On June 6, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, a high-risk operation of unprecedented size that turned the tide of World War II. Amid the many stresses of that day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt still made time to accept an unassuming document from Texas publisher Amon G. Carter Sr. A photo taken of that meeting shows Roosevelt laughing with Carter and three congressmen, a moment of unlikely joy.
The document was the deed to 700,000 acres of the Big Bend area in West Texas. Six days later, Roosevelt declared the land a national park, a gift for the American people in the midst of the horrors of war.
“The fact that [Roosevelt] took time during D-Day to help create a National Park is testament to the importance of these places and hope for a better future,” posted the Big Bend National Park Service on the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
As a part of the U.S. National Park System, Big Bend belongs both to itself and to all Americans — a protected, pristine desert landscape, home to peregrine falcons, bighorn sheep, rare plants, Native petroglyphs, and the magnificent Rio Grande. It is both dry and verdant, inhospitable to the unprepared, and absolutely breathtaking.
Today, its promised protections are gone, its beauty threatened.
To make way for the construction of border defenses through the park, the Trump administration waived 31 environmental and cultural resource protection laws, needlessly endangering countless species of plants and animals, increasing flood risks, and threatening Native sites. For weeks, bulldozers (at taxpayers’ expense) carved irrevocable damage through the parkland before a bipartisan backlash led to a temporary pause. A planning zone just outside the park is still active as are construction efforts in privately-owned Texas border lands and in other states.
On social media, volunteers documented the destruction in the park in the Santa Elena Canyon and Mariscal Mountain areas as followers watched in horror. A grassroots fundraiser was quickly established to rescue plants that lie in the machines’ paths. Laiken Jordahl with the Center for Biological Diversity describes pottery sherds kicked up by the bulldozers, testament to the hundreds of years of human occupation of the river corridor as yet undocumented and unexcavated.
The current no-bid $1.7 million contract for parkland defenses is specifically for “patrol roads and surveillance technology,” no longer for a wall, due to the furious public backlash when a wall was first proposed. Governor Greg Abbott in recent days repeated the promise of no wall, but that promise is neither new nor enough. Patrol roads alone are needlessly destructive. The permanently scarred landscape is heartbreaking proof
Texans on both sides of the aisle disagree with this construction project. It has nothing to do with border protection: less than 0.5% of crossings occur in the park, which is incredibly rugged and makes up only 6% of the southwest border. Furthermore, usable patrol roads already exist next to the newly bulldozed paths!
Watching the destruction unfold has brought my thoughts back to Amon Carter, to the man who handed Big Bend’s deed to Roosevelt on D-Day. Carter was my great-grandfather, and I cannot help wondering what he would do in this situation.
Carter promoted Texas interests every chance he got. He advertised; he spent; he befriended politicians. With good humor and an eye toward future dealings, he regularly sent Roosevelt prime cuts of Texas steak and a yearly live turkey. In 1934 he successfully lobbied for American Airlines to set up offices in Fort Worth, out-maneuvering Dallas. In 1940 when Oklahoma received a contract for a bomber plant, he convinced Roosevelt to build an even larger plant in Texas, now the home of Lockheed Martin.
He also took care to leave a legacy that would improve lives. He created a nonprofit foundation in 1945 to support civic and artistic services. He also founded an admission-free American art museum that bears his name “to stimulate the artistic imagination among young people.”
So it comes as no surprise that he became president of the Big Bend Park Association in 1936 with the aim to forever preserve a part of his beloved state for the American people — a living art museum. An unsigned letter written to Roosevelt likely by or on behalf of Carter reads, “Texas counts the advantage of assurance for all time that the region will be kept unchanged while being made accessible to universal visitation…” [italics mine]. Today, more than 560,000 people visit the park each year, and it has a $63.7 million local impact.
If Carter were alive today, his voice would be one of the loudest lambasting the park’s destruction.
With his example in mind, I’m calling on the modern Carters. The Texans with the loudest voices. The Texans with means and access to politicians. The Texans who love our wildlife and landscapes and want to continue to preserve them for the future.
Please use your significant voices. Call and write until the bulldozers are gone, every plant replanted, and every Native site treated with respect. Press until the border protection plan does not include any destructive measures.
Safe borders are important, but Big Bend is already safe.
Carter, Roosevelt, and others set aside this wild and wonderful part of Texas as a gift to the world, and it is now our duty to make sure that gift lives on.
