The Long Arm of the National Park Service

Removal of the famous Mojave desert phone booth (“Requiem for a Telephone Booth,” May 30) appeared to be a trivial story and basically harmless to everyone but the crazies who spent their spare time answering calls there. But the National Park Service’s decision is another example of its increasing control over public lands.

Its excuse that the “increased public traffic had a negative impact on the desert environment in the nation’s newest national park” is its way of saying that they disapprove of anything that created interest in “their national park” that wasn’t their own idea. The increased traffic is on an existing road. The people that visit camp on an area that had long ago been cleared of vegetation. This action was all about the park service’s flexing its muscles and exerting power over what it considers to be its land, not the land of the public that came to enjoy it, for whatever bizarre reason.

--DON SCHULTZ

San Diego