"Saving God's Creation " Jesup Denorial Library, June 19,2018. Bar Harbor, ME 12/28/2017 Slideshow and Talk: Ron Epp, "Saving God's Creation: The Distinctively New England Roots of Land Conservation" - Jesup Memorial Library Primary Menu Search Our Site Jesup Memorial Library A Community and Cultural Center in Bar Harbor All Events Slideshow and Talk: Ron Epp, "Saving God's Creation: The Distinctively New England Roots of Land Conservation" June 19, 2018 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm + GOOGLE CALENDAR + ICAL EXPORT Details Organizer Date: Jesup Memorial Library June 19, 2018 Phone: Time: (207) 288-4245 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm Event Categories: Community Events, Lectures & Slideshows Venue Jesup Memorial Library 34 Mt. Desert Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609 United States + Google Map Phone: (207) 288-4245 e- SION "Saving God's creation": Iglander 5/31/2018 Land conservation work has New England roots BAR HARBOR - Author and historian Ronald H. Epp will lead an exploration of the history of land conservation in New England at the Jesup Memorial Library on Tuesday, June 19, at 7 p.m. Epp's talk will begin with the Puritan belief that as agents of God's will, nature must be subdued for personal needs. Three centuries later, landscape architect Charles Eliot established the first land trust for the enjoyment of the public in perpetuity. Epp will explain how this movement for preserving wild land began with early environmentalists, including Eliot, Ralph Waldo PHOTO COURTESY OF THE JESUP MEMORIAL LIBRARY Emerson, Henry David Tho- reau, George Perkins Marsh, Ronald H. Epp Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Frederick Law Olmst- ed, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot during Acadia National Park's sachusetts families who in- and Theodore Roosevelt. These centennial year by Friends of fluenced the development of men were troubled by the con- Acadia. The debut of the book conservation philanthropy led tests between religion and so- was a joint talk with FOA at to "Creating Acadia National ciety and between nature and the Jesup that drew over 100 Park." Dozens of talks at book- culture, and by the advent of attendees. stores, libraries, historical so- industrialization, deforesta- Epp is a historian and pro- cieties and museums through- tion, urbanization, population fessor of philosophy with a out the Northeast followed. growth and transportation in- background in scholarly pub- Epp served as a consultant for novations. They began their lishing and academic library the Ken Burns documentary work to stem this by the cre- leadership. He currently teach- "America's Best Idea: the Na- ation of land trusts and sanc- es in the Presidents' College at tional Parks" and has uncov- tuaries. the University of Hartford. As ered and inventoried hidden Epp is the author of "Creat- part of its Distinguished Lec- collections of documents re- ing Acadia National Park: The tures Series, he has been invit- lating to the history of Acadia Biography of George Buck- ed to give a talk this October to National Park and the origins nam Dorr," the first biography the Lenox Library Association of the National Park Service. of Dorr, which was published on the impact of the Berkshires Copies of "Creating Acadia on the development of the na- National Park" will be on sale tional park on Mount Desert that night courtesy of co-spon- Island. sor Sherman's Books. Con- Epp's research over the last tact the Jesup at 288-4245 or two decades into the Mas- mrice@jesuplibrary.org. Page I 1 SAVING GOD'S CREATION: The Distinctively New England Roots of Land Conservation Ronald H. Epp Jesup Memorial Library, Bar Harbor ME June 19, 2018 I appreciate the opportunity to share with you some findings that I have pursued since my book was launched here at the Jesup in April 2016. This evening, I will highlight land conservation innovators, enumerate the cultural themes distinctive to New England land conservation, and show how developments nationwide would influence the land conservation movement with the dawn of the 20th-century. [1] But let us begin with a question. What came to mind when I use the historically descriptive term "Puritans"? Perhaps you conjured up the 17th-century English Protestants who advocated simplification of Church of England ceremonies and creeds; or those of a nonconformist faith who insisted on a strict discipline and the righteousness and sovereignty of God; or those intolerant of Catholicism where priests were holier than the congregation; or those who followed a principle of moderation and condemned what they judged to be excessive behavior; or those immigrants aboard vessels like the Mayflower who first landed at Plymouth in 1620? Perhaps an amalgam of these options? I raise this question because those who fled oppressive laws and traditions in their homeland adhered to a set of doctrines that would Page I 2 define American culture-and our views about what is private and what is public-- for more than two hundred years. [2] Their religious beliefs were shaped more by the Old Testament than the New. And none of the new European arrivals had first-hand experience with Wilderness. [3] Their biblical references confirmed that at one time all of the Earth was wild. Earth was a global wilderness-vast and devoid of human impact. [4] Yet when these immigrants stepped onto the Atlantic shoreline, what they faced was qualitatively unlike their Old World experience. [5] Their survival coping mechanisms--based on biblical sources-would adjust, degrade or elevate, as the decades rolled by. [6,7] Many passengers bound for the New World supported John Winthrop's claim that America was "the good land." [8] Others agreed with Lincolnshire cleric John Cotton who referenced the biblical passage where God appointed "a place for my people [of] Israel...