In this lavishly illustrated book well-known environmental historian Alfred Runte, a prominent figure on the Ken Burns documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea, tells the highly engaging story of the development of our national parks, from the first national park, Yellowstone, to the more recent decision to set aside vast tracts of Alaska for preservation.
How should a national park be managed? Among all of the debates affecting America’s national parks, none has proved more enduring. Nor has any park, Alfred Runte reminds us, been in the spotlight more than Yosemite. Its cast of characters is especially rich, including James Mason Hutchings, Galen Clark, Frederick Law Olmsted, John Muir, David Brower, Joseph Grinnell, George M. Wright, and Ansel Adams. Not only was Yosemite the centerpiece of their careers, it was also the wellspring of their passion for nature. Now fully revised and updated, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness continues their story, from Yosemite’s path-breaking establishment in 1864 as a grant to California, 1890 expansion into a national park, boundary reductions and loss of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, evolution of wildlife protections and science, management practices threatening Yosemite Valley, and the fight for wilderness to the present day.
A thoroughly revised and expanded successor to Runte's Trains of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks, the new edition now includes eastern historic sites and parks made possible or influenced by railroads. This book is a sight to behold as well as a wonderful, nostalgic armchair read"--
Runte celebrates the parks, their lost & returning trains, and the past opulence of getting there (still possible on the growing fleet of privately owned cars, often pulled by Amtrak, with space offered to the moderately comfortable see their journal Private Varnish ). A glorious, nostalgic book w
This photographic journey through our National Parks takes you on a visual tour of America's most special natural and cultural places. Arranged in chronological order from the year that each park received protection as public land, America's Best Idea provides you with a history of names, dates and designations of all national parks in the United States. This book provides an iconic full-color image of each national park, highlighting the spirit of preservation that became a guiding force in the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. The publisher has donated all copies of America's Best Idea to the Yosemite Association, and net profits from book sales benefit the educational programs of Yosemite National Park.
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A thoroughly revised and expanded successor to Alfred Runte’s Trains of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks, the new edition now includes protected landscapes and historical sites east of the Mississippi made possible or influenced by railroads: the Hudson River Valley; Delaware Water Gap; Harpers Ferry; Indiana Dunes; Gettysburg; Steamtown; and Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, and Acadia National Parks. Illustrated with paintings, posters, photographs, and artifacts from major libraries and public archives, as well as America’s railroads and the author’s private collection, this book is a sight to behold as well as a wonderful, nostalgic armchair read.
In this lavishly illustrated book well-known environmental historian Alfred Runte, a prominent figure on the Ken Burns documentary The National Parks: America's Best Idea, tells the highly engaging story of the development of our national parks, from the first national park, Yellowstone, to the more recent decision to set aside vast tracts of Alaska for preservation.
How should a national park be managed? Among all of the debates affecting America’s national parks, none has proved more enduring. Nor has any park, Alfred Runte reminds us, been in the spotlight more than Yosemite. Its cast of characters is especially rich, including James Mason Hutchings, Galen Clark, Frederick Law Olmsted, John Muir, David Brower, Joseph Grinnell, George M. Wright, and Ansel Adams. Not only was Yosemite the centerpiece of their careers, it was also the wellspring of their passion for nature. Now fully revised and updated, Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness continues their story, from Yosemite’s path-breaking establishment in 1864 as a grant to California, 1890 expansion into a national park, boundary reductions and loss of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, evolution of wildlife protections and science, management practices threatening Yosemite Valley, and the fight for wilderness to the present day.
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