A Brief History of Public Lands in American Politics, Pt 2.: The Pre-Conservation Era

In Part One of our story on the history of Public Lands in the United States and why they matter, we looked at the early years immediately after the Louisiana Purchase of 1830 through the Homesteading Era of Manifest Destiny. Part Two of this series investigates the early influencers who set the stage for people like John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt who led the Conservation Era of the late 1890’s and early 1900’s.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park, Public Lands
Bison in Yellowstone National Park. ph: Charles Watkins

Part Two: Setting the Stage for the Conservation Era of Public Lands

After the conclusion of the Civil War, America’s attention was drawn away from the Mid-Atlantic and Southern states and towards the Louisiana Purchase territories. Many of the war’s veterans were called westward and asked to either explore or maintain the young nation’s new frontier. Some of those men and women, like John Wesley Powell and Ferdinand Hayden, became enchanted with the vast unspoiled beauty of the West and would go on to explore it again and again. These early pioneers would plant the seeds of conserving the West’s beauty and bounty for future generations to come.

John Wesley Powell, the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon

john wesley powell grand canyon arizona
John Wesley Powell with Guide at Grand Canyon, Arizona

Starting in 1867, Powell led a series of expeditions into the Rocky Mountains and headwaters of the Grand (now Colorado) River, including a first ascent of Colorado‘s 14,259’ Longs Peak in 1868. In May 1869, Powell and his team of adventurers, explorers and scientists set out to explore the length of the Green and Grand Rivers through present day Wyoming, Utah and Arizona. With a team of nine men, four boats and enough food for 10 months, Powell’s expedition braved the violent, uncharted whitewater of the Grand Canyon and eventually succeeded in their ambition, completing the harrowing journey on August 30, 1869.

The experience would forever color John Wesley Powell‘s appreciation of the West.  Soon he would become the 2nd director of the US Geological Survey and be an early champion of Conservation and land preservation. Except for about 2% of the lands that were near reliable water sources, he believed that the arid West was not suitable for widespread agricultural development. He also believed that part of the progression of any maturing society would naturally include the proactive management of its natural resources.

Railroad companies, unsurprisingly, did not agree with Powell’s views. They hoped that their Homestead Act era investments would continue to pay off by portraying an image of the West that was conducive to agriculture. Through aggressive lobbying, the U.S. Congress would develop legislation that encouraged pioneer settlement of the American West based on an agricultural use of land.

Galen Clark, Mariposa Grove and the Yosemite Valley

In 1848, Galen Clark was just another anonymous Gold Rusher headed to California. Like many, he sought a fortune in the state’s vast resources of precious metals. Galen contracted tuberculosis upon arriving to California and was prompted by his doctor to move inland. Through a lucky twist of fate, he moved to an area that would eventually become known as the Yosemite Valley.

“I went to the mountains to take my chances of dying or growing better, which I thought were about even.”

Galen Clark, 1856
Galen Clark and the Mariposa Grove
Galen Clark and the Mariposa Grove near what is known today as Yosemite Valley.

While seeking the therapeutic benefits of rest and clean outdoor air, Galen discovered the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoia trees. The massive trees would leave a deep impression upon Galen. He would continue to go there and spend most of his time exploring and teaching others about the giants.

Galen also wrote about protecting the special grove of trees to friends and the US Congress. He contributed to the writing and passage of legislation to protect the area, gaining support of US Senator John Conness from California. The Act for the Yosemite Grant was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and ceded the land to the state of California for preservation. The grant was the first of its kind, protecting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for “…public use, resort, and recreation… to be left inalienable for all time.” Galen would go on to become the first “guardian of the Grant.”

Yosemite would later become one of the nation’s first National Parks – but not without some political pushback.  Local California newspapers lamented the attempts to preserve the Yosemite’s Hetch Hetchy Valley – calling opponents “…a crowd of nature lovers and fakers, who are waging a sentimental campaign to preserve the Hetch Hetchy Valley as a public playground, a purpose for which it has never been used.” The conflict over the Hetch Hetchy would be a defining moment in the early 1900’s. It continues to guide policies for the National Park Service to this day.

