The National Wilderness Preservation System Act of 1964
An Act to establish a National Wilderness Preservation System for the permanent
good of the whole people, and for other purposes.
In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding
settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas
within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for
preservations and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be
the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future
generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For this purpose,
there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System to be
composed of federally owned areas designated by Congress as “wilderness areas,”
and these shall be administered in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for
future use and enjoyment as wilderness, and so provide for the protection of these
areas, the preservation of their wilderness character, and for the gathering and
dissemination of information regarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness …
A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the
landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of
live are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.
An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped
Federal land remaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent
improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to
preserve its natural conditions and which…
(1) Generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with
the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable;
(2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of
recreation;
(3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make
practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and …
(4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific,
educational, scenic, or historical value.
Pastoral Harmony
Jefferson’s Pastoral Republic of Yeoman Farmers
John Wesley Powell
Chief of the U.S. Geological Survey
George Perkins Marsh, 1801 - 1882
Naturalizing the Nation;
Nationalizing Nature
The Sublime Spectacle
The Picturesque Scene
John Muir, 1838 - 1914
Tourist Landscapes
New York City Dudes
Frederick Remington & Adirondack Guides
Adirondack Park Tourist Hotel, circa 1885
The Rise of the Scenic Tourist Industry, 1870 -1914
Emergence of an affluent, upper class and upper middle class
Emergence of a middle class Romantic aesthetic based on feeling,
imagination, authenticity, and nostalgia.
Improvements in transportation and railway/hotel tourist connections.
Importance of landscape scenery as an element of taste and its conversion
into a saleable commodity through marketing.
Emergence of a “tourist sensibility” in which picturesque or sublime
landscapes and waterscapes become objects of mass cultural consumption.
Developing links between the landscape, nation, nationalism, and
national history, especially the myth of the frontier.
Deepening fascination with aboriginal peoples and “the primitive,” both
as standards against which to measure the progress of Western
Civilization, and as ideals of freedom, authenticity, and masculinity.
The Urban Industrial Landscape
Crowding
Crime
Squalor and Poverty
Federick Law Olmsted, 1822-1903
Central Park, 1948
Central Park, 1890
F. L. Olmsted, circa 1890
A Landscape Reclaimed
The Progressive Conservation Vision
And the Birth of Scientific Forestry
George W. Vanderbilt
Biltmore
Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.
“Here was my chance.
Biltmore could be made
to prove what America
did not yet understand,
that trees could be cut
and the forest preserved
at one and the same
time”
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot
The First Forester of the Biltmore Estate
1892 -1895
Dr. Carl Alwin Schenck
The Biltmore Forestry School
PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATION
Government Ownership & Management
of Public Lands
Scientific Movement
Elite Professionalism
Gospel of Efficiency
Favored Large-Scale Business Corporations
Opposed Preservation of Wildlands
Advocated for a Large-scale Administrative State
•Delbert: A miracle, a miracle!
•Clooney: Don’t be ignorant, Delbert. I told you they was flooding this valley.
•Pete: No! That ain’t it. We prayed to God, and he pitied us.
•Clooney: Well, it never fails. Once again you two hayseeds are showing how
much you want for intellect. There is a perfectly scientific explanation for what
just happened.
•Pete: I hate to tell you that’s not the thing you said back at the gallows.
•Clooney: Well, human beings cast about in a moment of stress, … no … the
fact is that they’re flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole
durn state. Yes Sir, South’s going to change. Everything’s goin’ to be put on
electricity and run on a paying basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo,
the superstitions, and the backwoods ways. We’re going to see a BRAVE NEW
WORLD where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes sir, a
veritable AGE OF REASON, like the one they had in France. Not a moment too
soon … not a moment too soon …
Norris Dam, Clinch River
Rural Electrification
Road-building & Automobile Tourism
Modern Agricultural Practices
Multipurpose River Development
Reforestation
Industrialization
Flood Control and Navigation
Curtis Stiner, an example of
the mountain farmer of East
Tennessee whose farm was
impacted by the TVA dams
and hydro projects.
"I love my mountains, and
I want to stay right here
the rest of my life if I can."
Curtis
Stiner,
1933
The flooding of the reservoir
area will take his home in
1935.
Benton MacKaye
Aldo Leopold
Ernest C. Oberholtzer
Bob Marshall
Robert Sterling Yard
Frederick H. Newell,
Chief Engineer,1902-1907,
and
Director of the Reclamation Service,
1907-1914.
Gifford Pinchot
Chief of the U.S. Forest Service
1901- 1910
Assassination of President McKinley, 1901
The T.R./Pinchot Partnership
National Forests Today
THE GREATEST GOOD
A Forest Service Centennial Film
The Hetch-Hetchy Valley, 1900
Gifford Pinchot
John Muir
A Working Man’s Fire
•
A.E. Sullivan: totally blind, right arm broken and may lose
right hand.
•
Tony Varish: totally blind, body badly burned.
•
John Blitten: right arm burned, will have to be amputated.
•
T. Gayers: face terribly burned.
•
Wm. Christianson: mass of burns around the face and neck,
will probably die.
•
J. Rickey: hands, face and feet badly burned.
•
Jack Flinn: blind.
•
George Carrigan: feet burned; will be crippled for life.
•
Edmond Hickman: face terribly burned and nose completely
burned off.
•
Mike Darrick: totally blind, burned about face and neck, will
probably die.
•
Ed Murphy. $21.50. Address unknown. Buried on Setzer
Creek. No clue as to his identity.
•
Henry Jackson. $5.50. Tacoma, Wash. Buried on Setzer
Creek. Wrote the mayor of Tacoma to look up this man.
Identified by Ed Bassett by heel plate worn on shoe.
•
G.A. Blodgett. $50.75. Supposed to have lived at Hotel
Reilley, Butte, Mont. Had card of Butte Workingman's Union
No. 5. Wrote to father and mother.
•
Oscar Weigert. $15. Missoula, Mont. Supposed to have
committed suicide, thinking that he would be burned to
death. Had hat, clothes, cartridges, gun, tobacco, cigarette
papers. Effects sent to Missoula.
•
L. Ustlo. $41.75. Address unknown. Effects: pocket knife,
gold watch. Buried on Setzer Creek. This man was a tall and
well-dressed Finlander. Wore lace belt. Scar on right knee.
Unable so far to get a clue to this man's identity.
Lick Creek, 1909
Lick Creek, 1915
Lick Creek, 1925
Lick Creek, 1948
Lick Creek, 1968
Lick Creek, 1989
Stephen Mather, Horace Albright, NPS Car #1
Mather’s Proposed Park to Park Highway, 1920.
Wilderness in relative rather than absolute terms; not
concerned with the ideal of “ecological purity.”
Sons of Gifford Pinchot: scientific and technical experts who
were critical of the single-minded commodity focus of scientific
forestry and water projects, but also believed in wise and
scientific management of wildlands for the public good..
Believed that wilderness designations could be compatible with
local subsistence and resource use.
Pragmatists who were discomforted by the effects of
automobile tourism, road-building, mass consumerism on
wildlands.