Ken Burns' new six-part series, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, will air September 27-October 2 at 8:00 pm on WNED-TV, Western New York's PBS station. The series is directed by Mr. Burns and co-produced with his longtime collaborator Dayton Duncan, who is also the series' writer. The National Parks starts in the mid-1800s, when the parks were just an idea, and charts the system's growth through 1980.

This is a story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence, and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. The series is told through the stories of several dozen extraordinary people who helped create our parks, including the well known, such as Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir, and many more who most of us have never heard of. The second program in the series, The Last Refuge (1890-1915), airing on September 28, features parks champion Theodore Roosevelt.

As the only unit of the National Park Service in Western New York, the TR Site is proud to be a sponsor of the regional broadcast of the series through WNED-TV. Also, an outreach grant secured by WNED, in conjunction with the series, is underwriting a special opportunity for several hundred Buffalo Public School students to visit the TR Site in October.