The Progressive Era:
1890-1915

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Think for a moment about the reaction of early European settlers to the Americas when they beheld the vast, seemingly limitless natural resources they found upon arrival. A major driver of European emigration and colonialism was a reaction to the exhaustion of European natural resources given the population growth, deforestation, and the resulting inability of wide swaths of the population to sustain themselves. There were other drivers of course - pure mercantilism (profit), flight from religious and other persecution, missionary goals, etc. - but as George Perkins Marsh [Link] demonstrated in Man and Nature (1864), Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East had been stripped of forests, resulting in severe degradation to waterways and soil quality, with disastrous impacts on agricultural production.

By the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, America was the wealthiest country in the world. That wealth was based largely on the combination of industrialism and the vast resources of the North American continent to feed that beast. As non-native settlement drove steadily westwards across the continent, forests were razed, iron and coal were mined, waterways were polluted and silted and, late in the 19th century, oil was pumped. The land was being pillaged, pure and simple. The end of the frontier era (semi-officially in 1890) brought with it the beginning of a recognition that this rapine of the environment and the waste in the use of the resources extracted would, if not curtailed, result in the same situation in America that had come to pass in Europe. This realization and the implementation of measures to counteract it was a principal feature of the Progressive Era and represented a crucial step in the development of the modern Environmental Conservation movement.

In fact, the birth of the modern EC movement was but one strand of the broader Progressive Era, embodied most significantly in the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, which broadly represented a reaction to the worst ills of the move to hyper-industrialization and urbanization that characterized the period. These strands included the trend towards increased regulation or dismantling of monopolistic corporate enterprises, a focus on the treatment and working conditions of the poor and working classes, and a concerted effort to rein in political corruption. Also important were women's rights including suffrage, treatment of Native Americans, and immigration issues. Broadly speaking, the Progressive Era represented an important reaction to the ills of mass industrialization and urbanization, and laissez-faire economics. In short, it was a reaction to greedy bullies, corporate and political - and the focus on EC issues was very much a part of that overall theme.

Some mark the beginning of the Progressive Era as the publication of Henry George's [Link] Progress and Poverty (1879), the genesis of which was the extended essay Our Land and Land Policy (1871). [A first edition of the latter is represented in the Collection; the former is not]. Our Land and Land Policy was George's first published work aside from newspaper articles he wrote as an obscure San Francisco reporter. In it, and in Progress and Poverty, he decries speculation, growing inequality, and rapacious corporate interests. Progress was an extraordinarily influential book for decades after publication, as discussed in the Catalogue.

As a student of history, my opinion is that 70+ percent of the domestic history of the USA can be explained by the conflict between the freedom, rights and power of the individual vs. the corporation vs. state governments vs. the federal government. The EC movement was and is no different. But during this time period, it was also a function of a then newly emergent faith in science and technology to solve previously intractable problems.

The myth and occasional reality of the American ideal is based on myriad factors, among them the unfettered right of the (white, ethnically European, Christian (initially non-Roman Catholic)) individual to pursue happiness and profit as he or she saw fit; the right in doing so to avail themselves of such natural resources as they could legally procure; and the mythical character of the intrepid pioneer. All were particularly relevant to the conflicts that arose during the Progressive Era, not least of which around the EC movement.

As previous Chapters and associated Catalogue entries have demonstrated, there were certainly calls for changes in behavior and even some specific natural preservation measures to counter American's impact on the environment before 1890. But these were generally isolated (Yellowstone and the Adirondacks), iconoclastic (Thoreau), and often focused purely on the potential for sustained negative impacts on humanity itself (clean water and sustained timber supply, etc.) rather than on the environment for its own sake. Such calls certainly did not represent the views of a meaningful percentage of the citizenry. Thus, while there were exceptions, it was not really until the advent of the 20th century that a sustained national movement in favor of conservation arose.

Recalling the list of evolving broad themes from the Overview chapter of this EC History section, the following were of particular importance during this period. For those keeping score, note that the first two are repeated from the 1855-90 Chapter introduction, given their ongoing importance.

12. Widespread interest in birds and birding.

13. The influence of wealthy hunters and fishermen and women concerned about depletion of game and habitat. - wildlife conservation

14. The development of scientific forestry in the U.S.

15. The Progressive Era. Conservation (sustainable use practices) vs. protection.

16. Widespread efforts at landscape and resource protection - National Parks and National Forests.

17. The formation and importance of environmental conservation advocacy organizations.

18. Social Darwinism vs. a rise in interest/concern for treatment of indigenous populations.

19. Nature education.

The period covered by this Chapter was obviously extraordinarily important in the history of the EC Movement and there were many critical writers and books. The development of scientific forestry and the importance of EC advocacy organizations are covered separately on this website, in blog entries posted in December 2023 and September 2024 respectively. The chapter below is divided into three principal sections. The first will focus on the conservation movement as it was understood at the time (think "wise use") and the onset of the ongoing debate between that conservation philosophy vs. preservation. The second section focuses on TR and his influential circle - the critical authors most closely connected with the Progressive Era as a political and conservationist phenomenon. Finally, I will discuss the key other authors and books of the period, which include some of my personal favorites of the entire Collection. John Muir [Link] and John Burroughs [Link] were such important figures during this period that the preceding chapter is dedicated solely to them.

Not incidentally, this period finally starts to see the inclusion of some female authors in the Collection - including one of the most popular authors during her time of any of the authors represented anywhere in the Collection, Gene Stratton-Porter. As of the time this is being written (fall 2024), the year 1672 marks the original publication of the oldest book in the Collection, John Josselyn's New England Rarities. The first book written by a woman in the Collection was not published for another 168 years, being the estimable Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours (1850), in which Cooper was not even credited as author. Another almost half-century passes before we see the next book by a woman that was written for adults - Mabel Osgood Wright's The Friendship of Nature (1894). (There were a couple books published during that interval aimed at younger audiences, including one by Harriet Mann Miller (writing as Olive Thorne Miller), who was an important ornithological writer.)

CONSERVATION VS. PRESERVATION

Progressives being progressives, the rise of the EC movement around the turn of the 20th century was not without significant controversy amongst its proponents. Some of the conflicts were minor - between those who valued wilderness as a sort of open-air holy cathedral vs. those who extolled its importance for vigorous physical activity, "manly" pursuits like hunting, etc. But the most important conflict was between those for whom the natural environment had inherent value (preservationists) vs. those for whom conservation was chiefly a vehicle to ensure the long-term health and prosperity of the country (conservationists). Certainly, the lines were not always bright - John Muir, patron saint of the preservationists, recognized the necessity for access to natural resources, and Gifford Pinchot, who actually coined the term 'conservation' as a synonym for an anthropocentric, sustainable-use approach to natural resource management, was by no means immune to the charms and value of untrammeled wilderness. That said, Pinchot defines this strand of the movement: "Conservation means the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time." [The Fight for Conservation, p. 48].