[where] they may dwell in a place of their owne, and move no more."[ll Samuel 7:10]. After all,didn't the Book of Genesis direct one to be fruitful and multiply... have dominion over everything that moves upon the earth? In encouraging belief in a terrestrial paradise they were aided by timely advertising brochures that praised the fecundity of the American soil and its capacity to produce "any grain, fruits or seeds you will sow or plant." [9] The clergy offered no cautionary remarks about seasonal challenges, the density of the forested landscape, and the pockets of indigenous peoples already decimated before the Puritan arrival. John Cotton interpreted an epidemic that decimated a neighboring encampment of native Americans as a sign from God that the Lord would have the English settle there. Page 3 Bear in mind that in the Western tradition, land ownership is entrenched in divine monarchies. European feudal systems provided the justification for the sale, restriction of access, and inheritance policies for land transfer. The concepts associated with private land ownership were entirely alien to indigenous peoples and many colonists took advantage of this exploitative opportunity. The colonists, however, were more concerned about the threat posed by the American wilderness to the veneer of civilization. Could the wilderness reduce man to a condition no better than the carnivorous animals he would face on these shores? [10] Many settlers- predominantly middle class Englishmen and women--feared that America might not be a New Eden but another refuge that would present unknown challenges compared with the known difficulties that they left behind. The surviving papers of the first settlers reveal that as they approached this spiritual darkness they were resolved that wilderness would inspire frugality and inventiveness, purifying and strengthening their faith. Their leaders encourage belief that the first order of business must be to carve a garden from the wilds, to redeem America from its wildness. Today we are prone to understand wilderness as positive, as part of our heritage. Yet as geographer David Lowenthal explains, for the Puritans and successive generations "wilderness was no 'heritage' to folk who had to cope with it; it became one only when it no longer had to be lived in.' "("Not Every Prospect Pleases," Landscape 12, 32 [1962-63], 19) Yet the English were not alone in colonizing the frontier-the French and Dutch were colonizing contested land. And within their own enclaves, the English increasingly found a need to develop the public Page I 4 domain to protect the general welfare from selfish individuals and those who strayed away from the faith. [11] The well-known Salem witch trials were expressions of mass hysteria rooted in religious extremism and group isolation. [12] By 1637 John Winthrop reported that Boston inhabitants were on the verge of civil discord "for want of wood." So too at inland settlements in Springfield and New Haven, where the lack of timber was acute. [13] There was also growing concern about the rocky hills being denuded to get to the mineral wealth that lay beneath. And towns responded with legislation to prohibit the depletion of fish stock, and the slaughter of wild pigeons even while other towns offered bounties for black birds, jays, woodpeckers, and crows in order to protect their growing stocks. Yet these 17tgh-century frontiersmen were decades removed from developing democratic principles of access to forest, wildlife, and resources. Over the next several decades the Puritans radically altered the appearance of the untamed landscape by transforming portions of the virgin forest into habitable areas, delimited into what they called settled estates where they pursued the ideal of a closely-knit society. Crop failures, epidemics, shipwrecks, and grasshopper invasions made many suspect that an angry God was displeased with their actions- others increasingly felt their governing bodies in England were inattentive; indeed, some claimed that the colonists had been "marooned and forgotten." Page I 5 Still later, the Jeffersonian secular philosophy enforced Puritanism by providing settlers and frontiersmen with a clearly defined agrarian role as pioneers of a civilized landscape where agricultural enterprise fostered national progress on an international stage. [14] In such an economy, federal and state rights are limited-private land ownership remained uncontested. Natural calamities were no longer interpreted as signs of providential disfavor. The Puritan hold on the New England psyche was slipping. The jeffersonian dichotomy between rural good and urban evil was later refined by Harvard historian Frederick Jackson Turner who said: "The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, [and] modes of travel and thought...Little by little he transforms the wilderness. But the outcome is not the old Europe. The fact is that here is a new product that is American...Thus the advance of the frontier has meant a steady movement away from Europe, a steady growth of independence on American lines." (The Frontier in American History, 1893). Those who remained on their original holdings began to reconstitute an