It seems like a radical idea in a country that was still trying to conquer the wilderness, but by the 1830s some members of the east coast elite were talking about somehow preserving wilderness and other special natural areas

steps involved in preserving wilderness:

1. seeing value in wilderness
   
2. regret wilderness is vanishing
3. idea of preserving a wilderness area as a park
4. arguments to persuade people to do this: usually focused how people can enjoy it rather than on wilderness
   
5. wanting to preserve wilderness needs to move from a few elite people to broader public opinion
6. once you have set aside land how do you manage it?
   

John James Audubon, naturalist and artist (1785-1851)

• he grew up in France and studied art there but was sent to America at age 18, to avoid being drafted
• his family owned an estate near Philadelphia
• he married and worked in business for a while, then went bankrupt during an economic downturn
• he then set out with his gun, art materials, and an assistant to document the birds of America
• In 1826 he took his work to England, where he was well received
  
• much more realistic paintings of birds (compared for example to Alexander Wilson) because he wired recently dead birds into poses instead of stuffing them
• also painted dramatic/romantic scenes and wrote exciting descriptions of his travels
  
• expressed concern that the forests were being cut down
• but he had trouble arguing with progress: "Whether these changes are for the better or worse, I shall not pretend to say" (p. 97)
• is it good to be conquering wilderness or is it a loss?
  

Francis Parkman, Jr., historian

• as a young man he took camping trips to "see the wilderness where it was yet uninvaded by the hand of man." (p. 98)
• give this new country an identity by writing its history
  
• wrote a book about the Oregon trail in the 1840s
• by the time he wrote a new preface for an 1873 edition the wilderness was vanishing
• the pioneers might celebrate that, but he regretted it
  

Artist George Catlin in 1832 not only regretted the loss of wilderness but envisioned a national park to preserve a bit of the wild west, including both buffalo and Indians

Thoreau wanted each town to have its own undeveloped area of woods as a park

Samuel Hammond had similar ideas on a larger scale--called for preserving some forest areas uncut

• His Wild Northern Scenes is available online

Before national parks can be established people need to

• become convinced that preserving wilderness is a good thing
• figure out how it might be done
• develop a set of arguments for why it should be done
• just saying wilderness is good is not enough to get a law passed setting aside a park
• you also need practical arguments--this is why we will benefit if we do it

George Perkins Marsh focused on reasons to preserve forests:

• he is arguing from scientific ideas of the time about climate and weather
  
• we need forests prevent flooding
  
• prevent drought, both by holding moisture like a sponge and recharging the water table
  
• also it was believed that trees cause rain (rain follows the plow)--if people started farms in the dry great plains it would start raining more, if they planted trees
  
• he argued that cutting down forests would lead to deserts

Marsh's Address delivered before the Agricultural society of Rutland County, Sept. 30, 1847

• he starts with the idea that agriculture is a "means and instrument of civilization and social progress" and asks how it can be improved
  
• he starts with how dramatically civilization has transformed America
• he talks about how agriculture has begun to be scientific (this goes back to 1700s and Jethro Tull, but by the 1830s science has more useful to say about agriculture)
  
• this is easier to see for soils, less so for climate, but he argues it is also true of climate
• "The draining of swamps and the clearing of forests perceptibly effect the evaporation from the earth, and of course the mean quantity of moisture suspended in the air." (p. 11)
  
• "There are certain other improvements connected with agriculture, to which I desire to draw your special attention. One of these is the introduction of a better economy in the management of our forest lands.... The functions of the forest, besides supplying timber and fuel, are very various. The conducting powers of trees render them highly useful in restoring the disturbed equilibrium of the electric fluid; they are of great value in sheltering and protecting more tender vegetables against the destructive effects of bleak or parching winds, and the annual deposit of the foliage of deciduous trees, and the decomposition of their decaying trunks, form an accumulation of vegetable mould, which gives the greatest fertility to the often originally barren soils on which they grow, and enriches lower grounds by the wash from rains and the melting snows....  Forests serve as reservoirs and equalizers of humidity. In wet seasons, the decayed leaves and spongy soil of woodlands retain a large proportion of the falling rains, and give back the moisture in time of drought, by evaporation or through the medium of springs. They thus both check the sudden flow of water from the surface into the streams and low grounds, and prevent the droughts of summer from parching our pastures and drying up the rivulets which water them. " (p. 18-19)
• "It has long been a practice in many parts of Europe, as well as in our older settlements, to cut the forests reserved for timber and fuel at stated intervals. It is quite time that this practice should be introduced among us. " (p. 20)
• concludes with a call for farmers to study science and technology
  
• 1864 book: Man and Nature was a history of human destruction of nature, starting with the ancient world
• called for humans to work with nature to repair the damage

"rain follows the plow" is the idea that farming will change the climate, making it less dry

• Marsh says forests add moisture to the air
• if we cut down too much forest we will cause summer drought
• Marsh believes we will reduce the amount of rain
• if we plant trees will that increase the amount of rainfall?
• if we plow the land more water will evaporate from the soil
• some people argued this would cause more rain
• there were a number of years of good rainfall which encouraged this wishful thinking, then drought hit
  

by the 1850s people are figuring out how to make an argument, both practical and philosophical, for preserving wilderness
but figuring out how to do so is slow

Arkansas Hot Springs

• set aside as a natural reservation by the federal government in 1832
• just as we have reservations for Indians how about one for nature?
  
• no laws were passed on how it was to be administered so people settled there anyway
• when the federal government tried to take control in 1849 the local residents sued to prevent their land being taken away--the federal government won but it took until 1877 to settle the lawsuits

1864 preservation of Yosemite: the federal government gave the land to the state of California to make a park because no one knew how the federal government could manage it

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