Two quotes from prominent historians of the era illustrate the conflicting interpretations. According to Douglas Brinkley's 2009 history The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America:

....[E]very U.S. president in the gilded age considered himself a conservationist.... Yet they all lacked long-term vision, concerned instead with only the forestry issues and water-shortage emergencies of the moment. But Roosevelt was vastly different; nature was his rock and salvation. Refusing to be hemmed in by the orthodoxies of his time, he burst onto the national stage...promoting the Gospel of Wilderness. Bridging the gap as a naturalist-hunter, he deemed songbirds liberators of the soul and bison herds incalculably valuable to the collective psyche of the nation. Even though local communities across the American West complained about federal land grabs, Roosevelt insisted he was preserving wilderness for their own good, for the sake of the American heritage. [p. 14]

Contrast that with Samuel P. Hays' [Link] 1959 classic Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920:

Conservation, above all, was a scientific movement, and its role in history arises from the implications of science and technology in modern society. Conservation leaders sprang from such fields as hydrology, forestry, agrostology, geology, and anthropology. Vigorously active in professional circles in the nation's capital, these leaders brought the ideals and practices of their crafts into federal resource policy. Loyalty to these professional ideals...set the tone of the Theodore Roosevelt conservation movement. Its essence was rational planning to promote efficient development and use of all natural resources. The idea of efficiency drew these federal scientists from one resource task to another, from specific programs to comprehensive concepts.... It is from the vantage point of applied science, rather than of democratic protest, that one must understand the historic role of the conservation movement.... [Conservation leaders] were not Malthusian prophets of despair and gloom. The popular view that in a fit of pessimism they withdrew vast areas of the public lands from present use for future development does not stand examination. In fact, they bitterly opposed those who sought to withdraw resources from commercial development. [p. 2]

The debate between preservation and conservation was particularly vigorous on the issue of what happened to the forest preserves, where the legislation enabling them was considerably more permissive, or less prescriptive, than in parks and other reserves. Gifford Pinchot was the chief forester for the entirety of Roosevelt's presidency and was his primary advisor on land use conservation issues. The debate at the time focused mostly on timber harvesting, mining, grazing and water-use issues. The battle over the Hetch-Hetchy valley, which epitomizes the broader conflict and really nationalized the preservation movement, is discussed in detail in the John Muir chapter of this EC History.

The conservation vs. preservation debate was an important one and continues in many respects to this day. But irrespective of how you come down on the relative importance of each during this pre-WWI period, either way they represent strands in the first phase of the modern EC movement. Historian Douglas H. Strong in his Introduction to the 1990 second Bison edition of Hans Huth's classic Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes (1957), distinguishes between the beginning of the Conservation Movement in the early 20th century (the period we are discussing now) vs. the beginning of the Environmental Movement in the 1960s. This parsing of what I've been broadly terming the Environmental Conservation (EC) Movement draws a useful distinction.

In 1891, Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act. The Act has been described as having been slipped through a Congress which had previously rejected virtually all attempts to establish large-scale federal control over forests. The main purpose of the Act was to repeal the Timber Culture Act of 1873, an extension of the Homesteading Acts which granted essentially free land to those who planted trees on it, without establishing any residency requirements. The goal was to encourage timber production and increased rainfall in the West, but the Timber Culture Act was widely abused and generally unsuccessful.

The last section of the 1891 Act, section 24, contained a provision authorizing the President to set aside timber reserves, which represented a significant shift in public policy away from disposal of land and towards governmental retention and control. At the time, the federal government had established Yellowstone National Park (under President Grant, who also preserved the Pribilof Islands and their seal rookeries in Alaska) and a small handful of other monuments and reserves. New York State had established the Adirondack and Catskill Reserves. But for the most part the policy of the national and state governments was to dispose of land and to encourage settlement (by non-natives) and development, typically agricultural. [See the July 2024 blog post on the western surveys and the 1855-90 Chapter, both of which discuss the issues around aridity and consequent suitability for settlement of the land west of the 100th meridian, an issue identified by John Wesley Powell and discussed by Wallace Stegner in his biography of Powell.]

The 1891 Act was largely silent as to how the land was to be used - not until the 1897 Forest Act was the exploitation of resources (timber, mining, grazing, etc.) specifically addressed. The President at the time the Act passed, Benjamin Harrison, who was in fact a conservationist and outdoorsman, created 13 million acres of forest preserves (including the land around Yellowstone Park). His successor, Grover Cleveland [Link], was also an outdoorsman - after his presidency he published Fishing and Shooting Sketches (1906), a vigorous defense of and paean to the outdoor life. Cleveland added 25 million acres of forest reserves. His successor, William McKinley, put in another seven million acres.

Regarding Cleveland and his love of the outdoors, he writes in Sketches: "...[T]he delightful and passionate love for outdoor sports and recreation is...so inseparably connected with the work of life and comfort of existence, that it is happily ordained that a desire or a willingness for their enjoyment may be cultivated to an extent sufficient to meet the requirements of health and self-care. In other words, all but the absolutely indifferent can be made to realize that outdoor air and activity, intimacy with nature and acquaintanceship with birds and animals and fish, are essential to physical and mental strength, under the exactions of an unescapable decree." (Pp. 8-9). [See more on the surprisingly robust role in conservation that Cleveland had as both President and NYS Governor in the 1855-90 Chapter.]

That all said, there was the other force which drove the early conservation movement - the application of new scientific and technological methods to drive efficiencies in human and natural resource utilization. By and large, the initial conservationists were seeking not to preserve nature for its own sake but to drive sustainable, efficient use. A major focus was the incredible wastefulness of traditional manners of resource exploitation.

The event which represented perhaps the apex of this strand of the conservation movement was the 1908 Governor's Congress on Conservation - an event some scholars use to mark the real beginning of the EC movement. Convened by the Roosevelt administration and largely organized by Pinchot, it was initially proposed in order to deal with water-use issues but was expanded to include natural resources broadly. (According to Hay, the actual term "conservation" initially referred to efforts to create reservoirs to preserve water - it was only later that the term became all-encompassing. So much so that in 1910s it was used to describe efforts to improve everything from public health to world peace). In any case, out of the Governor's Conference came a National Conservation Commission, chaired by Pinchot, which was charged with compiling an inventory of all of the natural resources of the United States. Scholars note that the Governor's Conference specifically excluded the preservationist wing of the movement, especially Muir. Most of the attendees and virtually all of the presenters were scientists and technocrats.

Many of the works of this period reflect the importance of, and enthusiasm which greeted, the conservation movement. Rudolf Cronau [Link] in his opening sentence in Our Wasteful Nation: The Story of American Prodigality and the Abuse of Our National Resources (1908), writing of the Governor's Conference asserts: "Of all conferences ever held at the White House...none was of such importance and so memorable as the one held in the second week of May, 1908." In his introduction to The Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States (1910), by Charles R. Van Hise [Link] states: "The natural resources limited in quantity should be conserved. By their conservation is meant that they should remain as nearly undiminished as possible in order that this heritage of natural wealth may pass in full measure to succeeding generations.... The modern conservation movement is the direct result of the work of scientific men. The great question of conservation has been more forwarded by the rapid reduction of our forests than by any other cause.... Among the men who have promoted the modern conservation movement, Mr. Gifford Pinchot has first place.... his vision, with enlarging horizon, saw the connection of the forests to the other resources of the country...."

An influential, and odious, early scholar of the period on resource depletion was Nathaniel Southgate Shaler [Link]. In his Man and the Earth (1905), he opens: "In this book I have endeavored to set forth certain reasons why there should be a change in the point of view from which we commonly regard the resources of the earth. As a teacher of Geology [at Harvard], I have seen that there is a complete lack of understanding in our communities as to the duty we owe to our successors in their use of these limited resources." Pinchot in his 1910 opus The Fight for Conservation, says of Shaler "no one has spoken with greater authority on this subject..." (p. 9). [My use of the term "odious" refers to Shaler's views on race - offensive even in the context of his time. More on the prevalence of eugenics, social Darwinism and racism during this period is discussed throughout this site.]

An important driver of the populist appeal of the conservation movement was women's groups. Women did not yet have the right to vote, but conservation (along with suffrage and temperance) represented an early cause which united many of the women's groups of the time. Writes Hays in Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: "Women's organizations such as the General Federation of Women's Clubs and the Daughters of the American Revolution became especially enthusiastic about conservation. A leader of the National Conservation Association wrote that three women leaders in these two organizations had 'done as much in the legislative field for conservation as any three men I know of.'" In 1911, the Chairman of the Conservation Department of the Massachusetts State Federation of Women's Clubs, Mrs. Fred H. Tucker, published Handbook of Conservation, a relatively short but meaty little tome meant as a primer, outline and discussion facilitator for its audience. Mrs. Fred H. Tucker's first name, incidentally, was Mary.

