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THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN NATIONAL PARKS HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY By Shelly D. Slusser A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Humboldt State University In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History Teaching of American History May 2012 THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN NATIONAL PARKS HUMBOLDT STATE UNIVERSITY By Shelly D. Slusser Approved by the Master’s Committee: Dr. Delores McBroome, Committee Chair Date Dr. Gayle Olson Raymer, Committee Member Date Dr. Rodney Siever, Committee Member Date Dr. Delores McBroome, Graduate Coordinator Date Dr. Jená Burges, Vice Provost Date ABSTRACT Many people think that the conservation-movement started in a more modern history of America, but contrary to that belief, it started in 1847 when George P. Marsh, a U.S. Congressman from Vermont, called attention to the destructive impact that people were having on the land, especially in deforestation. He called for a “conservationists approach to the management of the forested land” because we were depleting our nation’s natural resources with devastating speed. By 1860 the negative exploitation of tourism and livestock grazing in the high country of Yosemite were causing rampant and irreversible damage. Ongoing poaching and park devastation in Yellowstone required Congress to deploy the U.S. Army to build a camp at Mammoth Hot Springs to protect wildlife and natural reserves in 1886. The rookeries that provided nurseries for nesting young birds and the egrets and herons that graced the Florida landscape were being slaughtered at a rate of 5 million a year in 1886 to provide feathers for women’s hats. Clearly, federal intervention and enforced protection would have to ensue before the integrity of the United State’s natural resources were permanently compromised and all wildlife would go the way of the passenger pigeon. This historiography will examine the early United States conservation legislation that was introduced to Congress and became laws to protect our vanishing wilderness and wildlife. It will also investigate the Wilderness Warrior, the Progressive President Theodore Roosevelt and how he courageously and with conviction pursued the rights of “Citizen Bird”. This project will include nine lesson plans for the elementary and middle iii school students that will acquaint them with the early history of American conservation and the development of the National Park System. Most important of all, the students will come away from these lesson plans with a feeling of respect and stewardship for the natural world they share this earth with. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to take this opportunity to recognize Dr. Delores McBroome. She helped me finish my thesis years after most teachers completed theirs. She was truly an advisor in every sense of the word. She gave me great ideas and tips, as well as patiently correcting the numerous errors I kept making. I will always be very grateful to her. Thank you also to Gayle Olson-Raymer and Rod Sievers for the lectures and lessons that taught me to appreciate American history even more than I already did. A big thank you to Jack Bareilles for running around HSU this spring to get me registered. Thank you to my mom, Arlene, my husband, Jim, and my children Jeff, Tim, Jessica and Michael for all their interest, support and thoughtfulness. I am very thankful to Cynthia Werner for typing and formatting this paper because without her technology expertise, this thesis would not happen. Thank you to my best friend Martha who had to listen to me talk about my paper for over a year, and special thanks to Melanie Kuhnel who reminded me to finish my Masters. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .................................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................... vi LIST OF APPENDICES .................................................................................................. viii THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN NATIONAL PARKS .................................................. 1 Early Efforts to Protect America’s Natural Resources ........................................... 1 The Protection of Yosemite .................................................................................... 3 Yosemite Valley and the Hetch Hetchy Valley ...................................................... 4 The Protection of Yellowstone Park ....................................................................... 7 The Protection of Florida ...................................................................................... 10 Theodore Roosevelt: The Conservationist President ............................................ 13 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 26 ENDNOTES ..................................................................................................................... 30 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................. 38 LESSON PLAN: I SO DECLARE IT: THE BEGINNING OF THE NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM, THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND JOHN MUIR ........................................................................................................... 46 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 46 Objectives ............................................................................................................. 47 Prior Content Knowledge and Skills..................................................................... 48 Lesson Timeline .................................................................................................... 49 Lesson Content...................................................................................................... 50 vi The Early History of Yellowstone National Park ................................................. 62 ENDNOTES FOR LESSON PLAN ................................................................................. 66 BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR LESSON PLAN ........................................................................ 68 CALIFORNIA STANDARDS ......................................................................................... 70 vii LIST OF APPENDICES APPENDIX 1 AUDUBON’S BEGINNINGS .................................................................. 71 APPENDIX 2 PICTURE OF THE THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT ............ 76 APPENDIX 3 INFORMATION ABOUT THEODORE ROOSEVELT ......................... 78 APPENDIX 4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT AT YELLOWSTONE ................................ 84 APPENDIX 5 PHOTOGRAPH OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND OTHER MEN AT GRAND CANYON ................................................................ 85 APPENDIX 6 PHOTOGRAPH OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT, JOHN MUIR AND OTHER MEN AROUND AN OLE GROWTH REDWOOD........................................................................................ 88 APPENDIX 7 LIST OF CONSERVATIONISTS ............................................................ 90 viii 1 THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN NATIONAL PARKS The United States National Parks and Monuments are 84.4 million acres of protected land which include forests, mountains, canyons, rivers, oceans, estuaries, deserts, ancient cliff dwellings, historic sites, battlefields, and monuments. The "dean of western writers,” American Pulitzer prize-winning author Wallace Stegner, has written that national parks are “America's best idea,—a departure from the royal preserves that Old World sovereigns enjoyed for themselves—inherently democratic, open to all, "they reflect us at our best, not our worst. (1) President F.D. Roosevelt said, "There is nothing so American as our national parks.... The fundamental idea behind the parks...is that the country belongs to the people that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us." (2) President Theodore Roosevelt insisted that “The establishment of the National Park Service is justified by considerations of good administration, of the value of natural beauty as a National asset, and of the effectiveness of outdoor life and recreation in the production of good citizenship.”(3) Early Efforts to Protect America’s Natural Resources As soon as the early colonists entered North America, they thought the natural resources such as timber, fisheries and wildlife would last perpetually. Freely using these resources, the early colonies grew and prospered at an astonishing rate for many reasons: excellent land for agriculture, a constant large market with England, free land to immigrants, slave labor, a common defense, literacy and opportunity to list a few.(4) 2 President John Q. Adams, noticing the rapid use of hard oak trees as early as 1828, set aside more that 1,378 acres of live oaks in Pensacola Bay, not just to have access to durable timber for war vessels, but as an early-conservation effort to preserve oak trees. (5) Running for the presidency in 1832, Andrew Jackson ridiculed Adams’s tree farm as an un-American federal land grab and an unlawful attempt to deny Floridians timber to use as they saw fit. Jackson believed that “trees are meant to cut and birds to eat.” (6) It seems as though Jackson had a change of mind when in 1832 he, too, could see the benefit for future generations of