THE LAST FRONTIER

[Music] [Applause] A man would almost have to have a heart of stone to fail to appreciate the beauty of the American landscape. Some people have hearts of stone. There was a time when the great American junkyard blighted only our very first frontier, the eastern seabboard. Back then, the west lay clear and clean and open beneath a boundless big sky. There was a time, but it's gone now. We have finally managed to desecrate this land from sea to shining sea. [Music] There was a time when if you didn't like it where you were, you could leave your junk and move on. But there is no return to that time. For we are down to the last frontier. [Music] [Music] The original inhabitants of this land, the Indians, regarded the whole wondrous panorama of it almost as a kind of living being. It was as though a spirit infused the whole broad land. A spirit to which they were related and on which they were dependent for survival. This spiritual feeling was expressed by an Indian chief while negotiating a treaty with the new Americans. Explaining why certain land should be set aside for his people. The chief said, "The land we live on, our fathers received from God, and they've transmitted it to us for our children, and we cannot part with it. Where is the land on which our children and their children after them are to lie down?" It was a good question. The Indians spiritual view of this land was a pretty good way of looking at it. [Music] It only took the white man a few short centuries to make rather a mess of a good bit of it. A fact that is coming home to roost today. America [Music] now is one vast urban web. A culture based on wheels that runs from Boston to Miami, from New York to Chicago and Kansas City, from San Francisco down to San Diego and back across the country again. Every day we grow increasingly aware of what this urban complex is doing to us and our environment. But we are caught in the web. Life today is bumper to bumper from birth to death. [Music] There was a time in this country when you could just pick up and move on. [Music] If you didn't like the future slums the tinhorn builders were offering, you could always go west. But the smog of our spreading cities is at the foothills of the Rockies now. And those days are gone. They made their last stand on a later frontier, the far west. There's something wonderful about the ghost towns of the Old West, purified by air and sun and sand and dusted off by tumble weed. It's not like the older frontier of the east, buried under one spreading metropolis after another. out here when the doors swung closed for the last time. We'd had it as far as moving on is concerned. We'd gone clear across and on to Alaska. And that's all there is, brother. There ain't no more. And so, where is the land on which our children and theirs after them are to lie down? Now that the wheels have stopped, now that the rails have run out. [Music] Luckily, there is some left. About a half billion acres, in fact. Nearly as much territory as all the states east of the Mississippi River. These great tracks of leftover land lie mostly in the far west. They are the old public domain lands, the lands nobody wanted in the big push across the country. They stretch from the southwest desert up through Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana across into the big timber country of the Northwest and on to the vastness of Alaska. They still belong to the government, which means they belong to the citizens of the United States. They are administered under the Department of the Interior by the Bureau of Land Management for you because you own them. Unlike the national parks and forests which have been set aside for public enjoyment, the future of these lands is still undecided. It is the job of the bureau to classify, evaluate, and manage them for the uses they may have in the future. [Music] To people used to driving bumperto-bumper, the desert country of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah may seem like a far off and desolate place, brooded over by an occasional turkey vulture, but it isn't desolate at all if you look around. The desert is home to that curious bird, the roadrunner. [Music] A visitor may also stir up a fearsome but harmless banded sand snake. [Music] The desert is also home to some not so harmless creatures, the scorpion and the tarantula. [Music] [Music] prairie dogs are thick as fleas, of course. But it may take a bit of looking to come upon that strange animal, the Kawatti Mundy, a desert relative of the raccoon. Its name literally means the solitary ring nose. And its flexible snout works every waking moment, poking into anything it can find. [Music] [Music] For all its dryness, the desert is a unique and living zoo. From the desert, these lands extend to the top of our own private world, Alaska, with its lakes and rivers, forests and tundra, and clear streams filled with salmon. [Music] The salmon harvest is an element of life to the Alaskan Indians who clean and dry and smoke the big fish to provide food for their sled dogs during the long northern winter. The salmon run is important to other Alaskan residents who survive only on this spectacular piece of real estate, the great brown bear. [Music] farther. Further north still near the rim of the Arctic Circle. The only reindeer herds in North America graze on the half-frozen Alaskan tundra. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Some of these herds are being managed experimentally to see if they can be controlled like cattle to furnish meat for the Eskimos who live along the frozen shores of the Bearing Strait across the way from Siberia. Most of Alaska is public domain land and it must be watched against a really dangerous predator, forest fire. A sudden alarm and somewhere in Alaska, the forest is burning. Bureau of Land Management planes head for the telltale haze. [Music] Flying the fringes of the fire, the BLM planes drop chemicals that turn to a fine mist as they settle earthward. Chemicals that will fireproof untouched foliage in the path of the blaze. >> Bring up your fire lines to sector 3. >> Roger. I mean, you already have. At the same time, bureau crews move in to tackle the fire at ground level, receiving logistic support from the air force. Take off. [Applause] [Music] Army personnel carriers provide mobility for the firefighters. [Music] >> Moving in with flamethrowers, BLM crews start a backfire on the edges of the main blaze. The backfire will produce a wide burntout belt in the path of the spreading inferno. A baron and fuelless barrier to the marching flames of the main fire. [Music] Gradually the fire is brought under control. Guarding