Land. She also talks about her research on the Point Reyes National seashore which used to be a Ranch Community before designated a National Park in 1960s. Her class is about an hour and ten minutes. So today, were going to be talking ant landscapes and preservation and sort of how we change the places your intention is not only understand the history of these protected spaces, but to make the process of preservation more visible. To make it more easier to understand the history of parks and how they have changed over time and sort of more importantly, why they have changed over time. Most of us when we think about preservation, we think about something saying the same. Yet perreservation changes thin. In the context of space here in the u. S. , theres this p presumption that Public Ownership is the best way to protect a landscape. We even see the miniseries by ken burns from a ways back on National Parks. It was called americas best idea, which is taken from a quote from wallace stigner, that natural spaces that have trails for hiking and sightseeing are representative of pure, pristine nature thats just had some boundaries put around it and its been kept the same like the vase in a museum. That literally is part of the founding legislation for the National Parks services. The Parks Service just had their centennial last year. Lot of hoopla. And so you can see that their fundamental purpose is to conserve sekaenry. The impression you get from this language is that parks are unimpair and staying the same through generations through time. So what im going to sort of, what my research has folked on for years is that unchangingness is hiding thats occurring as places are preserved. These backdrops will be familiar from earlier in the semester. This idea that all ecosystems is from nancy langston, environmental historian and mentor of mine. She stated clearly that all e ecosystems are the product of history including both their natural and their cultural or social history. So one of the thing that i do in my work is looking at how landscape change over time can really tell us something about the ideas that people have about landscape over time and how those ideas change with changing times. So a lot of this is really underlining both why understanding history really important to begin with, then sort of seeing the current state of the ecosystem, how and why it got there from a social and cultural side as well. So were going to start with just again, review from my class. This concept of landscape. Landscapes are you sort of inherently formed by interactions, formed by people in place so theyre always about this interaction. Pierce lewis wrote there are unwitting biographies. Essentially, by shaping the land, by being influenced by whats on the land and what is possible there, come on in. Theres lots of seats in the front. We essentially write our own autobiographies in the landscape without realizing were doing it. So were leaving traces, all those things, for those who are researchers and interested in studying environmental history, we can then come along and look at the landscape and read something as if it were a book or another kind of text. We can read something about whos been here and what theyve been doing from looking at the landscape an and how it changes over time. We may use the term natural landscape or cultural. I always make the assertion that all landscapes are both. There is no purely landscape, Downtown Manhattan in the middle of a city and similarly, the most remote pristine looking wild erness has a lot of eventul management thats influnencing what the place is like. Lastly, all landscapes are dynamic. Always changing. Theres no way of holding them still the way we do with a vase in a museum. You can put the ming vase on a shelf and maybe have some nice climate controlled air and lighting for it and it will just stay pretty much the same for centuries. We cant do that with landscapes. Theres no way of holding them still. Theyre constantly shifting with climatic changes, ecological changes and with cultural and social changes. Thats really what im interest ed in looking at. And a prime example is National Parks. In the way that we often dont notice that landscape changes occurring because it happens so slowly. So many of us have visited the Yosemite Valley. This is a photo that i look when i was visit iing there alongsid the river. Again, i think the first week, we looked at some of these same images. This is the photograph taken from the same location near the versed river in 1865 by carlton watkins. What you can see in it, a little difficult, the trees are in the way. You can see theres a big meadow in the back. Some coniferous trees, but a lot of oak trees and willows. Its a much more open landscape than we have today. Similarly, we can look at paintings from the 1870s. Hes done a little fancy footwork with the sides of the valley. They actually dont match up u. If you look at a photograph today, youll realize this side is about five miles west of this side in his painting. But whats interesting about this painting is again b b, its showing us the ecosystem of this landscape in the 1870s. Which again is meadows in oak woodlands with a few coniferous trees. A real contrast to the landscape we see today, which is almost all dark, coniferous forests. Not that one is better than the other or preferable but that the ecosystem here has changed enormously because this place was preserved. This is a place where native americans have lived for cent y centuries and had been doing Landscape Management mostly through burning. Once that stopped and the place was protected, the ecological shifts started occurring. But those who visit today think, oh, this is what its always been like. Because we dont know the history. Thats part of what waer looking at today is trying to understand the ways in which parks change over time, how they change far more than we recognize and how that helps us to understand whats going on park protection. Other things that most of us take public parks for granted. In a