Olmsted and Environmental Restoration
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Announcements:
(1) Term paper proposals will be back to you hopefully by Friday.
(2) Course Enroll: NTRES 332, “Ethics and Environment,” meeting fall semester Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:10, 4 credits, discussion section TBA
(3) Mid-term exam goes back today; explanation of scoring convention. Total grade is in green pen.
See Anne Whiston Spirn’s article, “Constructing Nature: The Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted,” in Cronon, Uncommon Ground.
Olmsted’s legacy:
-Yosemite
-Niagara Falls
-Biltmore Estate
-Boston Charles River Fens
Yosemite is the first tract of wild land set aside by an act of Congress, in 1864, “for public use, resort, and recreation.”
Olmsted’s biography
1865 report to California legislature
Samuel Bowles, publisher of the Springfield Republican (Massachusetts).
Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Allen B. Richardson, war correspondent for the New York Tribune.
Bowles:
“The wise cession and dedication [of Yosemite] by Congress, and proposed improvement by California, . . . furnishes an admirable example for other objects of natural curiosity and popular interest all over the Union. New York should preserve for popular use both Niagara Falls and its neighborhood and a generous section of her famous Adirondacks, and Maine one of her lakes and its surrounding woods.”
John Muir and Yosemite
Importance of photography
C. E. (Carleton E.) Watkins
V. Niagara as spectacle:
The Michigan
