Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns turns his attention this fall to the nation’s national parks in a new six-part series, “The National Parks, America’s Best Idea.”  And it appears South Dakota’s national parks, monuments and memorials will be part of the series.

For one thing, Mount Rushmore National Park Superintendent Gerard Baker is among the people to be featured, according to a story PBS news release posted on the National Park Foundation website.

Blaine Kortemeyer, acting chief of interpretation at Mount Rushmore, said the Ken Burns film crew was at Mount Rushmore a couple of years ago — this project has been in the works for six years — and filmed at the memorial. Kortemeyer hasn’t seen the final series, so he’s not sure how much of the film will cover Rushmore.

The crew also filmed at Badlands National Park, according to Judy Olson, chief of interpretation. In fact, she recently was in Washington, D.C., where she saw a screening of a 45-minute companion film for the series.

Julie Johndreau, education specialist at Badlands, has been working with Public Broadcasting on a number of related outreach projects with PBS and South Dakota Public Broadcasting. SDPB did a film called “Badlands, Nature’s Time Capsule.”

I hope Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, Devils Tower National Monument and the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site get some screen time in the final version of the series.

From what I’ve read, the 12-hour Ken Burns series will cover the history of the national parks and the people such as John Muir who nurtured the idea of setting aside wild and scenic American places. It also features contemporary people such as Gerard Baker.

Burns’ work, which has covered the Civil War, baseball, jazz and the Lewis & Clark expedition, is both exhaustive and entertaining. He uses historic still photos extensively and languidly pans across all the details in each picture. In this film,

“The narrative traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years,” according to the PBS release. Burns and collaborator Dayton Duncan, who wrote the script, used archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and extensive cinematography. “It is simultaneously a biography of compelling characters and a biography of the American landscape.”

The series airs in September, and will be coincide with the publication of a companion book and the release of a DVD set.

I’m looking foward to seeing it.