Even the youngsters were brought into the fray. Overton W. Price [Link] was Pinchot's "right-hand man" at the Forestry Service and a member of the National Conservation Commission. In 1911, he wrote The Land We Live In: The Boy's Book of Conservation. Gifford Pinchot wrote the introduction in which he allowed as to how the work was equally appropriate for girls. Pinchot also takes credit for the entire conservation movement: "...Mr. Price has been associated with the Conservation movement from its very beginning. It was with him that I discussed it first after the idea had occurred to me...."

There is no question the initial conservation movement can be seen as a scientific and technological effort to bring efficiency to address resource issues. This was the dominant thinking which prevailed overall. The movement was not soulless though, even before the ascent of the Muir-led preservationists. TR was truly a nature lover. And his preservationist efforts as president and even as governor transcended wise-use principals. The expansion of the national parks, the creation of the first bird preserves, etc. was only one aspect.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS EXTENDED CIRCLE OF WEALTHY WHITE MALE HUNTER FRIENDS (SOME QUITE RACIST), WHO WERE CONSERVATION HEROES OF THE DAY

There is no question that Theodore Roosevelt [Link] presidency represented a new era in terms of conservation. During his administration, nearly 10% of the American landmass, including Alaska, became either a forest preserve, national park, national monument, or wildlife preserve. Many of those areas have subsequently been enlarged. Roosevelt changed the game - he vastly expanded the powers of the presidency and, however you want to interpret the motivations, established the framework for land protection, control, regulation and use that continues to evolve today.

I am not going to spend anywhere near as much space detailing Roosevelt's history as I could - it is sui generis (or so I'd like to think). For those interested in learning about it in detail, Douglas Brinkley's Wilderness Warrior, cited above, is outstanding. But a high-level summary with a few tidbits worth noting:

-TR's father helped found the American Museum of Natural History (as well as the Met, the NYC Children's Aid Society and the NY Children's Orthopedic Hospital).

-TR took a very early interest in zoology, starting a collection at age seven and writing about it. Some of his specimens ended up in the AMNH. TR was a lifelong ornithologist, and an accomplished one at that.

-TR was a sickly kid and became an early and enthusiastic proponent for the health benefits of vigorous exercise and outdoor pursuits, particularly hunting.

-TR's uncle Robert B. Roosevelt, represented elsewhere in the Collection (1862), was an important early conservationist and had a major influence on TR.

-TR's first wife died shortly after childbirth, on the same day as his mother.

-Early in his political career, TR established a ranch in North Dakota - he shuttled back and forth between ND and NY and embraced the rugged ranching and hunting lifestyle, a look which helped him politically. He wrote about that life extensively, including in Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter (1905), which had an overall theme of preservation and was dedicated to John Burroughs.

-Prior to assuming the presidency in 1901, TR served at various time as NYS legislator, NYC police commissioner, assistant secretary of the navy, member of the US Civil Service Commission, and vice president. TR was known as a hands-on, active and effective figure who was particularly focused on battling corruption and patronage. During the 1898 Spanish-American War, TR resigned as naval secretary and formed a volunteer cavalry, the Rough Riders, who fought in Cuba. His fame from that endeavor paved the way to his selection as VP, from whence he became president following the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.

-As president, TR established the US Forestry Service (run by Pinchot), created five NPs, signed the 1906 Antiquities Act allowing presidents to establish National Monuments (he created 18), and established 51 bird reserves, four game preserves and 150 national forests, including 21 just before signing a bill which limited his authority to do so in the future.

-After departing the White House, Roosevelt traveled on serious expeditions to Africa (African Game Trails (1910)) and Brazil (The Brazilian Wilderness (1914)). He also ran for president again in 1912 after forming the Bull Moose Party, having grown disenchanted with his successor Howard Taft.

-TR died in 1919. The Collection contains several memorial publications from that year.

As Brinkley argues, at his core TR's conservation ethos was driven by his love of nature - particularly birds. He was a serious naturalist. He was also an avid hunter, which was a critical driver as discussed further below. He was certainly reacting to the excesses of clear cutting, market hunting, strip mining etc. that were already denuding the land, as it had in Europe and the Middle East. And he was a Progressive - he believed the natural resources of the country should be publicly owned so that they could be shared fairly and equally - not just for his constituents, but for the generations of Americans to come. Which is to say: Each of us.

Driving, guiding and inspiring Roosevelt in his conservation efforts was a wide circle of wealthy, prominent men from the northeastern US, hunters, naturalists, writers, leaders and, in many cases, social Darwinists. The three men who were perhaps his closest advisors when it came to conservation issues were Gifford Pinchot, George Bird Grinnell and C. Hart Merriam. But make no mistake about it, if there was one person who can be called Roosevelt's muse when it came to the natural world and how he viewed it, it was John Burroughs. Burroughs began his publishing career when TR was nine years old - his essays were a constant in TR's life and informed how he observed nature. TR called Burroughs "Oom John" (Oom being Dutch for uncle) and met with and corresponded with Burroughs frequently before and during his presidential administration.

TR is represented in the Collection with his Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter (1905), African Game Trails (1910) and The Brazilian Wilderness. Also contained in the Collection are two memorials published after his death in 1919, one being letters and addresses delivered at The Century Association and the other a 31-page booklet reprinting articles from AMNH's Natural History Magazine. TR writes in the essay 'Wilderness Reserves' that "every man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of the wilderness and of wild life, should strike hands with the far-sighted men who wish to preserve our material resources, in the effort to keep our forests and our game beasts, game birds and game fish - indeed, all the living creatures of the prairie, and woodland, and seashore - from wanton destruction. Above all, we should realize that the effort toward this end is essentially a democratic movement." (p 288). Outdoor Pastimes is dedicated by TR with an open letter to Burroughs. Brinkley describes this essay as TR's "greatest call yet for preservation." (WW p. 556).

The EC movement has a relatively limited number of polarizing figures. Gifford Pinchot is perhaps the most controversial in terms of the reaction of the EC community to his legacy. No matter how you feel about him, he was clearly a remarkable man. Born rich - in large part from a grandfather's timber operations in NE Pennsylvania - he became the first formally trained forester born in America, having spent a year in Europe studying the subject. He served throughout TR's administration as the head of forestry and as TR's principal counselor on conservation issues. He has been described as one of the most able administrators ever to serve the federal government, bringing scientific rigor and sophisticated political and public relations skills to the bureaus and agencies he headed. He later served two terms as governor of Pennsylvania. Later in his career, he was close with and had a major influence on FDR, later supported many of FDR's New Deal policies.

Pinchot served as the fourth head of the forestry division of the Interior Department and then the first head of the US Forest Service when it was established in 1905. Earlier in his career, following his European forestry training, Pinchot returned to the US and became manager of forests at the Biltmore estate in Asheville, NC, the first professionally managed forest property in the country. Later he served on the National Forest Commission, disagreeing with its conclusion that forest reserves should be maintained free of commercial activities. For a broader timeline of important developments in the evolution of the US approach to forestry, and Pinchot's role therein, please see the blog post from December 2023 on this site.

Pinchot credited himself for starting the Conservation Movement. From his Introduction to Overton Price's The Land We Live In (1911): "Mr. Price is a forester, and was for many years my right hand in the Forest Service. Indeed, if credit could be allotted justly for work done, I believe it would be found that he had more to do with the success of the Service than I had.... Mr. Price has been associated with the Conservation movement from its very beginning. It was with him that I discussed it first after the idea had occurred to me, and from that time to this little has happened in Conservation which has not profited by his wide knowledge...."

