960s and completed in 1965. Each year we get about 2 1 2 million visitors who come to see the memorial and see the arch. So its a very busy place, especially during the summer months. The gateway arch was designed by a man who was born in finland. He came here to america when he was 10 years old with his father who was a very famous architect. He mainly had worked just with his father up to the point in time when an architectural competition was announced for what became the arch that you see behind me. The competition was for Jefferson National expansion memorial which was a National Park service site founded by a president ial proclamation in 1935 to commemorate st. Louiss role in the westward expansion of the United States. 12 years after the founding of the park, an architectural competition was held to decide what the memorial itself would look like. And basically, they had about 90 acres of land to work with. 40 city blocks had been torn down, completely raised of all of their original buildings, to make way for the memorial on the st. Louis river front. Each architect that submitted a design proposal could really do whatever he or she wanted. It could be a huge sculpture, a series of museum buildings. They did want one central feature to be in each of these designs. Some people put an obelisk in, some people put a big kind of monolithic rectangular block or something. He decided to go with the idea of an arch and it was only after he kind of designed the arch that he realized, oh, it forms a gateway. So its really appropriate for the idea of a memorial to st. Louiss role as a gateway, to have a gigantic gateway on the river front. On the inside its made of three quarter inch carbon steel. We have a sandwich. In the lower portions of the sandwich, its filled in with concrete. In the upper portions, there are steelreinforcing rods that keep the sections apart. Its a unique structure because theres no girders that form the shape of the arch. Sometimes visitors are surprised because they havent read about the arch to learn that they can go to the top of it. They think maybe its just like a big piece of Outdoor Sculpture and you can look at barrelshap capsules that fit five persons in each one and on each leg of the arch there are eight of those capsules that form a train that run on a track. With people get into the capsule its hanging from the tracks. As they go to the top, by the time they get to the top its on top of the track. So in order to accommodate that and make sure that people arent going to be flipped upside down, it actually shifts and turns to keep the car level. It doesnt go ride like something at a county fair or six flags or something, but its a unique experience. A lot of people really prize the experience of riding in these strange little capsules up to the top and getting the nice view that they get from the top of the arch from thorrer isvation deck right at the top. Right now were in the midst of a multimillion dollar project that is being funded by many different entities that are partnering with the National Park service to kind of revitalize the park itself and to make it more accessible to people. For many years weve been kind of an island surrounded by highspeed roads and what is going to happen is kind of a lid is going to be placed over the highway so that you can walk directly from the city where you probably would have parked your vehicle without having to cross any major streets. Its really this iconographic symbol of st. Louis sort of like what the space needle is to seattle or the Empire State Building or the statue of liberty is to new york. There are certain symbols that immediately identify a place on the map to people and the arch is the one, the one for st. Louis. Right now we leave the city once considered the gateway to the west and travel through the great plains and over the Rocky Mountains to the Colorado National monument near Grand Junction to hear how one man helped preserve this area on colorados western slope. I think everybody is just amazed by the its not a widely publicized presence here and the Public Service doesnt advertise. So people find out about this because they read magazine articles or they see features like youre preparing and its not our typical colorado scenery. Its not what most people think of when they think of colorado. So it comes as a pleasant surprise to folks who find it here. John otto was a kind of a vagabond, not in the sense that he was a na nair do well, but he didnt have permanent roots. He was attracted to this area around 1907 by the promise of employment on a water line project and i guess this was just the type of country thanks really appealing to him and so he issue gbegan to agitate for creation of a National Park here. First thing he did is he wrote a lot of letters to prominent people trying to get this established as a National Park and he also constructed a lot of trails to afford access into the canyons and on to the rims of the monument. Im sure the local people came out on sunday afternoon and they hitched out a wagon and so on. One of the other things he did was in 1926 he started collecting buffalo nickels from the kids in town, and used that money to transport a couple of bison in here. He wanted to establish a herd of bison in the monument. The elks club conspired to bring in a couple of elk. John got some money from the chamber of commerce to build some fences to contain these animals and for many years we had a bison herd now. The elk took one look around and they went on the south end of the high country, but oddly enough theyre coming back into the monument now impeach we. Were seeing more and more elk sign and they were confined to a really small area and they had a really adverse impact on the resource, but that was the kind of thing he did. He was interested in boosting the area and promoting it and so on, but there was no concerted effort until john otto came here to set this aside as a National Park or a National Monument. There are a couple of distinctions between National Parks and National Monuments and one of them is legal relating to the method in which it was established and the other is more based on its resource qualities. Otto agitated for the creation of a National Park here, but the creation of a National Park requires an act of congress, and so its much more difficult to do. The National Monument can be established by a president ial proclamation, and so although john otto wanted a National Park it was much easier to establish a National Monument and thats what happened when president taft proclaimed the area in 1911 the other distinction is resource based and generally the National Monumen