Why Is St. Louis So Excited to See Grant’s Farm as a National Park and Why Does the NPS Not Want it?

{Grant's Cabin at Grant's Farm - Is Hardscrabble the piece most worth preserving?}

Glossed over in the several weeks of headlines about Grant's Farm and the NPS is the seemingly insurmountable chasm between St. Louis's hope and expectations and the NPS evaluation of Grant's Farm. Whether in news stories or online comments, many in St. Louis seem excited about the prospect of Grant's Farm becoming a National Park. And why not? National Parks are great tourism drivers and are uniquely prestigious, not to mention they have the permanence we would like to see for Grant's Farm.

There appears to be two distinct and divergent storylines in the recent news concerning Grant's Farm the National Park Service's evaluation of the property as a potential National Park. The basics are: the Busch family owns Grant's Farm, AB-InBev owns the animals and pays to maintain the park at a cost of ~$4M per year, the NPS has worked with the Busch family to study the park as a possible National Park. (full NPS reconnaissance study is below)