A Career Dedicated to Turning the National Park Map Green: A Conversation with Howard Miller

Howard Miller (HM): More parks and more visitors! That’s a big thing—more people are visiting parks today. Most of the large parks in Alaska did not exist when I started with the Park Service 50 years ago. New kinds of parks were authorized; National Seashores, National Recreational Areas, and National Trails. There are also more threats on the parks today. When I started, air pollution wasn’t a big issue, and today you also have invasive species issues you didn’t have back 50 years ago. And 50 years from now there will be more changes, such as the effect of rising sea levels on coastal parks and shifting or changes in plant and animal life as parks’ climates change. Last but not least, there are more rules and regulations that slow down the land acquisition program.

HM: I was born in Luray, Virginia and raised on a small farm at the foothills of Shenandoah National Park. My father worked at Shenandoah, and I would sometimes go to work with him when I wasn’t in school. I obtained a degree in Political Science from Virginia Tech in 1966. While in college I worked during the summers at Shenandoah usually on survey crews, and after graduation I was offered a temporary job, researching and documenting water rights in the Park.

Shenandoah Valley. Photo by Ainsley Lockhart. 

In 1967 I had the opportunity to transfer to the Washington area and work in the newly created Land Acquisition Division of the Eastern Service Center. I started out as a Cartographic Technician drawing real estate maps, plotting deeds and writing legal descriptions, but soon moved to a realty position. In 1975 I became Chief of the Program Section in the Washington Land Acquisition Office. We handled the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Budget Request for NPS as well as the allocation of LWCF appropriations. In 1995 I became chief of the Coordination and Control branch of the Land Resources which not only included budget and programing but also real estate ownership status, mapping and deed retirement. In 2003, I became Deputy Chief of the Land Resources Office.

HM: Oh, yes. There were years when I did quite a bit of traveling to help with the study of areas for new parks. I would go with a team of park planners and real estate appraisers. Sometimes we would leave on a Thursday or Friday to do planning, mapping, collect ownership data, and prepare land acquisition cost estimates that were all due Monday morning. My work never took me to the older parks in the West, like Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, for land acquisition was essentially complete in those parks.

HM: Years ago the civil war battlefields were administered by the War Department and were not protected very well. Usually only the trench lines were federally owned. The battlefields themselves had returned to farmland—not protected and needing protection. In 1933 the War Department transferred the battlefield parks to NPS. In the 1960s NPS started to acquire the vacant battlefield land as newly developing subdivisions and shopping centers became a threat. Recently, the Civil War Trust has stepped in and helped to acquire land both inside and outside battlefield boundaries. Like other non-profits, they can move faster to acquire a threatened tract of land. NPS usually waits for the Congressional budget cycle to appropriate money. For example, at the Richmond Battlefield, Congress passed legislation in March 2000 establishing a fixed boundary for the park, but funds were not appropriated until 2003. At some National Battlefields, like Fredericksburg, battlefield land was lost to development.

HM: A recent success was the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania. That was a joint land acquisition effort with The Conservation Fund, Friends of the Families of Flight 93 and the Park Service to acquire the land needed to meet the deadline for building the Memorial. One of the most exciting land acquisitions was the Casey Ranch at Wind Cave by The Conservation Fund. We got the LWCF dollars lined up, but The Conservation Fund acquired the property for us at a public foreclosure auction.

Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. Photo courtesy National Park Service. 

One of my first acquisition projects was at Piscataway Park in Maryland across the river from Mount Vernon. I was involved in mapping, surveying and negotiations for some of the tracts. I have often stood on the front lawn of Mount Vernon and looked across the Potomac River and said to myself, “I helped to protect that view.”

HM: In the beginning, there wasn’t much involvement with non-profits. We didn’t need them because in the early days we had the money, resources and staff to go out and acquire a tract before development occurred in most cases. As appropriations declined, we needed non-profit partners who have the advantage of being able to acquire or hold a tract of land to stop development when we can’t act quickly enough. Sometimes we just don’t have the right amount of money in the right place at the right time, as we wait for Congress to appropriate funds.

HM: My motto is that I want to see more land protected and more parkland to turn the US national park map green. That’s overly optimistic, of course. The White House and Congress create new parks. In the Land Resources Office, our job is to acquire land to make parks a reality. We are always in competition with those who want to develop land to gain the highest profit possible. A balance is needed. I hope I have helped to maintain that balance, and hopefully, tilted the scales more towards preservation for park purposes.

"I hope I have helped to maintain that balance, and hopefully, tilted the scales more towards preservation for park purposes." Click to Tweet . 
Howard Miller at his office in Washington, DC. Photo courtesy National Park Service.