Home / Series / Ken Burns Films / Aired Order / Season 2009 / Episode 5

The National Parks: Great Nature (1933 to 1945)

A new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, expands the national park idea to embrace battlefields and other historic and iconic sites. He enters pitched battles to create national parks on the Olympic Peninsula, Florida's Everglades, Wyoming's Teton Mountains, and California's High Sierra; he also creates the Civilian Conservation Corps to provide young men with jobs improving conditions at national parks. George Melendez Wright, a young Park Service employee, begins arguing that the parks are not doing enough to protect wildlife in their natural state. In Seattle, Iwao and Hanaye Matsushita fall in love with Mount Rainier National Park; and in California, another Japanese immigrant, Chiura Obata, finds inspiration for his art in Yosemite. When they are interned during World War II, they all find solace in their memories of the national parks of their adopted country.

English
  • Originally Aired October 1, 2009
  • Runtime 90 minutes
  • Network PBS
  • On Other Sites IMDB
  • Created August 28, 2017 by
    Administrator admin
  • Modified August 28, 2017 by
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Name Type Role
Ken Burns Director