equilibrium between nature and culture. A growing agrarian appreciation for the harmonies of nature developed, no less than the reflex to pillage the land. And "while the darker side of Puritanism steadily receded in the 19th-century, the love of nature and the inclination to steward it...persisted and expressed itself", first in New England. In the mother country, there was a long-standing agricultural tradition where farmers agreed to share a common parcel on which their cattle grazed. Caring for the land is an act of individual stewardship and collective trusteeship; each herder has no claim to any part of the land but rather to the use of it. [15] This mutually-beneficial sustainable environment is threatened if a partner in the project decides to break Page 6 with the norm and seeks additional profit by adding an additional grazing cow. The quality of the Commons-which can be seen today as any unregulated resource such as rivers, oceans, or the atmosphere-- is damaged when equality is violated and individual overuse depletes a common resource. This issue of managing or policing shared resources we do not typically associate with the pretty village green in a picturesque New England village. And yet it overshadows characteristics distinctive to the New England conservation movement [16] advanced by Charles H.W. Foster in a 2009 Harvard University Press publication. Prior to his death in 2012, Foster had been Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and researcher at the Harvard Forest. Foster argued quite rightly that the New England approach to land conservation not only preceded its application in other regions but that our regional approach has "an enviable record of successful actions." These are: (1) a commitment to self-determination; (2) innovative thinking; (3) a reliance on individual leadership as a first resort; (4) a strong commitment to place; (5) a long history of civic engagement; and (6) commitment to the ethical imperative of stewardship. Notice how these characteristics manifest themselves in the following chronology. Professor Foster and University of Maine historian Richard Judd argue that environmentalists over the last half century have more often than not ignored the indigenous peoples and European colonists who tilled the soil, fished the rivers and ocean, and managed their woodlots. Through their practical concern for what we today call sustainability, Page I 7 they were the first practitioners of conservation, recognizing that the scale of their behavior was limited by pressing local concerns. The onset of the 19th-century brought the European growth of industrialized economies to our shores, including the shift to special purpose machinery. Mass production, railroad transportation, and the development of the factory system first expressed itself in New England. These changes were not the outcome of town hall decision- making but the result of profit-based entrepreneurs who spoke publically of themselves as constructive agents who harnessed the power of Nature through their own human ingenuity (Peter A. Ford, "Charles S. Storrow," 1993). A new landscape emerged, one of expedience where resources were bent by energy and enterprise to fuel the engines of material progress. Some of the negative effects of industrialization we know all too well: grim employee living-if not-- working conditions, exploitation of youth, diversion of water power, and the depletion of the land. As the land was conquered by expanding populations, those who traveled became sensitized to what they observed as the impacts of expansionism. [17] Artist George Catlin's 1832-1839 travels-- recounted in his landmark Letters and Notes on the Manners, Creatures, and Customs of the North American Indians-were actually field trips to study and paint the indigenous population. The consequences of advancing civilization were brought into stark relief in Catlin's mind. In his published writings he explained that without government intervention, the remaining American wilderness would vanish! For the first time, the landscape of America has an advocate insisting that selective portions should-in Carlin's words--be Page I 8 "preserved in its pristine beauty and wildness, in a magnificent park. There the world could see for ages to come beautiful and thrilling specimen hold[ing] up to the view of her refined citizens and the world, in future ages! A nation's Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild freshness of their nature's beauty!" Catlin knew that mere love of nature and devotion to it were insufficient-' "men would have to take definite action to keep the great fortune which nature had given them in trust." (Huth, 135) This is a bold concept ripe with changes that radically departed from traditional land ownership practices. In 1843, ornithologist and painter John Jay Audubon,[18 traveled West to find what Catlin had described. There he found abundant evidence of desolation which plunged him into mental darkness, later followed by dementia. This is not the Audubon we chose to remember. Instead, we recall the youthful Audubon in the decade between 1827 and 1838 quietly moving through the woods and wetlands; not only did he observe bird behavior but he also shot specimens in order to use his artistic skills to reveal their beauty in their last flourishing. [19] Few disagree that Audubon succeeded in capturing--in the 435 hand- colored plates included in Birds of America- - the splendor of what was at risk because of human self-absorption. (Audubon. 