Pinchot was a true Progressive. He believed prosperity helped all, but also believed that it should be shared fairly. He bemoaned the preeminence of profit over public welfare. He supported working folk and unions over corporations. He championed women's rights and the rights of minorities. "Like many other Progressive Era reformers, Pinchot emphasized that his field was important primarily for its social utility and could be best understood through scientific methods. He was generally opposed to preservation for the sake of wilderness or scenery, a fact perhaps best illustrated by the important support he offered to the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley...." (Wikipedia entry on Pinchot),

Char Miller in his excellent 2001 biography of Pinchot (see References) argues that Pinchot deserves a better reputation as an environmentalist that he has had. He concedes that Pinchot did not subscribe to the belief that "to preserve nature humanity must live apart from it. He knew that such segregation was impossible, and believed too that the survival of any organism - human included - depended on its ability to utilize the surrounding environment to its advantage." (p.5). He notes however that Pinchot did much to curtail the ecologically destructive practices of the day, was a firm believer in government ownership and control of natural resources, was a strong proponent of international environmental treaties and agreements, and generally took a progressive view toward causes and solutions to problems arising from economic and social inequality. Miller convincingly argues that Pinchot was a critical architect of the American society which we find ourselves today - which while true is to me not necessarily a matter for high praise.

That all said, right after Pichot was dismissed from the Forest Service, the Camp-Fire Club commissioned him to do a report on the state of the forests in the Adirondacks. Despite the visionary protection of state land described in the previous chapter, the Daks' forests were still suffering due to untrammeled logging practices on the significant private landholdings in the area. Pinchot issued a report and at the invitation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then a New York State legislator, made a presentation to the joint legislative committee overseeing forest, fish and game. Pinchot's report and presentation made FDR a disciple and led ultimately to the passage of the Roosevelt-Jones Conservation Act, which successfully regulated forestry practices on private land in the area, a "pioneering and trendsetting" piece of legislation per Brinkley (RH p. 68). Pinchot continued to have a huge influence on FDR's conservation thinking, a subject addressed in the nest chapter.

Irrespective of one's view of the man, Pinchot is deservedly well-represented in the Collection, with volumes including A Primer of Forestry (1903), The Use of the National Forests (1907), The Fight for Conservation (1910), The Training of a Forester (1914 - with a letter by Pinchot to pioneering USFS scientist Eloise Gerry tipped in), To the South Seas (1929), and Breaking New Ground (1947).

C. Hart Merriam was the second of TR's three closest conservation advisors. Merriam was a giant in the field of natural history, zoology, ecology and geography - known as the father of mammalogy and developer of the concept of life zones to classify biomes. He was born to a congressman in NYC but was mostly raised in the Adirondacks, where he took an early interest in specimen collecting. At age 16, having impressed Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian with his collection, he was appointed naturalist on the Hayden Geological Survey of 1872.

In 1883 - which was the year Hayden published his final USGGS report (see Government Publications) - Merriam was named initial secretary, treasurer and chair of two committees of the newly founded American Ornithological Union. (And around this time he also helped found the National Geographic Society!) His ambitions for his committees were so extensive that his father and Baird persuaded Congress to appropriate money for an ornithology section in the US Dept of Agriculture's Division of Entomology. In 1886, Merriam became the first chief of the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy at the Department Agriculture, later the US Biological Survey and the predecessor of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He served there 25 years, where he became close friends with and primary biological advisor to Theodore Roosevelt, who as president frequently walked over to Merriam's house to visit. In later years Merriam did important work in studying and attempting to protect Native American cultures.

Merriam is one of a number of important authors of the period whose work was of a mostly scholarly, scientific bent. This list includes Edgar A. Mearns, whose A List of the Birds of the Hudson Highlands (1878) in the Collection is inscribed to Merriam; Edward Forbush, whose Useful Birds and Their Protection (1907 - second edition) in the Collection is inscribed to Grinnell and who also published the magisterial multi-volume Birds of Massachusetts (1925-9); and Alice Eastwood (Handbook of the Trees of California - 1905 ltd ed) whose story is one of my favorites on this entire website. Note the focus on birds.

Merriam is represented in the Collection in a number of different ways, including the Mearns inscription:

- His A Review of the Birds of Connecticut (1878), published with Merriam was 23, was significant in recognizing the importance of temperature in governing a bird's range during breeding season. The copy in the Collection is inscribed (but not signed) to Henry Wood Elliott, who authored the 1911 Hay-Elliott Fur Seal Treaty, the first international treaty on wildlife conservation, and author of Our Arctic Province (1886), about Alaska.

- Merriam edited the voluminous Harriman Alaska Expedition report (1901 - Anthologies) about which more below.

- He also contributed three of the five essays in the two-volume work Transactions of the Linnaean Society (1882/84 - Anthologies). William Dutcher also wrote one of the essays - Dutcher was a long-time ornithological friend of Roosevelt's and was highly influential in TR's formation of the first federal bird reserve, at Pelican Island in Florida. He also had a hand in the passage of the 1900 Lacey Act, the first federal legislation protecting game - more on Lacey below and more on Dutcher in the Anthology Catalogue, where he contributed to Transactions of the Linneaen Society (1882) along with Merriam and others.

- Finally, Merriam edited and wrote a lengthy forward to Charles Sheldon's posthumously published The Wilderness of Denali (1930). Sheldon is described as "the father of Denali National Park," having used the influence of the Boone and Crockett Club, of which he was a member, to move the bill forming the park through Congress.

Sheldon was an interesting fellow, considered the finest big-game hunter of his time, at various times he served on the boards of Boone and Crockett, the National Parks Association, the American Forest Association, the National Geographic Society, the Explorers Club, the American Ornithological Union and the NY Zoological Society. (See the September 2024 blog piece on conservation organizations for more on each). In addition to Denali, Sheldon co-edited and contributed to the Boone and Crockett anthology Hunting and Conservation (1925) with George Bird Grinnell.

George Bird Grinnell, the last of the three key TR advisors, was arguably the first true great American conservationist. He was the editor and president of the weekly magazine Forest and Stream (which was founded in 1873 by Charles Hallock) for over thirty years, from 1880 until 1911. He used his voice and position to write articles and lobby for conservation policies, particularly around protection of the American bison. Grinnell also organized the first iteration of the Audubon Society, co-founded the Boone and Crockett Club with TR, spearheaded the drive to create Glacier National Park in 1910, and was an organizer of the NY Zoological Society (the Bronx Zoo).

Grinnell traveled extensively in the West, starting at age 21 with an expedition organized by the Peabody Museum. He became friendly with members of various of the Native American tribes of the Plains, including the Pawnee, Cheyenne and Blackfoot. Most of the books which he published were about hunting or the people of the Plains tribes. He is represented in the Collection by two books on the latter, Blackfoot Lodge Tales (1892) and When Buffalo Ran (1920), the latter once owned by the legendary writer of westerns Zane Grey. On a more conservation-oriented front, he co-edited and contributed to a number of the Boone and Crockett anthologies published over the years, including Trail and Camp Fire (1897, co-edited by TR) and Hunting and Conservation (1925, co-edited with Charles Sheldon). These were, respectively, the third and sixth books published by B&C.

A central position in Roosevelt's broader conservation circle was occupied by Henry Fairfield Osborn. Osborn was at the nexus of the upper-crust New York-based conservation community around the turn of the 20th century. Academically gifted, with degrees and expertise in paleontology, archeology, zoology, embryology, comparative anatomy and geology, Osborn served as the president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years (1908-33) and the head of the New York Zoological Society for 16 years (1909-25). The museum and the NYZS were loci of scientific research in geology, paleontology, evolution, wildlife biology, botany and conservation. Osborn oversaw massive fossil collection efforts. He described and named T-Rex and Velociraptor, among others. His greatest fame was as a science administrator - his "greatest contributions to science ultimately lay in his efforts to popularize it through visible means." [Wikipedia entry on HFO]. The dinosaur exhibits and famed dioramas at the AMNH, for example, are part of his legacy. [See September 2024 blog entry on conservation organizations for more on both.] Osborn has been described by historian Edward Larson as "a first-rate science administrator and a third-rate scientist." [Quote from Wikipedia entry on HFO]. He had an undeniably wide breadth of scientific interests however, and was widely honored for his scholarship and contributions.

