It's Nightside with Dan Ray. I'm tell you Easy Boston's new video.
Halfway through the show, Good Evening is Nightside. Dan is off until August twelfth. Gary Tangway will be here tomorrow during the front Friday night version of Nightside. I'll be here Monday, not Tuesday. I'll find out by Monday who's doing the Tuesday version of Nightside, and I'll be here Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week. So that's the schedule. And for the next two hours, we are going to talk about national parks, of which there are four hundred
and thirty of them. I know a lot of you listening right now will be going to a national park for your summer vacation. And I've got a gentleman who was a ranger, still has his uniform at included, and is here to give you pointers that you might need to know if you're going to the Grand Titans or Zion or Yellowstone. Its name is Ranger Richard Turando, but his nickname is Dixie, and that's what we all call him, Dixie. Good Evening, Welcome to Night's Side.
Good evening, Morgan.
How about those socks?
How about them? No? No baseball talk tonight's soft topic topic.
Well, let's talk about national parks.
All right, we will We will do that as soon as I say hello to Nancy at the information keyboard, Gray Kitty in a comfy spot, and to mister Morgan White at the broadcast console, jor.
Thank you, and let me say this to you. There was a bump I'm being facetious out from Yellowstone about eight to ten days ago. I'm sure you heard about it. Tell people listening what happened at Yellowstone?
Well, actually there were three bumps. Three bumps one two were okay, but one was not. And the one that was not was when the person who used to work there decided he would take a gun and try and shoot people. Oh no, that and the protection rangers took care of that quickly. Unfortunately they had to. There was no other way to deal with it. The two other bumps, which were quite natural, so to speak, were two geysers exploding.
Now supposedly and the stuff that I've read this happens quite often, except that it happens ten miles from any people, and so no one ever knows about it. But these two were right up close and personal. And there were
two there were about three or four days apart. They were actually about twenty seven miles apart, two different places, two different geysers, and suddenly these two geysers decided they would go off, and they did, and one was captured on film on somebody's phone with rocks coming down on people. It didn't get nobody got hurt, but it was exciting, certainly was exciting.
I recall one of those National Geographic specials on Yellowstone, and they predicted that within one hundred years there's going to be a big explosion from Yellowstone. No, I don't know.
I don't know about one hundred, maybe five hundred.
All right, what do you know about five hundred years.
Well, it's the thing is that Yellowstone is a volcano. I don't know about the people who are walking around out there every day, you even take that into consideration. But the whole thing is a volcano, and it could go up whenever it feels like it. That's the thing about Mother Nature. She's not taking any any direction or scripts from anybody.
She does what she wants. You can't say I'll take it in twenty nine.
Yeah, good luck to you.
Okay.
So it's a volcano. There are parts of it that are going off all the time. Probably these two explosions lessen the pressure underneath some of the park, but the possibility is always there that's something big could happen.
Okay, I just know what I saw on TV.
Yeah, I know. All there are ten thousand guys, is there. You can't keep track of all of.
Them, and every now and then one or two, or three or four or five of them will go pop.
That's right. And if they're five miles away from anyone's path or any trail, they could be going off without anyone actually knowing it.
Okay, and anything else of note that you want to share with the audience.
Yes, I do, because oftentimes when I come on for our national parks, we never really get to talk about the foundation of national parks. We go quickly into calls some and then we're often going So I've asked you to not take any calls before the first break because I just wanted to talk about the parks and put everybody now. You can pick your cliche here. Either get all your ducks in a row or you get on
the same page. Take either one. So for all you people out there who don't really know a lot about National Parks. There are now four hundred and thirty of them, and that is up to date. Sometimes we don't know how many there are because new ones come into the pack a lot. But we know that the last one came into the pack about a week and a half two weeks ago, and that was number four thirty. And that is Blackwells School, which was built for Mexican American
children out in a place called Marfa, Texas. And believe me, to get to Marfa, Texas, you want to be going to Marfa Texas. It's not something you come on by accident. So Marfa Texas has the latest national historic site, this school, and it is out there between Big Ben National Park and Collegsbad Caverns National Park. It's very close as a matter of fact of Fort Davis, a place where the
Buffalo Soldiers were, and that's in Western Texas. Okay, I've actually been there, but this place was not a National park when I was there forty years ago, so I couldn't I couldn't go to it.
