This is the memory palace. I'm Nate Demet.

The people would come before nightfall.

A new road's cut through the wilderness, stretched over prairies.

Layed out in roots governed by a convenient shore,

by ease of construction, of least resistance,

by proximity to existing amenities and all that, but by inspiration too.

By vistas, stirring scenery, mountains, majesty,

soaring, just so through the car window, as they came around the bend,

people who came before nightfall, when cars were still new to most.

When any flickering landscape out the passenger window,

a city street, a stand of trees, a rain-gray warehouse by the railroad tracks,

could still thrill, but here on these new roads were vistas.

Right on cue, there was El Capitan, purple in the fading light.

There were the teetons, as grand as advertised.

And when these people arrived at Yosemite or Yellowstone,

or Bryce Canyon, or any of the national parks in the American West in the 1920s and 30s,

they drive right to the trash dump.

Because if you were going to Yosemite or Yosemite or Yellowstone, or what have you back then,

if you had made the journey all the way there to the places America had pledged to keep wild,

you wanted to see some wild animals.

And if you made it by sunset, you could watch tons of bears eating trash.

The novelist Wallace Stegner called the National Parks the best idea the United States ever had.

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