As Osborn's books were largely about human evolution, and he was a rabid eugenicist and racist, his presence in the Collection is atypical, consisting of (1) an offprint of an article he wrote which was used in 1920 as a fundraising piece by the Save-the-Redwoods League, a conservation group closely allied with the Sierra Club (catalogued in the 1916-62 section), and (2) his personal copy of Maturin Ballou's Alaska guidebook (1894, catalogued in Guidebooks), containing a handwritten poem by Osborn, whose handwriting was so bad it is nearly illegible.

Joining Osborn in the Nasty Eugenicist Club (is that redundant?) was his close associate Madison Grant, represented in the Collection by a monograph on mountain goats (1905). See the catalogue entry for more on Grant, whose undeniable contributions to conservation were far outweighed by his negative contributions to humankind. (Grant also contributed essays to several of the Boone and Crockett books in the Collection, catalogued in the Anthology section.)

The third member of this circle who was a conservation giant and also has a place of dishonor in the Nasty Eugenicist Club is William Hornaday. Hornaday was the founding Director of the NYZS, where he worked for 30 years. He is credited as having done more than perhaps any other single person, save Grinnell, to save the American bison from extinction. His supremely important work Our Vanishing Wild Life (1913), "launched the modern endangered species movement. He also fought fiercely against the clear-cutting of forests, gouging mountains for coal and goal, and treating the Hudson River like an open sewer." (Brinkley - RH p. 63).

Like many of this circle, Osborn, Grant and Hornaday were members of the Boone and Crockett Club, the exclusive group of wealthy hunters dedicated to fair hunting practices and wildlife and habitat conservation which was started by TR and George Bird Grinnell. The club, which is described further in the September 2024 blog piece, had a singularly august membership (a list of members, with addresses, is printed in the back of one of their books(!) - see Anthologies (1897)). B&C members of the period included Congressman John Lacey, Merriam, Francis Parkman (honorary member), Clarence King, John C. Phillips and Charles Sheldon. (Aldo Leopold was later a member as well). Given the prominence of its members, it is unsurprising that at the time B&C was among the most influential of the conservation organizations formed during the period.

Towards the end of the Progressive Era, a rift developed between wildlife conservationists interested in protecting all (or most) species vs. those who were more focused on maintaining freedom to hunt and shoot at will. This conflict, with various authors discussed above on both sides, really took off in the period covered by the next chapter and is discussed there.

John Lacey is worth a paragraph. He was a Civil War veteran who served eight terms in the House of Representatives representing Iowa. Lacey sponsored meaningful conservation legislation, including the Lacey Act of 1894, which was the first legislation giving the Interior Department the ability to punish poachers and other offenders who were pillaging Yellowstone Park, a problem highlighted by Grinnell, who supported the legislation. The Lacey Act of 1900 was the first federal conservation law, protecting both plants and animals by prohibiting a wide array of violations including trade in wildlife, fish or plants that have been obtained or transported illegally. It remains a cornerstone of conservation law enforcement. Lacey wrote no books, but is appropriately represented in the Collection by the Major John F. Lacey Memorial Volume (1915), published by the Iowa Park and Forestry Association after his death, which contains tributes (including one by Hornaday) and a selection of Lacey's writings. (See also the discussion about Steel's Mountains of Oregon (1890) in the preceding chapter, which notes some further contributions by Lacey.

The B&C club was one of loci of eastern conservationists. Another, somewhat quixotic point of extraordinary cross-over was the Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899, organized by railroad magnate Edward Henry Harriman. [Harriman already has an important role in the history of conservation by virtue of his friendship with John Muir, formed on the voyage, whom he urged to write and at times provided a refuge and resources for Muir to do so - see Muir's short memorial biography Edward Henry Harriman (1911). Harriman's massive Hudson Valley estate lands north of NYC were also donated to create a huge and popular NY State Park, the closest one of size to the city].

Anyway, in early 1899 Harriman found himself exhausted by his various business activities and felt the need for a family vacation to Alaska, where he could hunt bear. As one does. Instead of going with just his family, he decided to charter a ship and recruit and pay for a large complement of scientists, geographers, arctic experts, writers and artists to accompany him and to document the coast of Alaska. Speculation about his ulterior motives in doing so ranged from suspicion that he wanted to exploit Alaskan resources, to building a railroad to Alaska, to buying Alaska outright, to building a railroad bridge from Alaska to Siberia. Or perhaps all four.

Whatever his motivation, Harriman enlisted C. Hart Merriam to organize the party. The roster was extraordinary, and included Merriam himself along with John Muir, John Burroughs, George Bird Grinnell, William Brewer, Bernard Fernow, G.K. Gilbert, photographer Edward Curtis and artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes, among many others. Including Harriman's family and personal entourage, the scientists and artists, and the support personnel, the total party on the ship was 126. The voyage left from Seattle and lasted two months. It was extensively covered in the press at the time, and did result in meaningful scientific output.

Harriman (and, after he died, his wife Mary) paid for a series of books over the course of ten years, the first three of which are in the anthology section of the Collection, under Harriman Alaska Expedition (1901-1904). (The later volumes were highly technical). Merriam edited the series and Burroughs, who was the official scribe of the expedition, wrote much of the first volume. For more on this fascinating expedition and the books themselves, see the Catalogue entry in the Anthology section.

In the John Muir section and elsewhere I discuss the role of Robert Underwood Johnson, who in addition to shepherding Muir was a key factor in the creation of the original Yosemite NP, the later successful campaign to have the actual Yosemite Valley transferred from California's badly executed stewardship into the NP, and the creation of the Sierra Club. Johnson was at Century magazine, which became under long-time editor Richard Watson Gilder among the most influential publications in America. The 1880s have been referred to as the "Gilder Age," given his impact. Johnson is represented in the Collection through a copy of his 1923 autobiography Remembered Yesterdays (catalogued 1916-62) which has the ownership signature of Gilder's daughter Rosamund Gilder, herself a very prominent person in the theatrical world.

NOT EVERYONE HUNG OUT WITH TEDDY ROOSEVELT

One of the most prominent and popular authors during the first half of the 20th century was writer, naturalist and nature photographer Gene Stratton-Porter, who is represented in the Collection with a signed deluxe limited first edition of her Music of the Wild (1910). (She also wrote an 11-page Introduction to Emma-Lindsay Squier's The WIld Heart (1922).) To demonstrate how popular she was, in the fifty-years ending 1945, she wrote five of the 55 books which sold over one million copies. She wrote nature studies, novels, poetry and children's books, eight of her books became movies (she had her own silent film production company, Gene Stratton Porter Productions, in the 1920s.). Please hop to the Catalogue for much more on this fascinating and influential writer and conservationist.

Ernest Thompson Seton was a prominent naturalist and author of the period who is primarily known for three things: (1) being a very fine and widely-read naturalist and artist who, among other things, was awarded a medal by the National Academy of Sciences; (2) being sucked into the "nature-faker" controversy of 1903 after John Burroughs wrote an Atlantic article criticizing some nature writers for being too sentimental and anthropomorphic in their accounts; and (3) for founding the Woodcraft Indians and being highly influential in the creation of the Boy Scouts.

He is represented in the Collection by a rare copy of his first publication (published under his original given name, Ernest E. Thompson), entitled A List of the Mammals of Manitoba (1886) inscribed by Seton to Canadian naturalist and AOU founder Montagu Chamberlain; and a copy of The Biography of a Grizzly (1900), inscribed and in a rare original dj. My favorite story about Seton is that on his 21st birthday, his abusive father presented him with an invoice for all of the expense associated with raising him, including the cost of the doctor who delivered him. That'll get you to change your name! He did not pay it, according to his autobiography, but left and never returned.

In the Introduction to this chapter, I listed birds and birding as one of the important themes of this period. We've already discussed the fact that TR was an avid and expert birder, as was John Burroughs. We've also mentioned Merriam, Mearns and Forbush, all of whom published works in the Collection on birds. [Please see their respective Catalogue entries for much more on Mearns and Forbush]. But it was also birding which resulted in finally seeing books by female authors begin to accumulate in the Collection. Harriet Mann Miller (who also wrote under the nom de plume Olive Thorne Miller), Mabel Osgood Wright and C. Hart's sister Florence Merriam Bailey were prominent ornithologists of the period who wrote popular and important books on birding. The three women were the first three elective members accepted into the American Ornithological Union.