Ferdinand Hayden and The Yellowstone

The Public Lands that make up the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem lay at the convergence of several Native American cultures. Ancestors of the Crow, Kiowa, Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and Shoshone were all familiar with the area’s unusual geography. Colonial Americans from the Eastern States, however, were skeptical of early reports of the region’s fanciful geological features. The rumors of the Nebraska Territory‘s steam belching, sulfuric mud pots were too impossible to be taken seriously. It wasn’t until the early 1870’s until enough information was recorded by early Anglo explorers to motivate the US Army to deploy its’ first properly funded military expeditions into the area.

Lead-Hayden-Expedition-Ferdinand-Hayden-geologist-in-charge-at-Yellowstone-National-Park-public lands
Ferdinand Hayden at Yellowstone National Park

While Ferdinand Hayden’s name will not go down in history as the original discoverer of Yellowstone, he has gone down for being the area’s most vocal original advocate. An Army Surgeon and another Civil War veteran, Hayden would eventually leave the Army to lead geological surveys of the Nebraska and Western Territories in the 1860’s. In 1871, eleven years after his first attempt at reaching Yellowstone, Hayden led a Geological Survey to northwestern Wyoming with 50 men, including Thomas Moran, renowned landscape painter, and William Henry Jackson, famous frontier photographer. Together the team would record their experiences and publish, “Preliminary Report of the United States Geological Survey of Montana and Portions of Adjacent Territories; Being a Fifth Annual Report of Progress” in 1872. This report would be instrumental in convincing the US Congress to establish Yellowstone as the world’s first National Park.

Hayden’s passion for Yellowstone went far beyond this initial, official publication. So convinced of the rare value of the Yellowstone region, that his belief in “…setting aside the area as a pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people” was absolute.  He would go on to warn contemporaries of his time that there were those who would come and “…make merchandise of these beautiful specimens.” Worrying the area could face the same fate as Niagara Falls, he concluded the site should “be as free as the air or water.” In his report to the Committee on Public Lands, he concluded that the bill to establish Yellowstone as a National Park must become law.

…the vandals who are now waiting to enter into this wonder-land, will in a single season despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable curiosities, which have required all the cunning skill of nature thousands of years to prepare.

Ferdinand Hayden, 1872

Echos of Yellowstone’s Present Era Public Lands

Once established, Yellowstone National Park was not yet “out of the woods.” There was an immediate backlash to the Park and its’ more restrictive land use regulations. Some of the region’s local residents feared that the economy would be unable to thrive with the prohibitions against resource development and settlement. Local entrepreneurs advocated for reducing the size of the park so that mining, hunting, and logging activities could resume. Montana based Congressional representatives made numerous legal attempts to redraw Yellowstone’s boundaries, ease regulations, or both. None of which were successful.

Mt. Haynes Yellowstone National Park
Mt. Haynes Yellowstone National Park. ph: Charles Watkins

While Yellowstone National Park was weathering legal attacks in Washington DC, it would also weather attacks within its own newly formed Public Lands boundaries. The park’s first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, would report wide-scale poaching, vandalism, and unapproved resource extractions. Langford, who was not only was denied a salary, funding, or staff to protect the park, was also denied the regulations necessary to protect the park’s designation.

Aware of the park’s amazing natural value, Langford predicted that Yellowstone would become a major international attraction, and deserved ongoing stewardship from the government. In 1874, Langford advocated for the creation of a new federal agency whose sole purpose would be to protect the vast park. Despite the seemingly obvious need, latent opposition in Congress persisted and the request was refused.

In 1875, Colonel William Ludlow, who had previously explored areas of Montana under the command of George Armstrong Custer, was assigned to organize and lead an expedition to Montana and the new Park. Observations about the lawlessness and exploitation of park resources were included in Ludlow’s Report of a Reconnaissance to the Yellowstone National Park.  The report included letters and attachments by other expedition members, including naturalist and mineralogist George Bird Grinnell. Grinnell documented the excessive poaching of buffalo, deer, elk, and antelope in the area.

It would take the continued presence of the US Army in the area to stem the lawlessness that continued on through the 1880’s and 90’s. Over the next 22 years, that protective troop would establish many of the original management principles that would eventually be used by the National Park Service when it was later formed in 1916.


Coming In Part 3 of, “Understanding Public Lands and Why They Matter,”

We meet the legends of the Conservation Era. John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and President Teddy Roosevelt would lead the U.S. into new ways of valuing the vast beautiful landscapes of the West.

Teddy Roosevelt above Yosemite Valley, public lands
Teddy Roosevelt in Yosemite