When people think of national parks, they probably picture mammoth redwoods, snowcapped Tetons or the Colorado River lolling through the Grand Canyon. It’s unlikely they envision George Masa, a Japanese immigrant who meticulously recorded local and Cherokee names of the Great Smoky Mountains, using a homemade bicycle wheel odometer to catalogue distances between the peaks. They probably don’t conjure an image of Horace Albright, assistant director of the National Park Service in the early 20th century, poring over detailed maps of the Grand Tetons, examining cost estimates with J.D. Rockerfeller or lobbying Congress for park funding. And they probably won’t envision William Gladstone Steele, “the father of Crater Lake,” who chanced upon a photograph of the lake in a newspaper he was using to wrap his lunch, and went on to spend 17 years studying and sharing its wildlife, hosting elaborate publicity events for influential people and shaping public perception about the lake.

But they wouldn’t have one without the other. “Every park has its hero,” says Dayton Duncan, writer and co-producer, with Ken Burns, of National Parks: America’s Best Idea, a six-part documentary series premiering this Sunday on KQED, which shares the stories of the people behind the landscapes.

Often the heroes squared off against the powerful forces of industrialism. “It’s hard for Americans to refrain from making money, whether extracting something from the land or mining it,” says co-producer Julie Dunfrey. “Almost every generation has the same debate as to whether or not it’s worth having [parks].”

The filmmakers spent six years and 53,000 rolls to capture the glowing sheets of lava that ooze across the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park nightscape, the tangerine sunrises reflected off the glassy waters of the Everglades, and the stoic, awkward Badlands arches.

Narrated by Peter Coyote with voices by Tom Hanks, John F. Lacey, Andy Garcia and Josh Lucas, among others, the 12-hour series chronicles key moments in the 150-year-old struggle to conserve federally owned lands for public use – especially relevant these days, given the closures awaiting many California state parks.

It tracks John Muir’s dozens of letters outlining the beauty and threats to the Sierra Nevada Mountains from damming, invasive species and other commercial development, and his lobbying of Congress for a National Park System to preserve its national beauty for every citizen. It explores how George Melendez Wright personally funded the Wildlife Division of the U.S. National Park Service after noticing human interaction’s adverse effects on deer, bears and cougars. It describes how the Rockefellers, Astors, Vanderbilts and Pulitzers built elaborate summer getaways at Maine’s Desert Mount Island, and donated private land so everyone could have the opportunity to enjoy the glacier-carved mountains and basins of Acadia National Park.

“It’s not a travelogue, and it’s not a nature film – it’s about people having a passion for their continent, or even just a little piece of it, and driving the government to do the right thing and put it aside,” Dunfrey says. It also pays homage to lesser-known players in the national parks epic, and the countless naturalists and advocates whose lives the parks have influenced, like Detroit-born Shelton Johnson, who left the city to become a park ranger at Yellowstone National Park. Johnson describes the awe he felt observing a passing bison while delivering mail by snowmobile: “I remember thinking that if I hadn’t been on that machine, I would have thought I had been thrust fully back into the Pleistocene – into the Ice Age. I felt like this was the first day, and this morning was the first time the sun had ever come up and the shadows that are being cast right now, it’s the first time those shadows had ever been cast on the Earth… a single moment in a place as wild as Yellowstone can last forever.”

Park Ranger Nevada Barr identifies the value of connecting with a larger reality. “They are slaves of hope,” Barr recounts. “These are places we can always go home, and paradoxically see into the future and hope for better things.”

Companion public television programs profile similar stories on a local level. In KTEH’s This is Us, Ernie Pruitt, a Hollister rancher, recalls riding horseback to high school, joining the Civilian Conservation Corp and building the original trails and bridges for Pinnacles National Monument. The 30-minute feature also profiles Gavin Emmons and Alacia Welch, two biologists who dangle from Pinnacles’ clifftops and peer into caves to monitor baby falcons and condors for the National Park Service.

Combined, the documentaries hum of stewardship and appreciation for outdoor beauty – a tune that’s music to the ears of the folks at REI in Marina. To celebrate the series, they’re hosting a “Get Involved” event Oct. 21, showcasing the multitude of upcoming stewardship and conservation opportunities in the area. The free event will host reps from local groups including Ventana Wilderness Alliance, Surfrider Foundation, California State Parks, Chuck Haugen Conservation Fund, and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary: an hour-long film about the national parks will also play, and attendees can enter to win a DVD set of the series.

“Early on, REI recognized the splendor of this media event and the potential for it to resonate with people across all lines,” says Ellie Kincaid, REI outreach specialist. “The next thought was, ‘Let’s just take that further and get this conversation going in all of our communities.’”

NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA’S BEST IDEApremieres Sunday at noon on KQED with encores at 4pm, 8pm and 10pm. The series continues at 8pm throughout the rest of the week. This is Us airs Sunday at 6pm on KTEH, and Bringing the Parks to the People airs on Tuesday at 7:30pm on KQED. REI Marina’s “Get Involved Event” takes place Oct. 21 from 6-8:30pm at 145 General Stillwell Blvd., 883-8048.