Harriett Mann Miller was by all accounts an exceptionally awkward and shy child who retreated to books. She wrote little until the last of her four children was no longer an infant, then began writing and publishing first for children, then for adults. She did not become a birdwatcher until she was nearly fifty years old. Once she started, she went on extended field trips and studied birds in captivity and ultimately published eleven books on birds, in addition to numerous articles, including for the journal of the Audubon Society. "Across her writing career she produced an estimated 780 articles, one booklet on birds, and 24 complete books. Her work was acknowledged by professional biologists for its highly accurate research and observation." [From Wikipedia entry on Miller]. The Collection contains a signed first edition of her book Little Brothers of the Air (1892).

Mabel Osgood Wright was a leading force in the ornithological world and an early leader of the Audubon Society. She also established the first bird private songbird sanctuary in the U.S., near her home in Connecticut. "Wright was an early exponent of the doctrine that all living creatures, not just human beings, had their natural rights." [Brooks pp. 168-9]. From her Wikipedia entry: "From its inception in 1899, Wright contributed to [Frank] Chapman's magazine Bird-Lore, co-editing its Audubon department with William Dutcher. She served as a contributing editor until her death. She helped organize the Connecticut Audubon Society, became its first president in 1898, and served for many years. From 1905 to 1928, Wright was a director of the National Association of Audubon Societies...."

"Wright was an early exponent of the doctrine that all living creatures, not just human beings, had their natural rights." [Brooks pp. 168-9]. She also became a notable fiction author. She is represented in the Collection with copies of her first book, The Friendship of Nature (1894) as well as Birdcraft: A Field Book (1895) and Citizen Bird (1897), which she co-authored with prominent ornithologist Elliott Coues [Coues is described by Brooks as "remembered today with more [than] with respect - almost with awe...." [p.135] - see the Catalogue for more on Coues].

About Birdcraft, no less of an eminence than Frank Chapman described it as "one of the first and most successful of the modern bird manuals" of "incalculable influence." The Library of Congress writes of Citizen Bird that it was a "classic work of nature-writing for young people...[which] suggests the conjunction of science, aesthetics, and moralistic pedagogical enthusiasm which inspired both the surge in popular ornithology in this era and much of the grass-roots support for preservationist conservation measures." [memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/cnchron3.html].

Notably, Birdcraft contained the first major series of illustrations by Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Fuertes set the modern standard for ornithological art and is described by the Library of Congress as being second only to Audubon in his output and influence. Fuertes illustrated many books in the Collection, including Citizen Bird, both volumes of Forbush's work, Bailey's book on New Mexican birds, a compilation of bird essays by John Burroughs and others. As mentioned above, Fuertes was also a member of the Harriman Alaska Expedition. He was tragically killed at age 54 when he was returning home from time spent with Frank Chapman in the Catskills. His car was hit by a train that had apparently been screened by an ill-placed haystack.

Florence Merriam Bailey was an important force in the world of ornithology. She attended Smith College as a "special student" (due to her sporadic early education, in part due to health issues). But she spent much time outdoors at the family's estate near the Adirondacks - her particular focus on birds was due to the encouragement of family friend Ernest Thompson Seton. While at Smith, appalled at the plumage worn in hats of other students, she formed one of the first chapters of the original Audubon Club, about a month after George Bird Grinnell suggested the formation of the club in an editorial. While at Smith she also wrote articles and, believing nature walks would be more effective than just exhorting students not to wear plumage on their hats, recruited John Burroughs in 1886 to come to come and lead a walk. Shortly after, one-third of the Smith population forswore plumed hats and joined the Audubon Society chapter.

Bailey was a prolific author, publishing several field guides to birds which were pioneering in their approach of observing and then describing birds in their environment, rather than just giving a scientific description based on a (dead) example. She generally wrote for amateur ornithologists, seeking to promote understanding, appreciation and protection of birds. She was an active member of the American Ornithological Union, being both the first woman elected as a "Fellow" of the AOU and the first awarded its Brewster Medal (named after William Brewster), which recognizes an exceptional body of work on western hemisphere birds.

In the mid 1890's, Bailey spent six months at Stanford University, where she became close friends with Alice Eastwood (about whom more below). In 1899 she married Vernon Bailey, a friend of her brother, our friend C. Hart Merriam. At the time, he headed the US Biological Survey (now the Fish and Wildlife Dept.) - Bailey was a Biological Survey field biologist. For 30 years, she accompanied him while he was doing field work for the Survey, where she conducted her own observations and ultimately wrote Handbook of the Birds of the Western United States (1902), the companion volume to Frank Chapman's Handbook of the Birds of Eastern North America (to which she contributed - 1895 - not in the Collection) and many other books and articles.

Bailey is represented in the Collection with the first trade edition of her magisterial Birds of New Mexico (1928 - Catalogued in the 1916-1962 section). She took over authorship in the early stages of the book when the original author died. The book was originally going to name both as co-authors, but she petitioned based on relative contributions and won, becoming sole author.

Bailey was close friends with Miller in particular. Miller "had encouraged her [Merriam's] writing early in her career and... had told her techniques to remain unnoticed by the birds she was observing." [Wikipedia entry on Bailey]. The two spent one summer in Utah together before Bailey moved on to Stanford.

More on Frank Chapman, whose name has come up a couple of times in the discussion above. Chapman was a giant in the field of ornithology at the turn of the 20th century. He spent a substantial part of his career at the American Museum of Natural History, where he became the curator of birds, working for Henry Fairfield Osborn. Chapman was friendly with all of the top ornithologists of his day, and, in 1902, founded Bird-Lore magazine, which he edited for 36 years, and which is still published today under the name Audubon. Chapman was hugely influential on the career of Mabel Osgood Wright. Paul Brooks writes of Chapman in Speaking for Nature (pp158-162):

Chapman was primarily a field ornithologist, a student of birds in nature, rather than a taxonomist. Above all he was a great popularizer - the greatest since Audubon. Taking charge of the [AMNH] Museum exhibits, he developed the now familiar 'habitat groups.'... By [1901] Frank Chapman had become perhaps the leading champion of nature and nature study in the country.... By the year 1945, when Frank Chapman died...our whole attitude toward birds and other wildlife had dramatically changed, thanks in large measure to the writings of the articulate naturalists.... [B]irdwatching grew to be a popular sport, with inestimable impact on the entire field of conservation.... When Frank Chapman received the Roosevelt Medal in 1928, the Brooklyn Eagle commented: 'Nature interests millions today when formerly it interested thousands. The men who have had a part in this development have effected [sic] a fairly profound change in our habits of mind.'

The women too, presumably.

Chapman is represented in the Collection with Bird Studies with a Camera (1900) and My Tropical Air Castle (1929), the latter warmly inscribed to an admirer of his work.

William L. Finley was a critical Pacific Northwestern conservationist and ornithologist whose work led to the creation of three National Wildlife Refuges in Oregon. A fourth is named in his honor. Douglas Brinkley quotes Roger Tory Peterson from the latter's Foreword to a 1986 biography of Finley by Worth Mathewson as being the most important western environmentalist of the period next to John Muir. (WW 716). For my part I would certainly rank Steel at least with Finley. But I am no RTP.

