Progressive
Conservation
Earth, Wind, and
Fire
The outdoor craze
± Rise of Vacations, 1869: Camping
° Summer
youth camps
± Old West craze
° Owen Wister
& Frederick Remington
± Boy Scouts of America, 1910
± Jack London: Call of the Wild, 1903
± Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tarzan, 1912
Wildlife
conservation
± Game rapidly disappears
° Passenger
pigeon & buffalo
± Elite Eastern hunting clubs
° Theodore
Roosevelt
± William Temple Hornaday, Washington Zoo
° Our
Vanishing Wildlife, 1913
National Forests
and Parks
± Presbyterian-raised conservationists
° Fiercely
protective of common good against selfish greed
± Benjamin Harrison and John Noble, 1889–1893
° Sequoia
National Park, 1890, protecting world’s largest trees
° Yosemite
National Park, 1890
± State
mismanagement; watershed damage
± John Muir:
Yosemite NP, with Hetch Hetchy
° Sierra
Club, 1892
° Forest
Reserve Act, 1891
± Harrison
& Noble create 15 with 13 million acres
More Parks and
Forests
± Army oversees both parks and forest reserves
± Grover Cleveland and Hoke Smith, 1893–1897
° Creates 17
forest reserves with 27 million acres
° Congress
opposes; approves commercial use, 1897
Progressive
Conservation
± Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09)
° 5 new
National Parks
° Adds
100,000,000 acres in 118 reserves
° Antiquities
Act 1906: 18 National Monuments
° 51 bird
reserves, 4 game preserves
± Gifford Pinchot
° Scientific
management
° First chief
of Forest Service
± “National
Forests,” 1905
° Successes:
PR & professional foresters
° “Conservation”:
greatest good for greatest number for greatest length of time
Reclamation
± Irrigating arid Western lands
± Reclamation Act, 1902
° 160-acre
limit
± Widely
ignored; speculation
± Los Angeles steals the Owens Lake for a water supply, 1913
Hydroelectric
power and the Parks
± The case for cheap public power
± Battles
° Hetch
Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park, 1913
± Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Lane, 1913–1921
° National
Park Service, 1916; Stephen Mather, director
° 8 new
National Parks