Lecture #15-16: Wilderness and the Land Ethic

Outline

I. Creating Parks

various origins for the idea of national parks and wilderness: back to 19th century
Frederic Law Olmsted's Central Park in NYC (cemetery predecessors): park as pastoral retreat within bounds of city, lungs of city, place to recover community: recreation
cf monumentalism of Niagara Falls: "natural wonder" as America's best alternative to European culture, the Edenic landscape of God's creation, the romantic sublime
but Niagara already too crowded and modified for water power by second half of 19th c
1864: US gives Yosemite to CA as state park at prompting of Olmsted; returned to US 1906
1870 Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition to Yellowstone: Cornelius Hedges' idea to set aside "a great National Park"; he and Nathaniel P. Langford lobby extensively for this
aided by report of Ferdinand Hayden expedition, with illustrations by Thomas Moran and William Henry Jackson: artist and photographer as promoters of image of romantic park
March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signs bill making Yellowstone nation's 1st national park
Runte's "worthless lands" thesis: strongest argument for parks was that they had no other good use
1894: Act to Protect the Birds and Animals of Yellowstone National Park" (park as game refuge)

II. Promoting Parks

long time before parks had special agency for bureaucratic oversight; initial management by Army
difficulty of reaching: take railroad to Montana, coach to Mammoth Hot Springs, tours from there
railroads logically became most important promoters of travel to parks: visit "Wonderland"
railroads affiliated with major hotels in parks, handled much of tourist movement: Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone, Northern Pacific RR, 1904; El Tovar at G. Canyon, run by Fred Harvey, 1905
Union Pacific & Northern Pacific linked to Yellowstone; Santa Fe to Grand Canyon, etc.
additional parks: 1890: Yosemite; 1899: Mt. Rainier; 1902: Crater Lake; 1906: Mesa Verde; 1910: Glacier; 1915: Rocky Mountain; 1916: Mount Lassen; 1919: Grand Canyon
process facilitated by passage of Antiquities Act of 1906: permitted president to create national monuments without congressional action
massive promotional outpouring from RRs on behalf of parks along their lines; selling points included sublime, playgrounds, recreation, romance, quaintness, Indians, etc.
arrival of tourist automobile (1st in Yellowstone 1915) liberated travellers from railroad & hotels: onset of camping, more highway-oriented mode of travel
1916: National Park Service Act creates administrative bureaucracy within parks, partly in response to Hetchy Hetchy, with Stephen Tyng Mather (1867-1930) as first Director
NPS promoted parks as democratic playground for recreation in midst of natural wonders
sought to widen access through road construction, widespread publication efforts

III. Aldo Leopold and the Problem of Game Management

at same time, U.S. Forest Service (USFS) seeking also to sell self as nation's playground, Sec. of Agriculture issuing vacation house permits at $10-$25 per year, widespread enthusiastic response
Arthur C. Carhart hired by Denver headquarters to plan vacation development at Trappers Lake, argued that no development at all would be better; lake set aside 1920
Carhart allied with Aldo Leopold, who argued for "special primitive area" as designation for Gila National Forest in New Mexico, to be roadless: escape car & industrial use
Leopold emerged as the major theoretician of wilderness in first half of 20th century
born Burlington IA, 1886 (died 1949), Yale BA 1908 and Forestry MA 1909, then on to Southwest to work for USFS doing forestry & game preservation, brief period with Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce to fight for predator control
"disaster" of deer overpopulation on Kaibab Plateau in early 1920s leads Leopold to reverse position on predators, and to argue against eliminating them; data very problematic
Leopold would nonetheless argued that people should be "Thinking Like a Mountain": wolves as much as deer essential to health of ecological community, to prevent overpopulation
went on to become Professor of Wildlife Ecology at University of Wisconsin, first such position in country; wrote classic textbook on Game Management in 1933; systematized state efforts at regulating hunt via game wardens, license fees, wildlife refuges, raising of pheasants, etc.
Izaak Walton League, founded 1922, would be play central role in national refugesystem
1934: first federal duck stamp, finances federal game refuge system, land acquisition; note also that wetlands for the first time start to preserved, even though not "sublime" in original romantic sense
note odd role of wildlife manager in protecting wildlife species: managing wild populations to protect hunt, even to point of breeding certain species like pheasants (introduced 1881, first hunting season 1892, very popular game target); hunters' licensing fees fund management system, help finance refuges
1935, Leopold family acquired "The Shack", worn-out farm in Sauk County that they sought to restore; story of efforts contained in posthumous Sand County Almanac, along with defense of "land ethic"
exercise in private stewardship of ecosystem, manipulation of abandoned agricultural land to reproduce healthy biota, native vegetation, mixture of game and non-game species
humans as members of biotic community with ethical responsibility to maintain its health
Leopold dies of heart attack in brush fire, April 21, 1948; Sand County Almanac appears next year

