The changing American conception of the wilderness as evidenced in the development of the national park system

Throughout the development of our country attitudes toward wilderness have gradually evolved, reflecting ever changing values and concerns. While colonial man viewed wilderness with fear and distaste and believed the worth of such areas was solely dependent on the economic value of its resources, his modern counterpart has begun to realize that the absolute preservation of wilderness is desirable and necessary in order to protect important inspirational, educational and ecological values generated from these lands. It follows that the federal agency we consider to be one of the largest holders of wilderness lands—the National Park Service—has not always employed wilderness preservation as a major criterion for national park establishment. The intent of this thesis is, thus, to trace the evolution of national attitudes toward wilderness through an examination of the development of the national park system, focusing on the types of parks created in different periods of time and the rationale used to justify park establishment. In this investigation the national park system was divided into five peak periods of establishment. Two parks were then selected from each period for examination as representative case studies. It was found that the parks of each period tended to possess similar physical characteristics, featured objects of preservation and rationale for inclusion into the system. As the park system developed a gradual broadening of concerns was apparent. With the introduction of new rationale and featured objects of preservation from peak to peak, rarely were previous concerns displaced entirely. Thus, the overall development of the park system can be interpreted as an additive process, resulting in the representation of an entire spectrum of environmental concerns by the fifth period of park establishment.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Landscape Architecture

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Landscape Architecture

Department dc:contributor.department

Landscape Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Year dc:date.issued

1986

Author dc:creator

• Burns, Barbara B.

• United States. -- History

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/52051

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/52051