Progressive Conservation

Earth, Wind, and Fire

The outdoor craze

± Rise of Vacations, 1869: Camping

° Summer youth camps

± Boy Scouts of America, 1910

The outdoor craze

± Old West craze

° Owen Wister & Frederick Remington

± 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 of state park; watershed damage

± John Muir: Yosemite National Park, 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

Progressive Conservation

± Gifford Pinchot

° Scientific management

° “Conservation”: greatest good for greatest number for greatest length of time

° First chief of Forest Service

± “National Forests,” 1905

° Successes: PR & professional foresters

Reclamation

± Irrigating arid Western lands

± Reclamation Act, 1902

° 160-acre limit

± Widely ignored; speculation

± Los Angeles steals 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