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Ken Burns: The National Parks - America's Best Idea

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Season 1
The National Parks series, from filmmaker Ken Burns, is a breathtaking journey through the nation’s most spectacular landscapes and a celebration of the people—famous and unknown—who fought to save them for future generations to treasure.
IMDb 8.620096 episodes16+
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Episodes

  1. S1 E1 - The Scripture of Nature (1851-1890)
    September 26, 2009
    1 h 53 min
    TV-G
    In 1851, a band of Indian fighters in California encounters a place of astonishing beauty, setting in motion events that bring other newcomers to Yosemite Valley, including John Muir, who becomes a national voice for preservation.
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  2. S1 E2 - The Last Refuge (1890-1915)
    September 27, 2009
    2 h 11 min
    7+
    Americans begin to question the nation’s rush across the continent that has devastated forests and ravaged animals. Conservation’s greatest champion is Theodore Roosevelt, who audaciously sets aside 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon.
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  3. S1 E3 - The Empire of Grandeur (1915-1919)
    September 28, 2009
    1 h 50 min
    TV-G
    Stephen Mather accepts the offer to oversee the national parks for one year. He launches a campaign to publicize the parks as a unified system and to persuade Congress to create a single agency to oversee it: the National Park Service.
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  4. S1 E4 - Going Home (1920-1933)
    September 29, 2009
    1 h 54 min
    TV-G
    Mather and Albright ally themselves with the automobile to “democratize” the national parks. Horace Kephart and George Masa launch a campaign to save the forests of the Smoky Mountains from destruction by establishing a national park.
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  5. S1 E5 - Great Nature (1933-1945)
    September 30, 2009
    1 h 53 min
    13+
    Franklin D. Roosevelt enters battles to create national parks on the Olympic Peninsula, Florida’s Everglades, and California’s High Sierra. George Melendez Wright begins arguing that the parks are not doing enough to protect wildlife.
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  6. S1 E6 - The Morning of Creation (1946-1980)
    October 1, 2009
    1 h 53 min
    7+
    After World War II, an increasingly mobile nation visits the parks as never before. When Jimmy Carter sets aside 56 million acres in Alaska–the largest grassroots movement in conservation history fights for the creation of seven new parks.
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Extras

Bonus

The Making of The National Parks
The Making of The National Parks
25minTV-G
Filmmaker Ken Burns and his longtime colleague Dayton Duncan take us on a behind-the-scenes tour of their series THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA.
Filmmaker Ken Burns and his longtime colleague Dayton Duncan take us on a behind-the-scenes tour of their series THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA.
Filmmaker Ken Burns and his longtime colleague Dayton Duncan take us on a behind-the-scenes tour of their series THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA'S BEST IDEA.

Details

More info

Content advisory
Violencealcohol usesmokingsexual content
Subtitles
None available
Directors
Ken Burns
Producers
Dayton DuncanKen Burns
Cast
Peter Coyote
Studio
PBS
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