Conservation
and Parks

Earth, Wind, and Fire

Roots of conservation

• Realization of dwindling abundance

• Proposals for regulation ignored

Roots of conservation

Saving the New England village

George Perkins Marsh

• Man and Nature, 1864

– Vermont experience

– Travels in Near East

– Permanent, deleterious human impact

– Forests preserve water purity, prevent erosion, floods, droughts

– Educated, disinterested control of resources

Saving the forests

• Division of Forestry, Dept. of Agriculture, 1876

• Charles S. Sargent,
Harvard arborculturist

– American Forestry Congress, 1882

– Fanned fears of “timber famine”

Saving the forests

• New York’s Adirondack State Park, 1885

– Protect Hudson River & Erie Canal

– “Forever wild”

The Parks Movement

• New England origins

The Parks Movement

• Central Park, New York City, 1857-1873

– Frederick Law Olmsted, “landscape architect”

Artists celebrate the West

Albert Bierstadt, 1830-1902

Thomas Moran, 1837-1926

America the Beautiful

• Sense of wonder at nature so grand

– Effect of Western paintings

– Report of naturalists & explorers

• Not like Europe

– Wild and as God made it

Nature tourism

• White Mountains in Vermont

• Adirondacks in New York

• Yosemite in California, 1864, first park

The Parks Movement

• Yosemite Park, 1864

– Granted to California

The Parks Movement

• First national park: Yellowstone, 1872

– In territories

The Parks Movement

• First state park: Niagara, 1885

– Supported by Olmsted, Church, Gov. Grover Cleveland