IV. Preserving Wilderness: The Battle for Dinosaur

Leopold not alone. Bob Marshall, (1901-39) trained as forester, worked for USFS & BIA, among most successful New Deal proponents arguing for setting aside wilderness
1929-39, USFS L-20 regulation sets up wilderness, wild, and roadless areas, total rose from .4 to 14.2 mill acres by 1939; new U-regulations after 1939 much more restrictive
private efforts too: Benton MacKaye's 1921 proposal for Appalachian Trail led to massive volunteer efforts, Appalachian Trail Conference 1925, trail completed by 1937, much of it over private land
Marshall, MacKaye, Leopold joined Harvey Broome, Bernard Frank, and Robert Sterling Yard in 1935 to found Wilderness Society: elite, wealthy, well-connnected, very effective in protecting wild land
linkage of wealth to wilderness & park preservation persistent feature of movement
cf. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: helped or gave outright Acadia, Grand Tetons, Shenandoah, Great Smoky National Parks to nation, along with New Jersey Palisades
Governor Percival Baxter: purchased 202,000 acres to preserve Mt. Ktahdin to state
in East, issue was acquiring or regulating private land; in West, setting aside government land
John Muir's Sierra Club largely an outing club in 1930s, but poised to become major player
David Brower (1912-2000) becomes editor of Sierra Club Bulletin in 1946, executive director in 1952
major fight of 1950s: proposed dam at Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument. Hetchy Hetchy all over again? Wallace Stegner edits This is Dinosaur in 1955 to educate public about threat of dam
Brower's testimony demonstrated Bureau of Reclamation had miscalculated own data re loss to evaporation and aquifer; 1956, Congress declares no dams in parks (but elsewhere on Colorado, eg. Glen Canyon)
NB: defenders had accepted principle of dams elsewhere on river; also nuclear power

V. Promoting Wilderness: Toward the 1964 Act

1960: Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall's This is the American Earth becomes first volume in Brower's new Exhibit Format book series: beautiful landscape images make case for wilderness protection
Ansel Adams (1902-84) started photographing Sierra Nevada in late 1920s, soon emerged as country's most popular landscape photographer; Sierra Club board member in 1934
question: "What is the price of exaltation?" 1964 book responds: In Wildness is the Preservation of the World, photos by Eliot Porter, words by Henry David Thoreau
romantic nature as source of secular faith in crisis of modern world: recovering spiritual values
high cost of book series led to increasing resistance to Brower by Sierra Club board members
goal of late 1950s: legislative authority to preserve wilderness. First bill, 1957.
drafted by executive director of Wilderness Society, Howard Zahniser (1906-64), from editorial and journalistic background like Brower, tireless lobbyist, died just before act passed in 1964
Sept 3, 1964, Wilderness Act: "where earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain": 9.1 mill acres initially

VI. Flooding the Sistine Chapel: Canyons of the Colorado

no time to celebrate. flood gates at Glen Canyon Dam close Jan 21, 1963, flood The Place No One Knew‑-Sierra Club book published 1963 to lament loss of wilderness to dam
in response, fight against Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon dams flooding Grand Canyon
June 9, 1966, Brower runs NYT ad, "Only You Can Save Grand Canyon"; next day, IRS revokes tax-exempt status of Sierra Club, leading by 1969 to Brower's ouster by Board
response, NYT ad: "Should We Also Flood the Sistine Chapel so Tourists can get Nearer the Ceiling?"
Feb 1, 1967, Sec. of Interior Stewart Udall reverses stand, rejects Grand Canyon dams and accepts Four Corners power plant on Navajo Reservation, eventually polluting air in canyon
wilderness: urban population seeking escape in conflict with its own material support system, leading inevitably to paradox of "wilderness management": Leopold's stewardship

Page revision date: 28-Oct-2009