way that most of us have grown up with in cities and National Parks to go visit, theyre kind of our culture now. Thats fairly recent. Public parks are involve, they evolved during the 1800s, essentially out of both the admiration of wealthy estates, private estates in england where there would p sort of oh whats the tv show . The um downton abbey. Yes, thank you. I always forget words. You have this huge estate with Rolling Hills and people strolling about, but most people couldnt visit those estates. They were privately owned by individual families. We wanted that space to be more democrats, more open to the public rather than just private. They also evolved in some ways from using certain public spaces like cemeteries. Very informally for going for an afternoon walk. It seems odd to us now this you would sort of go strolling in a cemetery. They seem much more formal now. But back in the 1800s, especially in the 1830s or 1860s, that was a very common thing in a lot of large cities. Pretty much the only open space available. People would go out for a walk and enjoy the view and green grass and the stones. Sort of a combination of these very formal spaces that we didnt want to repeat here in the u. S. And these more informal uses. Similarly, preservation itself of Historic Buildings say was originally something undertaken by private wealthy individuals. George washingtons estate at mt. Vernon was protected by the mt. Vernon laid can dis association, a private organization. The idea that government should protect and preserve places was not part of our culture. One of the people most responsible was this guy. Frederick homestead. He was a Landscape Architect and park designer. He very famously designed central park in new york city. I got the originally design here. A little hard to see. But from the 1860s. What he was doing at the time, this was actually not central in new york city. It was way out in the sticks. But he had the foresight to know that the city would grow up around the park and wanted to create a space of nature for sort of people to visit to just sort of stroll around and enjoy. This idea of sort of creating and designing a wilderness. This was not just a case of setting aside an already natural landscape and leave iing it alo. Which is again what we tend to think of when we think of park protection. What he was doing was making nature out of what at the time was mostly old sheeps meadows. Theres a big grassy area in central park call ed thes meadw and thats why. Because there were sheep on it. But you know, from this old image, moving earth around, planting trees, bringing nature in to a degree thats deeply, deeply designed. Has anyone been to central park in this room . When youre there, it feels very natural. Ive got a picture here of new york city with central park today. Its completely forested. Theres sort of hills and dales. Theres lakes. Lots of dense trees. A lot of little paths. It feels like youre in a pristine piece of new york forest thats just been left behind without any buildings, but almost every aspect of it with the exception of a couple of big granite boulders, all the hills, all the forests, all the lakes are all completely designeded and therefore, artificial. But we dont feel like theyre artificial. We interpret them as natural. As a natural space. And so thats really this idea that homestead brought to his work was designing nature to in essence make it more natural or more natural seeming than what might have been there originally. He also was very, he had a lot of nervous conditions himself as a young man and was ill a lot. He had this idea that nature could be sort of a therapy for people. That not literally sort of psycho therapy, but a relief from stresses of ordinary daily life in an urban setting with all the noise and trains running by and all kinds of crowding. He thought what people need is this escape valve. He very explicitly wanted this to be a public space. Open to all classes. Not just to the wealthy. They were much more geared towards middle and upper class visitors. Theres no organized sports aloud. This is very much a version of nature thats contemplative and quiet and sort of strolling about. Where as if youre a real working 9 00 to 5 00er, it wasnt 9 00 to 5 00 back then. It was like 6 00 to 08 00. You have one day off to blow off steam to people want to play stick ball in streets, drink beer and run u around and none of that was allowed. This was created in a public space, but really privileged certain users. Were going to see these early ideas hoff how youre spoized to behave in a park, who its aimed towards still carries through in a lot of parks today. Theres a lot of presumgtss that both parks are open to everybody, but there are particular ways youre supposed to behave and interact with nature when youre there. So youre not going to find soccer fields in a National Park. Youre going to find hiking trails. Not everybody likes to go hiking. Too bad. Sort of this element to it as well. So homestead starts off this idea of parks that designed nature. This gets combined with how do we get from these designed city parks like central parks to the National Parks that we have. In some ways, the National Parks originated with a place to become a National Park until much later. I think in the 1940s or 50s, niagra falls in new york. Before a lot of western expansion really started bringing awareness of the big monumental western landscapes that we have familiar with, before that, the early 1800s, niagra falls was considered one of the most stunning Natural Landscapes that north america had to offer. It is pretty darn stunning. I have never been there. Ive just seen pictures, but its pretty great. After the erie canal opened up easier transportation in the new york area, it became, it still doesnt seem fast to us. It would take at least two days to get from new york city to niagra falls, but that was instead of a week. So greatly easy. Greatly easier to get there and you have to big influx of tourists coming from new york and boston from sort of the