May I give the phone numbers now you can six seven, two, five, four ten thirty or eight eight eight nine, two nine ten thirty. And because we are hitting thirty eight states and parts of Canada. Some of you may want to ask about A a National park and stone's throw away from you, or B a National park states away, but maybe your plans will involve you going there this summer. Either way, call here. Dixie's here and he knows about
pretty much every national park there is. So if you ask a question about Zion, he's been there, he can tell you about it. If you ask him a question about the Grin Teetons, ditto. Let me take my break, and by the way, you already have a call Dixie from the Catskills. Margie, you'll be first after these messages. Time and temperature here on night Side ten sixteen eighty five degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray Mine from the Window World, Nice Sight Studios on WBZ News Radio.
This is night Side without Dan Ray. Dan. We'll be back, not next week, but the week after. I am Morgan. I'm here with Dixie and we're talking about any one of the four hundred and thirty national parks. Let's go to Margie in the Catskills. Martie, thank you for calling.
What's up?
I am so thrilled. I've had thirty eight years in the Park Service, And I don't know Dixie's background, but I love to know the years that he served.
Dixie Teller nineteen eighty three to two thousand and twelve.
Oh my goodness. Still I started in nineteen eighty three and retired in twenty twenty one.
Wow, and Dixie still gets his fingers wet dealing with park service stuff.
I'll give him a little trivia question. The side I worked at was the site of the first Presidential library, Dixie.
How about the Adams House?
Nope?
What was it?
Franklin Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park? Yes? Yes, and the odd thing was Dixie. I spent my entire career at one site. Did you move around a lot?
No, I stated, at Boston National Historical Park. Well, actually that's not true. I spent half my career in the Public Affairs Office representing all of the parks in the Northeast, and then the other half at Boston National Historical Park.
That's great, we must have Vanderbilt Roosevelt must have been in contact with you constantly because that was our sector.
Well, I was there the first day of Eleanor Roosevelt's house opening.
Yes, I was there.
You know.
I'll tell you something funny. About that Eleanor Roosevelt and God bless it was the only woman national park. The rangers had a party at her house the night before the public was going to open it. We had a hot dog gross supper, of course, celebrating that the Roosevelts had the King and Queen of England for hot dog roast. So we got to be in the house before anyone was let in the next day and I went into the bathroom to look around, and I tried to look in a mirror, and it was so far over my
head I couldn't see a thing. Apparently she was about five foot ten, Yes, I.
Believe she was that tall, and of course it was set up for her, so it was her house.
You know, it's interesting, isn't it the only First Lady National Park.
Well, now there are a couple that are sort of associated with other First Ladies, but there's First Lady National Park in Ohio, which covers ten or twelve of them. Okay, but as far as the house goes way back then, yet it was the only one.
I'm interested in. What was your daily duties, mostly with it administrative or tours or.
What Oh, that depends on which part of my career you're talking.
About any part.
Well, when I was part of the part of the regional office, in the public Affairs office, it was doing all kinds of stuff. I mean, I helped write speeches, I answered the phone like a good secretary. Uh, did a lot of work that way. Helped out when there was a special event, take pictures, write some stories, do all that kinds of stuff, and just do things so that the public affairs officer did not have to mingle with the low lifes. She only had to meet. She
had to mingle with the high life. And that was hard enough for her to do. And then when I when I when I moved over to a park, Uh, it was you know, I was just on the front line doing talking to people all the time.
Isn't it the greatest career there ever was?
Yes, And you shouldn't take it if you what if you want to make a lot of money, I'll.