Per an entry by Oliver Tatom in oregonencyclopedia.com (retrieved Dec 2024), Finley was interested in birds from an early age, forming the North-Western Ornithological Association at age 18 with several friends. He was an avid photographer, initially working with his boyhood friend and partner Herman T. Bohlman. "Finley's foray into the developing field of wildlife photography coincided with the rise of the wildlife conservation movement.... He helped organize the state chapter of the Audubon Society and lobbied the Oregon legislature to pass a Model Bird Law, which it did the following year...but enforcement remained lax until Finley helped secure private funds [through the AOU's Thayer Fund, with the help of William Dutcher] to hire additional wardens." Per Brinkley, Finley and Bohlman were inspired in part by Chapman's Bird Studies with a Camera. "Finley's images are now considered pioneering wildlife photography gems; they inspired National Geographic to improve its approach to capturing birds up close, even hatching. Finley was part of the first generation to abandon 'shoot-skin-record' ornithology in favor of the camera.... Finley became perhaps the best ornithologist the Pacific Northwest ever produced." (WW 549-50).

Finley and Roosevelt met in Oregon in 1903 (on the same trip that saw Roosevelt camp with John Muir in Yosemite). Finley showed TR photos (later included in his book American Birds (1907)) which inspired Roosevelt to protect the iconic Three Arches NWR, and two others a year later. The US Fish and Wildlife Service honored Finley in 1964 by naming a newly created, 5000+ acre NWR in Oregon's Willamette Valley the William L. Finley NWR.

One can find photos on the internet of Finley and his photography partners Bohlman and wife Irene going to extreme lengths to get the shot. A URL can be found in the Catalogue entry for American Birds (1907).

I previously mentioned that some of the authors from this period were amongst my favorite in the Collection. Two of those are Alice Eastwood and Anna Botsford Comstock. The discussions about both in their respective Catalogue sections are extensive. In the interest of space, I will give a brief summary here and [eventually] provide a link to the Catalogue.

Alice Eastwood's story is described in full in the Catalogue [INSERT LINK] but briefly, she was a self-taught botanist who became the head of Botany at the California Academy of Sciences, serving in that position over fifty years and publishing over 300 works. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, she single-handedly rescued over a thousand one-of-a-kind specimens from the Academy just before it was consumed by the fire which engulfed the city after the quake. The copy of her book A Handbook of the Trees of California (1905) in collection is nearly as cool as she is, a leather-bound limited edition prepared for her for distribution. Most of those copies, along with most of the first trade edition copies, were thought to have been destroyed in the fire before they could be distributed. The copy in the Collection has the ownership signature of "Jordan" - almost certainly David Starr Jordan, founding president of Stanford Univ who also served as president of the Academy at various times.

Gene Stratton-Porter was an extraordinarily popular and important environmental writer of whom I had never heard - she was a novelist, naturalist, conservationist and nature photographer. She wrote both natural history books and enormously popular, generally wholesome novels, many of the latter also incorporated a strong natural element. According to a March 2020 Smithsonian Magazine article about S-P [As Popular in Her Day as J.K. Rowling, Gene Stratton-Porter Wrote to the Masses About America's Fading Natural Beauty | Science | Smithsonian Magazine ], during the half-century ended 1945, of the 55 books which sold over one million copies, S-P wrote five (!) of them, the most of any of her contemporaries. At its peak her readership was estimated at 50 million, with earnings estimated at $2 million. She ultimately published 26 books, including 12 novels and eight nature studies. She also, remarkably, started and ran her own film production company and movie studio.

Geneva Stratton - she shortened to Gene when whilst courting Porter - was the youngest of twelve children, daughter of a Methodist minister. She grew up outdoors in a family which respected the beauty of nature - she became expert in and devoted to wild bird life. She lived as an adult near the Limberlost Swamp, which became her muse - she spent much of her time exploring, sketching and photographing there. She also began writing nature pieces and novels. Two of her most popular novels, A Girl of the Limberlost and Freckles were set there, as was much of her natural history writing. In 1917 she was active in trying to overturn legislation permitting the draining of the swamp. She was successful, but only temporarily - the swamp was later drained, and she moved away.

S-P's earliest published works included nature photographs and an article protesting the use of feathers in hat-making. As S-P's books started to sell, she cut a deal with her publisher allowing her to alternate between novels and nonfiction nature books. But nature plays an important role in many of her novels too. Her writing "introduced the concept of land and wildlife conservation to her readers." (Quoted in Wikipedia). Her novels were what sold best and made her immensely wealthy. Her nature work was her passion.

As one writer put it: "Gene Stratton-Porter's influence on American environmental writing may be hard to overstate.... Especially via her novels, she helped steer later generations including writers like Annie Dillard and Ann Zwinger who have both cited her [work]...as an important early influence." [Who knows, perhaps she even impacted male environmental writers.] Her photography is also considered to have been excellent, and underappreciated in her time, likely due to her gender. She is currently represented in the Collection through Music of the Wild (1910), in the form of a deluxe signed limited first edition.

Two quotes from Music of the Wild show her to be, if not ahead of her time, at least at the cutting edge of thinking on the respective subjects:

In my wanderings afield I often find ornithologists killing and dissecting birds, botanists uprooting and classifying flowers...each worker blind and deaf to everything save his own specialty.... Whenever I come across a scientist plying his trade I am always so happy and content to be merely a nature lover, satisfied with what I can see, hear, and record with my cameras. Such wonders are lost by specializing on one subject to the exclusion of all else.... Life has such varying sights and songs for the one who goes afield with the senses alive to everything. I am positive I hear and see as much as any scientist can on the outside of objects, for I have recorded with my camera a complete life history of many birds no one else ever photographed.... [p. 55]

The tension between specialist vs. generalist was not new when she wrote that - but nor was it top of mind for most and the ecological underpinning of her approach is notable.

It was Thoreau who, in writing of the destruction of the forests, exclaimed, "Thank Heaven, they can not cut down the clouds!" Aye, but they can! That is a miserable fact, and soon it will become our discomfort and loss. Clouds are beds of vapor arising from damp places and floating in air until they meet other vapor masses, that mingle with them, and the wight becomes so great the whole falls in drops of rain. If men in their greed cut forests that preserve and distil moisture, clear fields, take the shelter of trees and drain the water from swamps so that they can be cleared and cultivated, - they prevent vapor from rising; and if it does not rise it can not fall. Pity of pities it is; but man can change and is changing the forces of nature. I never told a sadder truth that man can "cut down the clouds." In utter disregard or ignorance of what he will do to himself, his children, and his country he persists in doing it wherever he can see a few cents in the sacrifice. [p.335]

In addition to fighting the draining of Limberlost, Stratton was a founding member of the Izaak Walton League, joining its efforts to preserve the wild elk in Jackson Hole WY, and remained a strong lifelong advocate for land and wetland conservation. Today part of the Limberlost Swamp has been reclaimed - including the Music of the Wild sanctuary. S-P's two houses in the area are on the National Register of Historic Places and are both open to the public as State of Indiana historic sites. Wrote the Izaak Walton League in its publication following her death in an automobile accident, "if we can write her epitaph in terms of clean rivers, clean outdoor playgrounds, and clean young hearts, we shall have done what she would have asked." (Quote from Wikipedia).

A nice, not too long 1996 issue of The Indiana Historian, dedicated entirely to S-P with extensive quotes by her, is worth a look:

09/96 stratton-porter (in.gov)

Pioneering educator, artist, professor and conservationist Anna Botsford Comstock first published her Handbook of Nature-Study in 1911 - it became the standard textbook in the field for teachers globally and remains in print today in its 24th edition (as of 2024). She was also a master wood-engraver, illustrating both her own and her husband's books. She was the first female professor at Cornell. Well worth jumping to the Catalogue to read more about her as well. [INSTALL LINK]

Comstock worked at Cornell directly with Liberty Hyde Bailey, who was perhaps the most prominent botanist of his time. Bailey was at the forefront of the agrarian and country life movements of the time and chaired TR's 1908-09 National Commission on Country Life. He wrote The Holy Earth (1915) and other books seeking to preserve America's rural tradition while simultaneously ridding them of their provincialism, ignorance and inadequate institutions. The Holy Earth is called "a pioneering work in environmental ethics" by Enos Millls's biographer Alexander Drummond. Thomas Lyon describes Bailey as "one of the early 'deep ecologists' of the modern era." (p 247).

