There is, perhaps, no more concrete example of the National Park Service’s struggle to balance preservation and access than roads. On the one hand, roads are an unnatural affront to the forests, mountains, rivers, and wildlife that the agency is entrusted to protect. On the other hand, fewer people would make the effort or have the ability to appreciate America’s grand parks without a road that paves the way.

In National Park Roads: A Legacy In The American Landscape, Dr. Timothy Davis details the history of a relationship as fragile and monumental as Glacier National Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road – full of ups and downs, twists and turns, challenges and beauty. It is a story that many of us take for granted; after all, a park’s road serves as a de facto tour guide for most visitors, and that’s due to intricate planning and inventive engineering by park leaders for over 100 years.

“At the most obvious level, they enable visitors to drive within walking or viewing distance of sites like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite Valley, Old Faithful Geyser, or the monuments and battlefields of national military parks,” writes Dr. Davis, a historian with the National Park Service. “On a more subtle level, roads shape motorists’ encounters from the moment they enter a park, creating both general impressions and specific views. The distant panoramas, intimate woodland scenes, relaxing meadows, burbling streams, breathtaking cliffs, and spectacular canyons and waterfalls encountered along park roads may be natural features, but the sequences in which they are seen and the angles from which they are viewed are not happy accidents, but carefully choreographed compositions involving large-scale location choices and more fine-tuned manipulation of alignment and framing.”

But it took some time to get there. Dr. Davis details the dirty, bumpy, and harrowing routes, first utilized by stagecoaches, that park visitors encountered more than a century ago, particularly at Yosemite and Yellowstone. Although railroads then established numerous visitor services in the parks and brought awareness to the masses, in true American spirit, individuals wanted control over where to sleep, what to see, and how long to stay. As automobiles rose to prominence, making trips cheaper and easier in the years leading to 1920s, the newly formed Park Service and its first director, Stephen Mather, embarked on a plan to develop “one good road” to show off each park’s finest features (plus a National Park-to-Park Highway to link all the parks in the West).

Viewed as a mutually beneficial to the fledgling agency and motoring clubs, the effort produced some of the most magnificent examples of engineering in the world: the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier, Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, Zion-Mount Carmel Highway in Zion National Park, and Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. But these monumental undertakings were not built without conflict and determination. Dr. Davis paints a broad picture of the relationship between roads and parks as deftly as he hones in on details about inclines and turning radius. He exposes philosophical differences both within the Park Service and with partners such as the Bureau of Public Roads (now the Federal Highway Administration) and the Sierra Club, and outlines some road proposals that never came to fruition.

Beyond the wide view of campaigns such as See America First and Mission 66, Dr. Davis tells the story behind many of the roads you know by name, as well as some you probably don’t. Of particular note is his research into the Going-to-the-Sun Road, an effort that epitomized the early roads movement. The account is complete with conflicting interests, bruised egos, technological advances, dangerous terrain, power struggles, budget pressures, and, in the end, an achievement that showcases the alpine majesty of the park and remains to this day an enormously popular attraction.

Of course, after World War II, those roads and the massive influx of people that they brought to national parks eventually drew backlash from environmentalists, particularly over the Tioga Road in Yosemite’s high country in the 1950s. In response, the wilderness movement has inspired roadless parks and refuges, parkways were set aside for Sunday drivers, and shuttle services have been added to relieve congestion. Dr. Davis posits that now, as the National Park Service begins its second 100 years, “major additions to the NPS road system are likely to be few and far between,” citing issues that echo from a century ago like financial uncertainties and maintenance requirements, and the need to attract underrepresented communities.

This 344-page book can proudly be displayed on your coffee table, its large format (11.5 x 12.25 inches) the perfect vehicle for showing off historical photographs, brochures, maps, and diagrams that underscore the difficulty of planning and constructing roads that “lie lightly on the land” while leading visitors to the finest sights in each park. The book’s size and glossy pages, however, make it a bit cumbersome when attempting to curl up on a coach or chair to dive in for a prolonged reading session.

In his introduction, Davis quotes former Sierra Club leader Harold Bradley: “Park roads determine park history.” For better or worse, National Park Roads makes a compelling case that Bradley was right.