Agree with that. I'll just tell you one more thing, because everyone wants to talk with you. I'm sure. I was walking back from patrol. We only have two hundred acres at Vanderbilt, so it's rather small, and I was walking.
Back wait wait, waits small?
Oh, to the rest of the National Park. It's tiny, yes it is, but we have great views of the Catskills on the river. But this day I had become engaged, and I was to my fiance and he said, are you ever going to retire? And I was walking back from patrol with a fellow ranger, and I looked at him and I said, he is sixty years younger than me. It's about time I retire at age eighty five. Only in the park service, right, Yes.
You just continue to go off until you get tired of it.
Thank you so much. I enjoyed it very much. Goodbye, You're welcome.
Night night. All right, you want to do what Margie did. We're talking national parks, and I know that's somebody listening right now, plural, there are some bodies listening right now. That you have a tour planned, you're going to go to the Grand Canyon, You're going to go to Zion, wherever your plans are, call in share that news with Dixie and I I'm more.
Or if you've already come back from a from a tour, from a trip, tell us about that.
Yes, definitely, all right, I have.
Some business to do here, all right, go ahead, I must say hello to Lottie on the Cape, Miss Jean and Lawrence, and Susie v in Brookline, the favorite aunt of Zoe Rabel, the Queen of the Pinball.
Machines, who got mentioned earlier.
Oh, I didn't hear that one, but I did hear some of the two programs. And I guess on the comic relief for the Night at Dan Ray show.
Not comic relief.
Anyway. A couple other things people who are not that familiar with national parks should know. Of the four hundred and thirty parks, sixty three of them are called national parks. The others are called either National Historic Sites, National Historic parks, national lake shores, national this, national that, National battlefields. But they are about twenty five different designations that hold up all of the rest of the parks. But sixty three
of them are in fact national parks. And if you're wondering, If you're wondering, there are twenty thousand, maybe twenty one thousand, who knows, employees of the National Park Service who try and guide you and teach you and entertain you and protect you from various things when you're visiting.
Here's my question. Yes, I know, Teddy Roosevelt gets credit would with creating national parks or segmenting lands to say this area will now be a national park. But there must be other people who are instrumental in the beginning of an area being designated a national park. Who are the unsung names?
Well, Teddy Roosevelt, Johnny cum Lately. He was very good as a Johnny cum Lately. And we certainly appreciate everything Johnny com Lately did, but he was a Johnny cum Lately. Yellowstone was started in eighteen seventy two, and so Ulysses S. Grant was the first guy to put his pen on a piece of paper to say, Okay, this is going to be a national park. When there were no other national parks anywhere on the planet, Yellowstone was the first one. And as ken Burns told you in his film It's
America's best idea now the national Parks. There were several national parks that were already in use when Teddy Roosevelt decided it would be good to have places that were not quite as big or maybe as important as the specific national parks that were in existence in nineteen hundred and nineteen oh five. So he signed into law in nineteen oh six the national monuments which were kind of
smaller than national park areas. That's how Devil's Tower got to be the first national monument in the United States. The Star of Close Encounters of a third kind?
Right, that was Wyoming? Am I right?
That was Wyoming? Yes, so that there were a lot of as. As the years went by, more and more areas were decided to be important enough to save and large enough to become national parks. But then in nineteen oh six we had an influx of smaller areas and also historical sites, not just not just wilderness areas or natural areas.
Let me stop you here because if a break to take and I'll let people know if you want to call in and join our conversation. Six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty or eight eight nine, two nine ten thirty, please call in and join our conversation. I mean Dixie and I will be here in at midnight. You may as well come on board. Time and temperature ten thirty eighty four degrees.
You're on Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
We are speaking with Dixie aka Ranger Richard Tranto, who worked for over thirty years in the Parks Service, and we're talking national parks. And if you'd like to join the conversation six one, seven, two, five four ten thirty or eight eight eight nine to nine, ten thirty. And if I'm not mistaken on the information you sent me ahead of time, there's a new center at Constitution Park where old ironsides it's located.
