After WWII, park visitation exploded from 11.7 million to 49 million, but budgets stayed frozen at wartime levels. The parks were literally falling apart.
Mission 66 was born from desperation: a billion-dollar bet that the only way to save the parks was to completely rebuild them.
The mid-twentieth century was an existential crisis for the National Park Service. After World War II, Americans returned to their public lands in overwhelming numbers, but the parks they found were in catastrophic physical decay.
During the Depression, New Deal programs like the CCC and WPA had built rustic infrastructure across the system. But WWII redirected all federal resources toward the war effort. Between 1941 and 1945, NPS budgets were slashed by more than half. Maintenance stopped entirely.
When the war ended, prosperity returned, but park budgets didn't. In 1940, the parks hosted 17 million visitors. By 1945, that dipped to 11.7 million due to rationing. But by 1954, visitation had surged to 47.8 million. By 1956, it hit 49 million, and NPS models projected 80 million by 1966.
The actual number? A staggering 127 million.
Across the West, old stage roads built for horse-drawn wagons were crumbling under modern automobiles. Safety rails rotted. Water and sewer systems failed. In Yellowstone, Brilliant Pool looked like a trash pit. Yosemite Valley had become a refuse-littered parking lot.
In 1953, historian Bernard DeVoto published a scathing exposé in Harper's Magazine: "Let's Close the National Parks." He called the parks' condition a "national disgrace" and suggested the Army physically bar the public from Yellowstone until Congress funded proper management.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. wrote directly to President Eisenhower to express his dismay over the "national tragedy" unfolding on America's public lands.
NPS Director Conrad L. Wirth took action. He believed park access was an inherent democratic right. Working with wartime-level secrecy, Wirth assembled committees to draft a comprehensive ten-year plan. He named it "Mission 66," militaristic in tone, timed to conclude on the NPS's 50th anniversary in 1966.
The proposal was staggering: $1 billion to overhaul the entire system. Congress approved. Over the next decade, Mission 66 added two million acres, expanded protected areas from 181 to 258, and built thousands of miles of roads, hundreds of employee residences, and over a hundred visitor centers.
Newton Drury described the national parks as 'victims of the war,' noting that without immediate federal intervention, the parks risked losing the very nature that attracted people to them.