One minor strand which runs through a handful of the works of this period is a growing appreciation of and fascination with the desert. Mary Austin's best-known book was The Land of Little Rain (1903), which captured not just the ecology but also the atmosphere and mystique of the desert southwest. The book is #2 on the Zamorano Eighty, a 1945 compilation of the most important books written about California. Austin was a true bohemian who left her husband to live in an artist commune. She was a feminist, Native American and Latin American rights activist, and theatrical producer and director besides being an author. In addition to Land of Little Rain, she is also represented in the Collection by California: Land of the Sun (1914) and Earth Horizon (1932). Paul Brooks describes her as "an extraordinary woman whose nature books...have been ranked with those of Thoreau and Muir." (p.183).

Other books about that part of the country from this era include Charles Van Dyke's The Desert (1901), George Wharton James' two-volume The Wonders of the Colorado Desert (1906), and Mitchell Prudden's On the Great Colorado Plateau (1907). All three authors are worth a jump to the Catalogue to read more about, but a special shout-out to Prudden, who was highly instrumental in bringing clean and sanitary drinking water to New York City. As a resident myself, I am most grateful.

Environmental historian Donald Worster writes in his biography of Muir (see References):

The great awakening to nature that was sweeping through urban civilization, a movement in which Muir was a popular international leader, was now pulling people - pulling him - into the Southwest. That region had long been 'the epitome of ugliness and emptiness' to earlier white travelers, or to those who looked to Switzerland or Italy for models of landscape beauty. John Wesley Powell and Clarence Dutton had forced some change in that negative attitude, encouraging a more positive appraisal of the desert's stark beauty. The shift was furthered by such works as John Van Dyke's The Desert (1901) and Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain (1903).

The turn of the 20th century also brought the technology to begin photographing and videoing wild animals, a break-through which represented a step-change in the way ordinary people were able to absorb and relate to nature images. The pioneers of both wildlife photography and video were the British brothers and naturalists Richard and Cherry Kearton - they essentially invented nature photography. Among their most famous books was With Nature and a Camera (1897), in the Collection in a first edition inscribed by both to a manager of the publisher. Richard later became a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and of the Royal Photographic Society. Cherry became a wildlife and news filmmaker (including the first footage of WWI) and a friend of Theodore Roosevelt. The book itself has one of the most modern covers of any book of the period in the Collection. [Someday there will be photos, I promise].

I am going to end this section with one of the most quixotic and fascinating figures of the time, the indomitable Enos Mills. As Yosemite has John Muir, Glacier has George Bird Grinnell, Denali has Charles Sheldon, and Crater Lake has W.G. Steel, so does Rocky Mountain NP have Enos Mills. Mills was born in Kansas and was a sickly kid whose inability to keep up with farm work disappointed his parents. At the age of 14 he left home, walked to Kansas City, worked long enough to earn enough money for a train ticket to Denver, where he went to work on a cousin's ranch. He had a very rudimentary formal education.

Mills' cousin would bring his herd into the mountains in summer, and Mills was enchanted. He built a homestead near what is now Estes Park, summited Longs Peak for the first time at age 15, and spent winters in the mines Butte, Montana in order to support himself. During the summers he traveled throughout the Rockies, camping raw and eating chocolate and nuts as he did not wish to kill animals. In fact, he felt that he communed with them. He also traveled to the west coast from time to time and in 1889 had a chance encounter with John Muir, which drove him to dedicate his life to conservation, writing and lecturing.

In 1902 Mills purchased a guesthouse near Estes Park which he renamed Longs Peak Inn, and Mills spent years guiding his guests, some quite august, up Longs Peak. He also served as an official Colorado snow observer, measuring snowpack to predict runoff. He then served as a US government lecturer on forestry from 1907-09, a position to which he was appointed by Roosevelt. He traveled throughout the country, and earned a fair bit of fame.

Many of Mills' books recount his solo experiences in the backcountry, others are more reflective of his work as a naturalist. In the former, some of the events he recounts are pretty incredible, but while he may have exaggerated, critics seem mostly to think that he was largely truthful. His naturalist writing was accurate, detailed and varied. He wrote with enthusiasm and personality for a popular audience, and his books are as entertaining as they are informative, to my mind.

Despite all this, Mills was incredibly irascible, stubborn and often angry. He was a disciple of Pinchot's before realizing the utilitarian nature of the Forestry Service's work, at which time he became an implacable foe. His advocacy for the creation of RMNP was successful and is justly celebrated, but he made few friends and many enemies in the process.

In 1995, Alexander Drummond published Enos Mills: Citizen of Nature, an outstanding biography of Mills which I thoroughly enjoyed. His concluding chapter, "Enos Mills in the Stream of 20th Century Conservation" is a thoughtful and thorough review of the strands of thought which have characterized the EC movement over the period and is well worth reading as a stand-alone piece. The parts about Mills specifically are just a bonus. He writes:

As an "environmental activist" Mills was a personality type recognizable by anyone who has participated in public campaigns: intelligent, idealistic, energetic, inflammatory, distrustful, and uncompromising both toward his adversaries and members of his own coalition.... Mills easily mistook structural problems for the machinations of individual scoundrels, tended to demonize his adversaries, and at times resorted to name calling.... It is significant that some of the opposition to the RMNP campaign was raised solely from dislike for Mills himself. And it is equally significant that Mills's own force of personality prevailed over that opposition where the most crucial support was needed. (p. 394)

The life of Enos Mills illustrates a response to personal conscience and a respect for both nature and humanity as moral forces in arousing himself to public action. He was an almost archetypal example of a man acting on his beliefs, a man with a Faustian drive to pursue noble ideals in the face of any obstacle. Some modern activists will see in Mills the prototypical "ecowarrior" - defending his flowers against marauding cattle, waving his fist at the Forest Service, provoking his arrest by the Park Service. We have tried to enter the complex terrain of Mills's public and private psyches, his heroic self-image, the persona that expressed it, and the borderland he sometimes inhabited between fact and imagination. In his crusading persona Mills expressed a kind of holy and sacrosanct anger that was both his greatest liability and his most powerful weapon. Enos Mills, wilderness man turned fierce wilderness defender, still stands for many as the primary image of the Rocky Mountain conservationist. Let us grant substantial truth in that while at the same time qualifying it on several fronts." (p. 393).

While traveling through Estes Park recently, I stopped in a brewpub which was serving "Enos Pils." I had one, and drank a toast to the man.

Mills is well represented in the Collection, including a first edition of his first book, The Story of Estes Park and a Guide Book (1905); and inscribed later printing of The Spell of the Rockies (1911); a signed later printing of In Beaver World (1913); an early printing in rare dj of The Rocky Mountain Wonderland (1915); a signed first of Your National Parks (1917); and a copy of The Rocky Mountain National Park 1924 Memorial Edition, signed by Mills' wife (Mills died in 1922, at age 52). The last is the final iteration and edition of the first.

CONCLUSION

Conservation writ large became a national issue during the Progressive Era - forests, soil, water, wildlife (especially birds), land and park protection, nature education, and the costs of unfettered mining, grazing and timber operations were all top of mind. John Muir became the prophet, John Burroughs the muse. Theodore Roosevelt and his circle of rich white men dug in and, for all of their faults, made extraordinary strides on multiple fronts in a comparatively short period of time. Female authors (and clubs) contributed mightily to the burgeoning movement.

The exact dates marking the beginning and end of the Progressive Era is of course somewhat arbitrary. Certainly, many of the authors discussed above continued their work in the period covered in the next Chapter, and some in that Chapter (i.e. Henry Fairfield Osborn) is best associated with this period. But there is no question that the onset of WWI changed the focus and energies of the nation. Irrespective, the authors from this period represented in the Collection built out the foundation upon which the modern environmental movement was constructed.

The Progressive Era: 1890-1915

The Progressive Era:
1890-1915