This is the third of four Public Lands Blog posts that examine the topic of national parks in Oregon. Part 1 explored Oregon’s one success in establishing a national park. Part 2 discussed multiple failures to establish additional national parks in the state. Part 3 examines both successful and failed attempts to expand Crater Lake National Park. Part 4 will look at the potential supply and demand for additional national parks in Oregon and the political challenges and chances.

Late in December 2018, during the lame-duck session of the 115th Congress, a deal was almost struck to move an omnibus public lands package of legislation. The package compiled specific bills that were legislatively ready to advance. Some of the bills in the package were quite good, others quite bad.

The congressional conservation pipeline is clogged. This is not because it is too full of fine legislation that would elevate the conservation status of certain public lands by designating wilderness, wild and scenic rivers, and other special protection areas, but because of the general dysfunction of Congress.

The federal government says Oregon has 110, 994 miles of streams. Most do not qualify for inclusion in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System as they have been dammed, dewatered, ditched, denuded, and/or otherwise degraded, if not downright destroyed. Today, 2 percent of Oregon’s streams are in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

Republican legislator, lawyer, chief justice, granger, sportsman, conservationist, explorer, and scholar John B. Waldo read and quoted Thoreau, Shakespeare, Emerson, Aurelius, Goethe, and Wordsworth. He made twenty-seven summer sojourns in Oregon’s Cascades.