2016. PBS home video). Oddly, America's foremost clerics of Audubon's day were largely silent on these human assaults on God's creations. [20] Two years later, a Vermont attorney, diplomat, and philologist, George Perkins Marsh, published Man and Nature. Having spent productive years as the United States Ambassador to Italy, this native of Woodstock [21] drew upon his wide-ranging nature studies in New England and abroad. He compiled empirical data that showed that Page |9 deforestation at the global level resulted in erosion, loss of agricultural fertility, and the destruction of fish habitat. Marsh used historical evidence to show that lush lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea had become deserts, creating a desolation "almost as complete as that of the moon." From this data Marsh concluded that "Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discord." Marsh claimed that the welfare of man and nature over generations is only achieved if man manages resources. When those who despoil nature trump it with the utility card, Marsh argued that "utility" was a bird of many feathers. If minerals and timber were examples of utility, so were water and watershed. Considered by many to be the Father of the American conservation movement, Marsh revealed man's abuse of nature, explained its causes, and prescribed reforms. [22] In their day, Marsh and Audubon were not solitary conservation advocates. Widely read was The North American Review, an influential serial spreading progressive ideas as well as traditional Yankee values. What their authors-first-rate scholars, clergy and other professional men and women-articulated, was concern that modern power in irresponsible hands could lead to new forms of human abuse against the earth, air, and waters. One contributors was a popular board-game designer and author Anne Wales Abbott (1808-1908). Reflecting Charles Foster's aforementioned standard of a strong commitment to place as well as the imperative of Page I 10 stewardship, she wrote in 1848 that no self-respecting "Yankee land- owner would fell a single oak without planting an acorn." She warned that the reduction of forest areas was diminishing the water-power on which the many of the fabric mills depended." [23] In another essay she emphasized that individual initiative is not enough. The task of forest improvement "is one whose importance to the commonweal makes it the proper action of the government." Her action is both notable and noble for she was convinced that once the public was made aware of the importance of preserving woodlands then the public would act collectively in the interest of conservation. Her thinking was allied with Mary Hopkins Goodrich who not only planted 400 trees in the Berkshires but initiated sustained actions to elevate the condition of the commons, streets, walkways, paths, lighting, cemeteries, and public places in Stockbridge, MA Formed in the same year as Dorr's birth-1853-- the Laurel Hill Association that Goodrich established is the oldest existing village improvement society, the model for scores of other communities (including the villages on MDI) where public engagement was newly fostered-- at a time when town services were sorely lacking-and the evidence of environmental degradation was increasingly evident. But at a more conceptual level, we turn our attention to Concord MA where the American Romantic movement wrestles with the meaning of Nature. There a new vision emerges in the writings of Thoreau and the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson-- a descendant of eight generations of Puritan clergymen.| [24] To study nature now meant that one had to rely on one's own resources, acknowledging that the inner voices of sentiment and intuition spoke with finality. [25] Moreover, Page 11 Emerson admitted that while humans derived wealth from the commodities extracted from natural sources, he cautioned that this exploitative value is "but temporary and mediate, not ultimate." The Rev. William Ellery Channing paraphrased his friend when he wrote that "Emerson and the Transcendentalists discerned more and more of God in everything [from] "the frail flower to the everlasting stars." Emerson's lifelong walking companion was Henry David Thoreau, and whereas Emerson enjoyed meeting people, Thoreau hoped that his peripatetic efforts would allow him to escape his neighbors. [26] Hills and mountains were Thoreau's domain. He anticipated George B. Dorr's purchase of the top of what is today called Cadillac Mountain when he noted in his Journal for January 3, 1861: "As in many countries, precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public... think that the top of a mountain should not be private property; it should be left unappropriated for modesty and reverence's sake, or if only to suggest that Earth has higher uses than we put her to." Thoreau sought the wild even in one of the tamest places-- Concord. For "each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres where a stick should never be cut for fuel-not for the Navy, nor to make wagons, but [to] stand and decay for higher uses-a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation." [27] These are the places where Audubon's birds reside. Wildness was palpable in Concord but in Maine it was unrelenting. In his classic personal adventure, The Maine Woods, Thoreau recalled his experiences of the "howling wildness," the deep primordial north woods that his Puritan predecessors had tried to eradicate. [28] Page I 12 Thoreau asked: "Why should we [not] have our national