the vastness of Alaska is a big job for the bureau. But there's a lot worth watching over. There used to be many clear, cold rivers in this country, but there aren't all that many left. If you live in Birmingham or Gary or Peoria, river like this belongs in another world. And that's where it is. Except it's part of your world now. Way people move around these days. [Music] If you want to get in some really fine grailing fishing, there's no better place to pitch your tent than along the Delta River in Alaska. [Music] You might as well go on back there and play, fella, cuz lunch is already on the fire. [Music] In the hands of a real gourmet chef, you can't beat a dish like this. Provided the cook minds what he's doing, of course. Half a billion acres of public land is a lot of territory. Unless you like the feeling of being a solitary angler on one of the best trout rivers in the world, a big hole in Montana. Then it's only a thin cushion. If you look at it realistically, between you and a lot of tangled lines on a bridge. [Music] This is Yellowstone. When it was established as a national park about a century ago, only a handful of people had ever seen it or knew what a spectacular piece of real estate Yellowstone was. It seemed extravagant almost to set aside these 2 million acres for the public. Later, more people heard about it and saw pictures of it and talked about it. But still, few went there. Even 20 years ago, you could drive through the park and hardly meet a soul. But today, with a growing population that moves everywhere on wheels, Yellowstone is more a national backyard than a national park. [Music] Of [Music] course, it's fun. There's nothing like it anywhere in the world. And people are sociable. They like to look at each other and at each other's kids and old faithful, too. Going off right on schedule. [Music] [Music] Visiting and camping in Yellowstone has been and always will be a great national pastime. Crowded as parts of the park are, you can still find a spot to be alone in. But if you're a rockhound and a loner and want a whole peak to be alone on, preferably with a lot of other unoccupied peaks around you, then you can't beat the public lands of the West. Or incidentally, rockhounding is permitted. If you feel that way about things, half a billion acres doesn't seem a lot anymore. [Music] If you like to pack off cross country for days on end, it doesn't seem like a lot either. If you like to go it on foot, following a route like the old prospector's trail along the Rogue River in Oregon, then the Pathfinder will sense looking down something else. That a wild river like the Rogue needs a stage 200 m long to present properly its own unique spectacular, which includes a whitewater boating act that rivals any in the world. It takes a couple of million acres of watershed to produce a river like the road. But they are not simply idle and idyllic acres. They pay their own keep many times over. Here on the Rogue Whed, the west slope of the Cascade Range is the most productive timberland in the United States. This magnificent forest of Douglas fur is managed by the bureau so that a portion is logged annually without diminishing the stand. Hey The timber is harvested by the highest bidder and the revenue from this operation is shared between local governments and the federal government and thus helps underwrite the bureau's expenses. In the case of Douglas fur, a whole track is logged completely. This affords the sunlight that new seedlings need for growth. Once the tract has been logged, the seedlings emerge, reforesting this fertile tract of timberland. [Music] The public lands produce revenues in other ways. They may be leased for oil drilling, tapping underground resources that also yield natural gas, potach, sulfur, and helium. [Music] Ranchers also lease these lands for grazing, about 160 million acres of them. In many instances, they afford multiple use, surface grazing, while at the same time underground oil and other mineral resources are tapped. Grazing includes wildlife as well, like doll sheep, a rare and prized big game animal found only on the razorback ridges of Alaska. [Music] For most of the great animals of this country, the public lands represent their last frontier, too. [Music] The most desolate tracks of the public domain seem to have no value at all, except for the priceless look of them. [Music] They do contain the oldest apartment houses in North America. Built a thousand years ago in southeast Utah by the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians out of field stone instead of brownstone. [Music] In places where the lizards now roam, a wanderer can find the symbols left by those ancient people. Momentos of the hunt game hoped for. We do not know. The symbols have not been deciphered yet. [Music] Cryptic symbols left by people who survived on this land, arid as it was and is. People who perhaps knew more of the value of it than we know today because of a spiritual dependence we do not fully feel. The most remarkable fact of all about the public domain is what can be found here. things out of the past, things out of the present that do not exist anywhere else on Earth, things that have no value at all. Because each in its own way is quite priceless. [Music] The wind blows, the rain falls, and somewhere on the public lands, soil is being eroded away. Should it be to provide the messes of tomorrow? Or should it be controlled to provide irrigation and range land today? The time to wonder is now. Now that we've followed the American rainbow clear across the continent and come to the end of it. We must now try to decide about these great tracks of public land that all of us own together. Some people feel they should be sold off to private developers. Others believe they should be kept as a public trust. Still others say each track should be judged individually, keeping in mind the economy of the area, traditional uses of the land, and the needs of a vastly larger population in years to come. Should this or that tract go for oil, grazing, housing, timber, or what? Should it be set aside forever just because of the way it is? Can it have a variety of uses? These questions are complex, but they are being pressed today. However, they are resolved. We will have to live with the answers from here on in. If the future of these lands is to really reflect our national desire, then the feelings of each of us must somehow be expressed, for we are down to our last frontier. And so where will our children and theirs after them lie down? It's a good question. Still, take a look, friend. Take a look at the last big backyard any of us will ever have. [Music]