Well, there's there's going to be. There's not one right now. Okay, they have to have to take care of a lot of things first before building it. But that is one of the plans for Boston Park. Is then they've been planning this since I was there twelve thirteen years ago. Is who is to take down a building or two and to use it for a brand new visitor center and different different kinds of other things replacing what they have now, which is true all over the park Service.
One thing that the regular visitors to the parks do not understand or know is the number of things that need fixing in national parks. The backlog of work is now at twenty three billion dollars of what needs to be repaired, fixed, upgraded or built new.
Give me a couple of examples, well, a couple of years ago or a year or so ago, Yellowstone had a road taken out by a combination earthquake and a flood.
And things like that have to be fixed all the time. And you're talking about areas where there are not streets everywhere where. You've got to bring in equipment from all over the place and work going to maybe a mile of road. It's going to be completely rebuilt and fixed so that people can travel on it. And things like that happen all the time. But what has happened in the last twenty five years, well more than that actually, But let's just take this century. The parks. The parks
have budgets. Okay, everybody's got a budget. The parks have budgets, But the parks really have three budgets. Now, I know, there wouldn't be a superintendent worth his or her assault that would it would tell you this, But there are really three budgets. The one that the superintendents of the park submit for money, the one that they actually get from Congress, and the one that they should get from
Congress but never get. And that there's a big difference there, and the reason why they don't get it, it's because there are other things going on in the country that take precedent. Now that only can happen so many years in a row before you end up twenty three billion dollars down.
I was about to say, if it's nineteen sixty and they needed to make improvements at the Grand Canyon, they didn't get done because other things happened in nineteen sixty that took priority. And now it's nineteen seventy. What was supposed to be done ten years earlier didn't get done, and they keep pushing or kicking the can down the road, so to speak.
Well, some things are like that. In some parts, some of the work actually gets done. New visitor centers are put up eventually, but every time you put up one visitor center, there are two or three that are fifty years old and need to be fixed or knocked down and start all over again. So that's what they're facing. But the thing is that the visitors hardly ever recognize the fact of what money the park that they're at doesn't get. So you could be visiting Park X and
you could be having a marvelous time. What you don't realize is that if the park had enough money, they would have two or three more rangers, and you would be getting two or three more, two or three more times during the day where there would be park ranger tours or lectures or something else. Instead, you might get one. You might get one a day, which is you know, when you're there, you don't realize you could have three or four, but you only get one. And that's the problem.
The problem is the parks are trying to do as best they can with what they have, but they don't have enough. Ever.
Okay, let's talk about the Grand Canyon.
All right, it's a big hole in the ground.
I understand that, and I know of the Grand Canyon because in nineteen seventy five thereabouts, I took a Grand Canyon tour from Las Vegas via helicopter, and you know, they flew in a big arc and you got to say, ooh, and I looking at the vast expanse of the big hole in the ground.
Yep.
But from my helicopter looking out, I could see other vehicles flying a route around the Grand Canyon. And they have since kept back on the amount of air traffic allowed circling the Grand Canyon. And that's just one change. There have been many changes to that specific tour, so speak to changes at the Grand Canyon and they have built a big jack Gunda hotel.
Correct, well, there are six hotels there all, right, at least the Altivar being the biggest and most fancy one, the fanciest one.
Right.
If you get to eat breakfast at the Ultavar, you've done well, and you get to stay at the Altavar, that means you're really doing well.
What's on the menu at the Altovar.
Just about anything you could ask for. Anyway. As for the Grand Canyon, yeah, they cut back on the amount of planes and helicopters flying around because the people who were there to enjoy the quiet of the canyon were now, you know, being bombarded by plane and helicopter traffic. Aside from the fact that they were, you know, some of them were hitting each other and that's never good. So
they decided to cut back a little on that. I don't know how much they did, but I'm I'm sure it's less than it was back in nineteen seventy five. But anyway, there are you know, there are really only two roads, two roads to go into the canyon and one along the southern rim and one that comes to a point at the north rim. So there isn't much of a road system there to take care of, but it still has to be taken care of no matter what.
