October 3, 2018: National Park Studying: Everglades

[On October 1^st, 1890, Congress established California’s Yosemite National Park. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Yosemite and four other amazing National Parks, leading up to a special weekend post on their counterparts, National Historic Sites.]

On the very American story of the woman who helped save the Everglades.

In 2018, the name Marjory Stoneman Douglas has likely and tragically become synonymous with the Parkland, Florida mass shooting in February at the high school named for her. But while of course we can and should continue remembering the Douglas High shooting (and celebrating the amazing group of Parkland students who have turned that tragedy into an occasion for activism), Marjory Stoneman Douglas deserves separate and full commemoration as well. In a 108-year life that spanned nearly all of the 20^th century (she was born in April 1890 and passed away in May 1998), Marjory Stoneman experienced a number of striking and very telling moments, including many by the time she turned 25: from watching her mother, concert violinist Florence Lillian Trefethen, get committed to a mental hospital in Providence for being “high-strung” to attending Wellesley College and helping form its first suffrage club; from a brief marriage to charming con artist Kenneth Douglas (who was already married at the time and subsequently attempted to defraud Marjory’s father) to a groundbreaking 1915 divorce and move to Miami (then a small town of less than 5000) to rejoin her father and join the staff of his decade-old newspaper The Miami Herald.

For the next few decades, Douglas (she continued to go by her married name for the rest of her life) made quite a name for herself as a South Florida (and national) journalist and literary figure. (After serving in both the navy and the Red Cross during World War I.) Besides her work for the Herald, which included long stints as Book Review Editor and Assistant Editor, she also worked extensively as a freelance and creative writer; she published forty stories in the Saturday Evening Post, for example, and also wrote a number of one-act plays for the Miami Theater as well as the foreword to the WPA’s 1941 guide to Miami. Around that same time, however, Douglas became involved with the cause that would define her second half-century of life, and all of America, very fully. The publisher Farrar & Rinehart approached her to write a book on the Miami River for their new Rivers of America series; as she began her research Douglas found herself unimpressed by the river but profoundly moved by the Everglades, and convinced F&R to let her research and write a book on them instead. She spent five years researching and writing, working closely with geologist Garald Parker, and the result was The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), a monumental achievement that sold out its initial printing in a month and remains one of the most significant and influential works of American naturalism.

River of Grass was just the beginning, however (and not even that, as Douglas had been fighting for local environmental causes for decades by that time). Over the next half-century, Douglas would more than earn her nickname “Grande Dame of Everglades,” waging continual war to protect and preserve the wetlands from developers, politicians, corporations, sport hunters and fishermen, and just about every other adversary one could imagine. Douglas titled the last chapter of River of Grass “The Eleventh Hour,” warning that the region was on the brink of destruction; but in December of that same year Everglades National Park was dedicated, and thanks to those federal protections and Douglas’s lifelong efforts, the area instead has become the largest tropical wilderness in the US and the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi. No individual can achieve such milestones single-handedly, of course; but at the same time, American history reminds us time and again of the power a determined and impressive individual can have to help shape the future. Marjory Stoneman Douglas most definitely did so for the Everglades and South Florida—and having had the good fortune to visit the Glades a few times as a kid (my maternal grandparents had retired to South Florida), I can testify that she helped preserve a truly unique and amazing American space.

Next Park tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other National Parks you’d highlight?

October 2, 2018: National Park Studying: Blackstone River Valley

[On October 1^st, 1890, Congress established California’s Yosemite National Park. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Yosemite and four other amazing National Parks, leading up to a special weekend post on their counterparts, National Historic Sites.]

On two interesting comparisons for one of our newest National Parks.

Earlier this month, as a small part of a very large Congressional bill (the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015), the longstanding Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor was upgraded, becoming (after a decade of efforts and activism) the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park. As that second linked article suggests, the change is far more than semantic—gaining National Park status brings with it a great deal of development and support, linking the area to the National Park Service and turning it into much more of a organized and coherent entity than had been possible in the prior incarnation. The self-proclaimed (American) “Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution,” an area running along the potent Blackstone River from Worcester all the way to Providence, Rhode Island (making it one of the few National Parks to span multiple states), will now be presented and interpreted in all its historical and social significance for generations to come.