preserves, [places] in which bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may still exist-not for idle sport or food, but for inspirations and our own true recreation? Or shall we, like villains, grub them all up, poaching on our own national domains?" Hudson River School painters anticipated this movement away from the "poaching our own domains." [29] Led by Englishman Thomas Cole [30, 31] and Frederick Church [32,33] - -these artists traveled far and wide to represent nature unspoiled by human intervention. They covered their canvases with radiant landscapes that awakened viewers who first admired their works in museums or publications, many then planned to travel to the places where Hudson River School painters like Cropsey, Durand, Innes, and Kennett found their inspiration. The practical implication was that if these sublime Arcadian landscapes were worthy of preservation in the foremost American museums, [34] surely the conservation of the physical source was worth as much or more !! Notice that value is here redirected-from artistic representation back to its natural source. As young George Dorr worked his way through Harvard College (1870-74), D. Appleton & Company published a two volume set of illustrated books that was implicitly a conservation manifesto. Appleton's Picturesque America S celebrated the entire continent-and its first essay was "On the Coast of Maine." Yet it was not enough to illustrate and write essays about thunderous cataracts, lofty mountains, and undulating pastures. The citizenry of any era lives in the here and now, fixated on the sober realities of life and death. [35] It was commonplace to believe in the mid 19th- century that depositing one's remains in a church burial ground increased one's Page I 13 chances of salvation. But as cities grew, health studies suggested that these burial grounds might be a source of disease and a cause of epidemics. An enlightened physician and public-spirited Boston citizen, Jacob Bigelow (1786-1879), became alarmed at the health risks in the rapidly growing inner city. [36} He joined forces with Influential men like Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, and Thomas Wren Ward (George ma Dorr's paternal grandfather), [37] and pioneered the rural cemetery movement. [38] Aligned with the newly formed Massachusetts Horticultural Society, these bluebloods identified an aesthetically compelling location in Cambridge. [39] Founded in September 1831, the natural beauty and diverse topography of Mount Auburn Cemetery became popular both to visit and to be interred-after all, did not this "pleasure ground" demonstrate the kindliness of a Creator who had given the world such natural beauty? [40] A Dorr family friend, British actress Fanny Kemble, lightened the ambiance associated with a burial ground, referring to Mount Auburn [41] as her favorite trysting place. Landscaped with trees, shrubs, water features, paths, in a topographically varied setting, the seasonally changing environment fostered belief in the continuity of life. In time, thoughtful men and women began to ask: if we can provide such an environment for the departed, is it not reasonable to pursue at least as much for the living? While new technologies offered unprecedented power over nature they also distanced people from the organic world so dominant in the earlier economy. [42. 43] Increasingly, the forces of Industrialization, immigration, and population density put a premium on health and open space. [44] Outside New England, positive steps were taken to offer a Page I 14 sanctuary for such change. In 1853, New York State authorized on a massive scale a portion of Manhattan Island for recreation. [45] In the first landscape design contest in history, the proposal of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux was selected over thirty-two other applicants. Of course you have figured out that they would execute the transformation of 778 island acres-one square mile--into a Central Park.[46] There they pioneered an urban conservation movement, a new era where urban-not agrarian--forces came to the forefront. Central Park set a precedent for land conservation in the common interest more than a decade before realization of the national park concept at Yellowstone. After frustrating and protracted disagreements with New York politics, the Father of American Landscape Architecture left the Northeast in 1862 for a three year stay in Bear Valley, adjacent to the Mariposa Grove in California's Yosemite Valley. There the western explorer and politician John C. Fremont had purchased seventy square miles of real estate and turned it into a massive mining operation. Having lost his fortune, Fremont sold The Mariposa Company to a New York banker who approached Olmsted about managing the Estate. [47] So impressed was Olmsted by the beauty of this Valley that he issued a report arguing analogously that such natural scenery should be available to the public for the same reason that the water of rivers should be guarded against private appropriation and protected against obstruction. Back East In the nation's Capitol, Irish-American California Senator John Conness secured passage of the Yosemite Act of 1864 which reserved Yosemite Valley from settlement and entrusted its care to the State of Page I 15 California. [48] Olmsted became a Yosemite commissioner tasked with oversight but when he called for strict regulation and public access, his claims were suppressed by the California legislature. Not until 1891 were John Muir and others successful in