urban cities wanting to go and visit niagra. This big old plats, they have their photograph taken. I couldnt find a date for this picture, but its clear ly sort of the late 1800s at some point, but one of the problems of nigh ar ra, the tourists alongside the beautiful falls having their photograph taken with the big view camera. One of the problems though was there werent any public controls in a way we once them now. Again, people just didnt have that cultural conception of governments stepping in to control space in any way. What part was youd get these little tourist stands. Saying hey, were going to sell pos pos postca postcard, may me a dollar, stand here and get the best view. There would be photographers supplying their trade and so you got all this sort of messiness messing up the scene. The grandeur of the falls get messy. Theres people selling the equivalent of hot dogs and cotton candy today, kind of messing up the view and a bunch of european visitors come to visit an they write criticism. They say, oh, these taqqcky americans, they would sell their grandmother the make a dollar. Theyre essentially ruining the view to have this sort of small scale entrepreneurial use. They just think its incredibly tacky. How dare they. This is a time when here in the u. S. , were kind of culturally sensitive. Were less than 100 years old as a nature, had recently sort of shaken off the influence of europe. Great britain specifically. Yet all cultural references are from europe. The writers we read, the painters we look at, the sense of high culture we look at is european. So theres this purr, especially when the europeans are now krit soyuzing us and saying theyre so tacky. To try and say what do we have. And one of the things they start to focus on are the Natural Landscapes that especially the western u. S. Sort of reveals as people with moving west. And so niagra falls becomes essentially a negative example sort of what not to do. We dont want to mess things up the way we did there. So when Yosemite Valley here in california is quote unquote discovered, by a batallion of military folks chasing americans up the versed river and sort of come out into this amazing valley and theyre stunned by this incredible scenery they see. Yosemite valley is pretty unlike almost anywhere on earth with these huge Granite Cliffs just sort of dominating this thing. So to this young u. S. Cultural at the time, these kinds of monumental unique stunning Natural Landscapes become symbolic of our National Pride. Saying hey, weve got something those crazy europeans dont have. We see a lot of descriptions of people moving across the territories and describing these territories. And saying how much cooler essentially these places are, like you could have some tum babled downcast l or you could have this amazing rampart of stone and granite and all this sort of comparison going on. It becomes very nationalistic to experience these kinds of landscapes. Its not just the landscape in this case. There was similar interest in the redwood trees, the redwoods here and in coastal california and se coias. Just the sheer size of these things. Theres all kinds of photographs sliced through trees with people posing by them or standing on the stump and seeing how many people they can fit on as like a dance floor. Just saying look how gigantic this is. This is better than any tree youll find in europe. And its taller and just you know, its what were doing tas great. The funniest thing for me about the giant trees is the botanists who are all about identifying species in sort of the early stages of biological science in the 1860s or so. They have this giant fight over what to call the trees with their latin name. The british botanists all wanted se coia wellingtonian. Then washingtonia. Instead, thankfully, sticked with sequoia gigantia. Which is more descriptive. This is a quote from surveyor Clarence King describing them in 1864. He writes no fragment of human work broken pillar or sand worn image hath lifted over pathetic desert. None of these linked to the past as today with anything like the power of these monuments of living an ttiquitantiquity. Its this natural past, this Natural History thats better than anything europe has. Its in part where the setting National Parks to keep the symbolic scenery pretty and powerful and not sort of messedmessed ed up the way niagra got messed up with these little shops and trinkets and stuff. Interestingly, its a little hard to see this map. The pink outline here is more or less the actually a little bit smaller than the current yosemite National Park. The park thats labeled in green is the original reservation is the aside, signed by lincoln in 1864. And as u k see, hopefully, from that map, all that was protected, the original protected area is very small. It was just the valley. And literally sort of the view shed of the valley. So if youre standing on the valley floor like where i took those photographs earlier by the river and youre looking up at a granite walls, the boundary of the protected area is the top of those walls. What were protecting here is the view. By making it into a public park. A government owned park is used to begin with. And california became part of the ewan youn. Trying to keep it nice and tidy so tourists are come and see this nationalistic pride. The original proposal for setting aside yosemite did not come from the public at large, which is sort of how we think about parks today that theyre for us and by us and all that sort of democratic language. The original proposer was from the steamship companies, which was bringing people from the east coast sort of around the horn and pringing people to california before the trans continental railroad. That was the only way of getting here other than a few people coming over land. They said everyones going to want to visit it and theyll have to pay us by steamship and stagecoach to take them there. Have them stay in our hotel well build then we take them back again. They pay us three times. This is great. So this is you know, it g