Doing battle: Palo Alto superintendent promotes history and nature at historic battlefields.

Is seeing a picture of a place the same as visiting it?

Not long ago the question would have been absurd, but not anymore. For National Park Service officials like Mark Spier, it’s an issue.

Spier, who became superintendent of Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Site in July, says that while visitation at national parks around the country is up because people are vacationing closer to home during the recession, the longterm trend is of a park system struggling to stay relevant to today’s public.

Kids used to play outside. Today they play outside virtually — at least that’s the trend, even among adults. It’s not good for park attendance. Virtual canoeing, anyone?

"Now a lot of kids’ whole level of connection is virtual," Spier says. "We find that some kids, if they’ve taken a virtual flight through Grand Canyon, in their mind they’ve checked it off. They’ve been there."

Palo Alto is up against the same trend of changing habits and demographics. Why should anyone care what happened there, much less visit? Well, for one thing, an 1840s-style cannon being fired by guys in period military uniforms is more interesting in real life than on a computer monitor, Spier says. Palo Alto wheels out the artillery the first Saturday of every month for a demonstration — weather permitting.

Even more important is that the events that took place at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma more than a century and a half ago still have ramifications for people on both sides of the border, Spier says.

The first and second battles of the U.S.-Mexican War took place in 1864 at the Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma battlefields, respectively. The battles paved the way for the eventual U.S. invasion of Mexico and that country’s massive loss of territory — including Texas.

The park service has 391 parks and sites around the country. Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma are the only two that focus on the U.S-Mexican War, which Spier says has been largely forgotten or misunderstood by many people. The park service has a mandate to tell the story objectively and from both sides, he says.

"It’s a very pivotal point in U.S. history and certainly in Mexican history as well," Spier says. "It’s American history. It’s all of our history. "There’s an amazing thread of stories that run through these sites here in Brownsville."

Getting people to connect with those stories on the non-virtual level is part of Spier’s job.

"It is a huge issue for the national parks: How do I make a national park relevant for today’s visitor? I don’t have the answer. We’re working on it."

Among the innovations the park service is experimenting with are podcasts visitors can listen to while touring a park or historical site. The current spike in park visitation will only last as long as people feel pinched by the recession, while the demographic challenges for Park Service destinations will continue.

Naturally, this affects funding.

"Of course funding is always an issue," Spier says. "In some respects — particularly in the current economy — national parks can be viewed as luxuries as opposed to necessities. I think we’ll continue to face the struggle for funding. Fortunately, we’re fairly innovative and we’ll make do with what we have."

Spier, who was the top ranger at Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River in Texas before coming to Palo Alto, says the Park Service would have a hard time without volunteers to conduct bird tours, catalog museum artifacts, answer questions from the public — or fire cannons.

"We’re always looking for more," he says. "Anybody who want to volunteer, we’ll by happy to put them to work."

Spier points out another aspect of parks you can’t get from a computer screen or Wii console: room to breathe.

"There in a nutshell is the beauty of a national park or any open space," he says. "Many people view national parks or state parks or these open spaces as almost healing or cathartic spaces, where you can go and wash away a lot of stress and not be pressured by things. Even a small space in a place like Brownsville: Not only is there a connection to our nation’s history, but a little elbow room. What a great thing."