establishing Yosemite National Park. [49] This bill contained something exceptional: a clause that the federal land was given "under the express condition that the premises shall be held for public use, resort and recreation and shall be held inalienable for all times." Unlike the local scope of Central Park, Olmsted here was the driving force behind this completely new idea-- of creating a park as a playground for the nation. Olmsted's biographer emphasized that the expansion of the concept of a park was the beginning of what would become a half century later The National Park System. For this was the first time that a national government set aside federal land for the explicit purpose of conservation. The motive? In Olmsted's eyes, the answer was the recuperative power of natural scenery. Nature heals, fresh air is good, and this sort of change in everyday habits improves health and intellectual vigor. Have no doubt. Unlike Central Park, Yosemite was real wilderness and yet it could be as powerful a civilizing force as urban parks, providing an escape from the cramped, confined and controlling effects of town and city life. In Olmsted's own words, "an enlarged sense of freedom is to all, at all times, the most certain and the most valuable gratification afforded by a park." Page I 16 Four years before John Muir arrived (1868) in California, Olmsted realized that there were management issues that could not be ignored. recording regailing, The nation was still caught in the grip of the Civil War, yet Olmsted from pointed out that "the mere existence of some great natural wonder was not enough; it was essential that someone with both vision and initiative made the place attractive and acceptable to the public, and in addition provide [the] means by which the public could reach it in convenience and safety." In the territories of the far West, John Wesley Powell's geographic exploration of the arid Colorado River basin in 1869 led to federal proposals to enforce irrigation and watershed systems across state lines, proposals resisted in Congress but not ignored on the East coast. Similarly, surveyors, artists, and railroad entrepreneurs came to the conclusion that more than two million acres in the Montana and Wyoming territories needed to be preserved from commercialization. Sensational accounts of Yellowstone's geology -with accounts of shooting geysers, boiling streams, sulfuric pits, stunning canyons, and majestic waterfalls-- were featured in newspapers and magazines. [50, 51] Proponents used the Yosemite Act in late 1871 as precedent to save the massive Yellowstone from private development; yet to permanently shut the door on settlement of an area comparable to several eastern states, departed from the long standing national policy of transferring federal lands into private ownership (e.g., through homesteading). But there was opportunism quickly seized by the Northern Pacific Railroad which adopted Yellowstone as a destination for tourists aboard its trains. Those railroads that traversed the Plains' States attracted Page I 17 hunters at this time who found great joy in slaughtering buffalos from moving trains. [52] Between 1870-1875 six million bison were killed-- and the species neared extinction. No other resource in this country "has ever been destroyed in so short a time and with so little protest." [53] (Hans Huth, Nature and the American, 163). The conservation concept had again been broadened. Thereafter, some wildlife was aligned with land and water conservation. In January 1872 the Yellowstone bill was introduced in Congress and it quickly became apparent that neither Wyoming or Montana could be assigned management responsibility--they were not yet States. [54] On March 1st President Grant signed the bill to "set aside a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." While that story unfolded, back East a precocious 23-year old topographical engineer named Verplank Colvin (1847-1920), issued a report in the early 1870's detailing the extent of deforestation in the Adirondacks. [55] Not only did lumbering poise a threat to the Erie Canal, but the erosion that resulted-- as winter snowmelt emptied into the Hudson River-- was "laden with disaster for communities downstream [i.e. Manhattan]." In 1872, under sponsorship of the State of New York, Colvin was appointed Adirondack Survey Superintendent charged with surveying with strict accuracy-- using triangulation--the millions of acres that constitute the Adirondacks. Early into this 30 year project, he proposed the creation of "an Adirondack Park or timber preserve...[set aside] for posterity." It took more than a decade for The Forest Preserve Act to remove logging from state owned land. Moreover, this report came on the heels of the 1869 publication of Adventures in the Wilderness, or Camp Life in the Adirondacks by Page 18 William Henry Harrison Murray, aka Adirondack Murray. [56] This extremely influential book whetted an appetite for the North Woods and engagement through travel with the woodsmen who inhabited this wilderness. [57] Albany journalist Samuel H. Hammond, a hunter and conservationist like Audubon, returned from a 1857 Adirondack camping trip and worried what modern commerce would do to wild places. He then set pen to paper and wrote these startling words that resonated far and wide : "Had I my way, I would mark out a circle of a hundred miles in diameter, and throw around it the protecting aegis of the [New York] Constitution. I would make it a forest forever." In the succeeding decades recreationists