The new park’s multi-state span is one of a few things that differentiate it from most of its fellow National Parks, but I would still highlight a couple of comparisons that can shed light on what and how this park might achieve its goals most effectively. Salem, Massachusetts is home to a wonderful park, the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Featuring a dozen buildings, multiple wharfs, a reconstructed tall ship, and a number of other elements, the Salem Maritime park does an excellent job interpreting multiple centuries and stages of work, community, and life in the city and region. The Derby Wharf section alone includes all those centuries and stages in its different buildings and placards. Compared, for example, to battlefield national parks such as Gettysburg or Yorktown, which focus on a few days’ worth of historical events and issues, the Blackstone River Valley Park will have to cover more than a century of industrial and social history and culture, and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site provides an excellent model for doing so successfully.

On the other hand, Salem Maritime occupies an area of a few square miles; the Blackstone River Valley Park will cover (as has the Heritage Corridor) a distance of some forty-five miles, to say nothing of how far it extends on both sides of the river. For a comparison with that element, I would turn to one of the national parks around which I grew up: Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park. The Skyline Drive, a winding, scenic road atop the Blue Ridge Mountains, travels more than 100 miles, and yet is all part of the same unified national park identity and interpretation, with its many distinct stops and areas comprising their own unique identities yet tied together consistently and coherently. While Shenandoah and Skyline focus much more on natural rather than historical or cultural subjects, this large yet linked and coherent park community offers a rich and successful model for how a park as spacious and far-reaching as Blackstone River Valley can move through its many different places and communities yet maintain that overarching sense identity and history. I’ll be interested to see how Blackstone River Valley takes its next steps!

Next Park tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other National Parks you’d highlight?

October 1, 2018: National Park Studying: Yosemite

[On October 1^st, 1890, Congress established California’s Yosemite National Park. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Yosemite and four other amazing National Parks, leading up to a special weekend post on their counterparts, National Historic Sites.]

On six figures who help narrate the unfolding history of an early National Park.

1)      Chief Tenaya and Lafayette Bunnell: The first European Americans that we know for sure entered California’s Yosemite Valley were a battalion of US Army soldiers led by Major James Savage; the so-called Mariposa Battalion were chasing Ahwahneechee Chief Tenaya and his forces as part of 1851 military efforts to destroy the area’s Native American communities. That’s a pretty bleak starting point for a US relationship to Yosemite, but it didn’t go entirely unchallenged—traveling with the battalion was Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, and the physician would go on to interview Tenaya at length, learn the region’s name and history from him, and eventually author the book Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851 which Led to that Event (1880). Bunnell of course was wrong to call it a “discovery,” a choice that reflected and reinforced a Eurocentric view of the region to be sure. But his book helped make more Americans aware of this beautiful and important space, and was a crucial step toward conservation.

2)      John Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson: As with virtually all of the late 19^th century’s conservation efforts, the push to preserve Yosemite was led by the Scottish-born naturalist, scientist, and activist John Muir. Muir became enamored of Yosemite at a young age, writing frequently about the region’s wonders and even helping develop (in his first published work!) the controversial (and now widely accepted) theory that they had been created by alpine glaciers. But Muir alone could not persuade the federal government to help conserve Yosemite, and thankfully he had help from other prominent Americans who shared his views. Chief among them was Robert Underwood Johnson, one of the era’s most famed literary figures (he edited Century Magazine among many other roles); Johnson camped in Yosemite with Muir in 1889 and went on to help him successfully lobby Congress to pass the October 1, 1890 Act that created Yosemite National Park. Their partnership exemplifies the best of the nascent Progressive Era and of how allies from different communities can help advance causes of environmental justice.

3)      Ansel Franklin Hall and Rosalie Edge: National Park status ensures a certain level of conservation and protection, but of course doesn’t necessarily guarantee enough travel and support to keep a park thriving beyond that starting point. One of the most important figures in the park’s early years, Park Naturalist (and later the National Park Service’s first Chief Naturalist) Ansel Franklin Hall, was crucial in moving the park in those directions: he founded the Yosemite Museum (which featured Native American craftspeople and interpreters), developed numerous interpretive programs, and edited the 1921 Handbook of Yosemite National Park. Complementing Hall’s efforts from inside the park were those of external advocates like Rosalie Edge, creator and head of the National Audobon Society’s Emergency Conservation Committee (ECC); in 1937, Edge lobbied Congress to purchase 8000 acres of forest on the park’s edge that were scheduled to be logged, making them part of the park’s expanding identity instead. Thanks to Hall, Edge, and their peers, Yosemite not only endured but expanded and thrived throughout the 20^th century, and remains a vital American space and destination into the 21^st.

Next Park tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other National Parks you’d highlight?