And if you're getting four million people a year, which the canyon often does, then you've got to fix things and repair things. As for the ask for the attendance at national parks, the last ten years, the average attendance total for the year for all national parks is three hundred and eight million. That's the average.
That's a big number.
For a couple of years, it was three hundred and thirty million, but it got cut down during COVID. When it was left it was under three hundred million. But for the last ten years, three hundred and eight million people are going to national parks every year. Now, the as I said, the backlog is twenty three billion dollars. The budget for the Park service is about three four
five billion. So how long do you think it's going to take to fix everything If your budget is let's say five billion at best and your backlog is twenty three billion.
Well, I'm assuming that they have not adjusted their budget adequately to make sure four hundred and thirty national parks get their fair share of the pie.
Well that's that's the problem. I mean, and they and you know, like I said, two weeks ago, we had our four hundred and thirtieth park made, which in one respect is fabulous because that means there are still places along the way out there and some place in the rural west or the urban east that are deserving to be a park. But who's paying for this? The other parks are already not getting the money they need, and you're throwing new parks in there, and the Congress isn't
giving them the money to run anything. So somebody has to do something about this or else the parks are just going to keep getting worse, getting worse and getting worse until the park is destroyed.
Let's put you in the White House to make sure these things get.
A dressed well, I said twenty five years ago.
Now now we're looking back. I'm looking forward.
By the way. For all you people there who are counting your coins, there are like I said, there are about twenty twenty one twenty two thousand people that work for the National Park Service in various degrees, and that includes front of the front line park rangers, protection ranges who have guns, who will take you into custody if you're doing something wrong. Just the people who take care of the administrative work of all the parks, and there
are there are those people are needed. The jobs generated by having national parks in this country is about three hundred and fifty thousand jobs. And all of those dollars go back to the communities. For every dollar, every one of your your wonderful tax dollars that you worn't hard, work hard for, and if the park Service gets one buck, it generates ten to fifteen dollars in your area. So please don't start talking to me about tax money and
everything else. He goes. The Park Service is paying for itself hand over fifth, So get with the program.
I'm going to stop you here so I can take a break, but I'm going to ask you when we come back, let's talk about just jumping in the car and taking a day trip. Half an hour forty five minutes, our two hours top tops driving from Boston to wherever.
Let me draw it a trivia question. Since this is the Morgan White program, throw trivia question. Okay, everybody knows that Yellowstone was the first national park. What was the second?
More Lago?
Yeah, that's that's good Morgan.
On that note, let me take my break. Temperature here on night Side ten for six eighty four degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.
We are talking national parks, of which any one of the four hundred and thirty may be a destination for you. You've got planned to throw the kids and your spouse into the old Volkswagen bug and drive off into the sunset. And I'm gonna let Dixie talk about a few national parks that are within a short sprint from Boston.
All right, why don't we start off a little bit wider range. But the biggest park in the northeast, which is a kd up in Maine, Okay, So that's a good what is four hour drive? Maybe, but it is. It is the only national park in this area. The next closest national park is the one down in Virginia in Great Smoking Mountains, not great Smoking Mountains, Shenandoah, Okay, Shenandoah. So a ride out to Acadia gives you hiking trails and seacoast things and a little swimming if you don't
mind the water being twelve degrees. So that's a great place to be. Friends of mine, we're up there camping last month or two months ago. Sorry, I had a marvelous time, even though it rained a couple of days. So if you want a real National Park primo experience,
then Acadia is the place to go around here. All of the other sites or areas National Park areas are usually historical site, except for maybe the Cape Cod National Seashore, But of course the seashore is surrounded by hotels and everything else, so it's it's not a completely natural area within five hundred yards of the seashore, but it is part of the National Park Service and the people in
the Cape are lucky to have it. Everything else is pretty much or Fire Island Seashore in New York there's another one, all right, So there you have a couple
that are that are fairly close by. But if you're staying in Massachusetts or just kind of wielding your way up to New Hampshire, then it's usually National Historic sites or National Historic parks, And the only difference is that national historical park is sometimes a larger area encompasses more in terms of buildings or sites, whereas a National Historic site most of the time is just one building that's and they're all over the place. I mean, you go
to the Adams House in Quincy. If you want to learn about John Adams and Abigail, that's where they lived. You can't get better than that. And it's a fabulous place to get a tour of, see how they live, see what went on there revolutionary war times. So all that kind of information the rangers know, and we'll tell you.