like Hammond, Murray enthusiasts, and New Yorkers who sought an antidote for the encroachment of technological power, came together. In western New York, a group of enthusiasts called Free Niagara crusaded against expansion of the commercial exploitation of the Niagara River. The Robber Baron era was at hand and with it the formation of monopolies and the attendant corruption. [58] Sheds, refuse dumps, and the pollution from the Niagara power plant downriver from the Falls gave rise to public protests that resulted in legislation creating in 1885 the Niagara Reservation, America's oldest state park. [59] And who was the leader of the Free Niagara movement? None other than Olmsted! Manhattan residents and visitors had witnessed the benefits of their new Central Park and those voices resonated to Albany and beyond. University of Maine environmental historian R.W. Judd rightly argues that New Yorkers like their New England neighbors at the end of the 19th-century "were more Page 19 alienated from nature and at the same time, more attuned to the natural elements in the landscape around them." [60] (Second Nature, 2014.95) That very same year (1885) the Forest Preserve was established in the Adirondack mountains [61], though we New Englanders should take pride in the fact that it was Arnold Arboretum Director Charles Sprague Sargent who proposed the words "forever kept wild as forest lands." In 1892 the Adirondack Park was created. [62] Finally, in 1894 a constitutional convention closed loopholes to the new law-and in Article 7, section 7 it is affirmed in the State Constitution that State lands "shall be forever kept as wild forest lands... not leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall any timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed." The implementation of 'forever wild' signaled the ascendancy of a specific type of utility over another. A choice between wood and water. And water won! As a consequence, New York voters by popular vote affirmed a key axiom of the conservation ethic as a rule of law." Here in Maine, the forests were understood in the last decade of the 19th-century as critical to the survival of its fish and game-not to mention their attraction to vacationers. Yet it was not until 1891 that a Forest Commission was created to oversee development of a forest policy; many insisted that the forests were inexhaustible. Similar issues faced New Hampshire residents where poor timber practices in the White Mountains irritated the Rev. John E. Johnson during his years at Dartmouth College. His pamphlet, the "Worst Trust in the World," was nothing less than a diatribe against the New Hampshire Land Company which had lobbied the State legislature successfully to become the Page I 20 region's dominant landowner. The NELC then refused to sell lumber to local loggers for their milling operations. Johnson called this process "refrigeration," a deliberate act that resulted in business failures, the defaulting of commercial and residential mortgages, and the company picking up the available properties for a song. More than a decade later in 1911 the U.S. Congress passed one of the most significant pieces of conservation legislation in U.S. political history. The Weeks Act authorized the federal government to purchase land to protect the watersheds of navigable streams and rivers. Not only was the White Mountain National Forest an outcome, but over the decades more than 22 million acres of national forests were secured and managed in 26 states. The Weeks Act made the nation's forests national. Through it, forest conservation became continental. In conclusion, we have shown that the Puritans approached the New World as the perceived agents of God's Will, invoking biblical directives about subduing the landscape to serve their personal ends. This approach is clearly at odds with another biblical interpretation: that America was the Garden of Eden, a paradise altered through the commission of sin. As the boundaries of the managed North American landscape were pushed Westward, notions of public space-the Commons-were an incidental corrective to private exploitation. While the collective roots of New England land conservation are distinctive to this region, their piecemeal application of these characteristics outside the region propelled the public-spirited men and women highlighted in this lecture to reformulate the Puritan model. By the end of the 19th- century the innovative approaches of these outsiders returned to the Northeast where they were incorporated into the Progressive Agenda of the new century. To repeat the aforementioned Olmsted prescription: Page 21 "It [is] essential that someone with both vision and initiative make [some great natural wonder] attractive and acceptable to the public, and in addition provide [the] means by which the public could reach it in convenience and safety." Saving God's creation would now be at the forefront of the national agenda. Jesup 6.18 Slideshow: Saving God's Creation 1. "Embarcation of the Pilgrims," Robert W. Weir. 1844. 2. Mayflower Compact signing enroute to America. J.L. Ferris. 3. "Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor," William Halsall. 1882. 4. Mayflower arrival 5. Colonists move inland 6. First sermon ashore. J.L. Ferris. 1900. 7. John Winthrop 8. John Cotton 9. Imagined Thanksgiving 10. Native americans attack settlement 11. Salem witch trial, 1682. 12. Founders Memorial. Boston Common. 