Is Paul Revere's House a national anything or No.
That's a privately owned place. Okay, Now you're outside in Springfield where the Basketball Hall of Fame is right only a mile or so from it is the Springfield Armory National Historic Site where there are loads of exhibits about guns, various guns that were used by Revolutionary war people, civil war people, all kinds of people. But that's the main idea of that armory is guns and who use them.
Is there a test that rangers have to sit down and whip out their number two pencil and take, because it sounds like you past the test easily so.
Well, I don't know if I could if they have one. I don't know if they have one. The thing about National Park Service jobs is that you can almost be well versed in anything and there is a space for you in a National park if you want one. You can be a biologist, there's plenty of places for those. You can be an accountant, you could work in the administrative office, you're a history major. Hundreds of places you
can work. So it really is what you want to do if you want to take the time and work for the Park Service to see it, if it is your kind of place. There are very few people who stepped into the National Park Service the way I did.
This job.
Very few. Well, the fact that it was available, okay, and the fact that the job I had I hated. I had been at a job for ten years. I no longer liked it. I despised going. And it was suggested to me by the lady of the house, who was actually kind of my boss at the place that I hated, that I should take a look at this ad in the paper and the Globe for volunteers for the National Park Service. And I said, okay, I'll go
down there see what's going. This was summertime, so it was easy for me to go down and see what this was all about.
So you went. They had a uniform that fit you, and.
No, no, no, no, oh no, okay, no, far from it. So I get to this place downtown State Street, and I walk into this building and the Park Service as a nine story building where the regional office is there. And the regional office at that time in nineteen eighty three, accounted for New York, New Jersey, and all of New England, all of the parks, all of their stuff, all of their accounts and everything were connected to this regional office
along with the Public Affairs office. And the Public Affairs Office were the people who put the ad in the paper because they wanted somebody to come in and help out, just do volunteer stuff. So I talked to a nice lady about what I could offer coming into work and not work, but volunteer. And I said, well, I used to be a newspaper reporter, so if you need something written, I could do that. I can certainly talk on the phone, which looks like you need that. And she said, is
there anything else? I said, well, I've been to one hundred parks. She looked and she looked at me, and she said what. And I said, I've been to one hundred parks. She said, you're kidding me. I said, no, I've been to one hundred parks. She said, I've been to twenty five parks and I've worked here for five years. And I said, well, I've been to one hundred. So she said, come on in.
And that gets all hired.
That got me hired as a volunteer. Now, as at that very moment, there were at least seven other volunteers doing various things. The trouble is is that the leader, the actual person being paid to run the operation, was soon going to leave, as was a second in command person, and the third person, the lady I spoke to, was going to be sort of left in a lurch by her lonesome. So as the days this was in, oh that's right, this was in late June, the first thing
that came up was the July fourth holiday. Okay, so everyone had something to do. All six other volunteers had someplace to go, and the three people who were actually working for pay had someplace to do, someplace to go. And so she said to me, could you handle the office for a day, And I said, yeah, sure, nothing to do it.
I got to stop you here because I have to take my news hit. All right, the story in the other half of the two hours you've been allotted to be on night side anyone else who wants to call in lines The wide open six one, seven, two, five, four, ten thirty eight eight eight, nine, two nine, ten thirty Time and temperature ten fifty eight eighty four degrees