13. St. Gauden's sculpture of Samuel Chapin. Springfield, MA 14. Agrarianism 15. Medieval English Manor estate map with "Commons" 16. Charles H. W. Foster 17. George Catlin & Native American 18. John Jay Audubon 19. Birds of America. 20. George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882). Man and Nature. 21. Woodstock VT home. Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP. 22. North American Review 23. Author game of Anne Abbott 24. R.W. Emerson residence in Concord 25. Emerson in study 26. Walden Woods Cabin Site. Roland Wells Robbins marker. 27. Walden Pond quote from Walden. 1854. 28. In the Maine Woods. 1864. Trips in 1846, 1853,1857 29. Jasper Cropsey. Winter NH Landscape. 1859. 30. Thomas Cole. Sand Beach. MDI. 31. Thomas Cole 32. Frederick Church 33. Beehive. MDI. 34. Fitz Henry Lane. Blue Hill, ME. 1850's. 35. Jacob Bigelow. Mount Auburn Cemetery. 36. Daniel Webster & Edward Everett 37. Thomas Wren Ward 38. Park Street. Boston Commons. 39. Mount Auburn Cemetery 40. British actress Fanny Kemble. 1809-1893 41. Trails throughout Mount Auburn 42. Massachusetts advertisement for women workers 43. Amoskeag Manufacturing Co., Manchester NH 44. Amoskeag 45. F.L. Olmsted and Calvert Vaux 46. Central Park drawing. Proposal for Central Park 47. Senator John Conness & John Muir 48. Yosemite. Mariposa Grove 49. Yosemite Valley 50. Yellowstone geysers by Albert Bierstadt (1868) 51. Yellowstone by Bierstadt (1830-1902) 52. Railroad passengers slaughter buffalo 53. Forty thousand buffalo hides in Kansas 54. President Gran signs 1872 bill establishing Yellowstone NP 55. Verplank Colvin self-illustration of NY Survey (1872-84) 56. W.H.H. Murray 57. Samuel H. Hammond's 1857 Wild Northern Scenes. 58. Niagara power plant 59. 1898 postcard of American falls and Niagara Reservation 60. Forest Preserve. 1885 61. Adirondack Park. 1892 62. 1894 vote for "Forever wild" clause addition to Constitution 63. Iconic Somesville MDIHS bridge 64. Winter scene of bridge 65. Champlain Society 66. Mr. & Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt. 1898 Wedding illustration 67. Biltmore landscaping 68. Gifford Pinchot. Simsbury native. Milford PA Grey Towers 69. Biltmore under construction 70. FLO in Asheville amid flowering rhododendrons at Biltmore 71. Biltmore. 72. Keney Park. Hartford 73. 1st annual report and 125th anniversary issue of The Trustees 74. Charles Eliot and his 1901 biography by Charles W. Eliot 75. Overhead view of Castle Hill Estate, Ipswich MA. Plum Island. 76. Castle Hill on Crane Estate. 77. Castle Hill from rear. Third floor attic. Trustee archive center. 78. Naworth Castle. 79. Brideshead Revisited. Evelyn Waugh. 1981 Castle Howard. 80. Castle Howard. Yorkshire. England 81. Rosalind & George Howard. 9th Earl and Lady of Carlisle. 82. Mount Desert. 83. George B. Dorr. 84. Old Farm 85. Path Committee chairmen on shore of Eagle Lake 86. HCTPR, 2nd ed. 2016. Historical Sketch. 87. Charles W. Eliot and John D. Rockefeller Jr. 88. Creating Acadia National Park. 4/20/2018 XFINITY Connect Inbox questions about your visit on June 19th Ruth Eveland 5:00 PM To Ronald & Elizabeth Epp alister Dear Ron, I was talking this afternoon with Nancy Poteet, chair of our Advancement Committee, and Lee Bonta, our new full-time Director of Development, and we have a couple of questions. 1. Would it be possible for you to send a paragraph or two summarizing your planned talk? Yours is one of our summer events which we are hoping will help to open a few doors for us. I didn't have an opportunity to check with Mel or Kayla to see if you have already sent them something we could use, so if you have please pardon the double-ask. 2. Would you be willing to participate in something like a light supper at the Jesup on Monday, the night before your talk? We are thinking about inviting some of the people on our cultivation list who we believe will be interested in attending your talk yes and who might additionally value the opportunity to meet with you. We'd want to have on display some of maps from the Deasy-Chapman collection as well, particularly, of course, the one with Dorr's handwriting on it. I hope that spring is finally arriving in your new location. We've had a few random nice days, but not yet any sequence of them. They promise it for early next week and we are hopeful. We have survived this winter and have earned our spring! Thanks, Ruth Ruth A. Eveland Director Jesup Memorial Library 34 Mt. Desert Street Bar Harbor, Maine 04609 207/288-4245 (library); 207/610-2355 (cell) reveland@jesuplibrary.or www.jesuplibrary.org Jesup Memorial Library: "Anchor to the Past; Chart to the Future" 5/21/2018 XFINITY Connect Inbox Re: Dorr Biography & Jesup Event June 19th Deb Taylor 11:10 AM To Ronald Epp, Mel Rice Hi Ron, Mel Rice, from Jesup, had already given me information about your talk on June 19th, and we (Sherman's) were planning on having the books available for them to pick up for your event. They sell the books at the event, rather than Sherman's. We just don't have the staff to do it. I'm sure your book will do well for many years to come, as it is a wonderful book. Best, Debbie On Mon, May 21, 2018 at 10:02 AM, Ronald Epp wrote: Hi Deb, The folks at Jesup who booked my June talk on land conservation, suggested that I contact you to see whether you might do a reprise of my book launch back in April of 2016. That is, have copies of Creating Acadia National Park available for sale to the audience by a staff member before and/or after the 7 p.m. talk on June 19th. Now that the book is in its second "corrected" printing, I'm hopeful that sales this summer will be energetic. Best, Ron