The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920

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Go directly to the collection, The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection.

This collection features fine examples of descriptive writing on travel, scenery, and nature topics. Students can review examples of descriptive writing in the collection, then try their hand at writing a description of a trip, scenic area, or natural element from their own experience.

Sunset (California Scenery); L. Prang & Co., 1864.

For example, in the 1908 book The Lay of the Land by Dallas Lore Sharp, students can find lyrical descriptions of nature such as:

(page 1) We have had a series of long, heavy rains, and water is standing over the swampy meadow. It is a dreary stretch, this wet, sedgy land in the cold twilight, drearier than any part of the woods or the upland pastures. They are empty, but the meadow is flat and wet, naked and all unsheltered. And a November night is falling.

The darkness deepens. A raw wind is rising. At nine o„clock the moon swings round and full to the crest of the ridge, and pours softly over. I button the heavy ulster close, and in my rubber boots go down to the river and follow it out to the middle of the meadow, where it meets the main ditch at the sharp turn toward the swamp. Here at the bend, behind a clump of black alders, I sit quietly down and wait. I am not mad, nor melancholy; I am not after copy. Nothing is the matter with me. I have come out to the bend to watch the muskrats building, for that small mound up the ditch is not an old haycock, but a half-finished muskrat house.

Search on essay, nature writing, travel, and wildlife to find examples of descriptive writing.

2) Persuasive Argument

Throughout the collection, persuasive writing and speeches champion causes such as conservation, public access to wild lands, and preservation. Students can study the collection to find examples of persuasive argument, then stage a mock debate -- taking two sides of an issue covered. For example, students can research the Hetch Hetchy Dam controversy. John Muir, leading preservationist and founder of the Sierra Club, led the fight against the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley as a reservoir for the city of San Francisco. Muir wrote many eloquent essays about Hetch Hetchy.

Yosemites Domes Carleton E. Watkins, photographer. [ca. 1865 or 1866]

In the pamphlet entitled, Let everyone help to save the famous Hetch-Hetchy Valley..., Muir calls on the public to fight to preserve the valley. Muir combined his own writing and quotations from others to outline the case for preserving the valley, and to show what supporters could do to persuade Congress to defeat the dam. The pamphlet outlines many steps for influencing the debate in Congress, including:

(page 20)

1. Write at once to Hon. Richard A. Ballinger, Secretary of the Inerior [sic], Washington, D. C., requesting him to revoke the Garfield permit to flood the Hetch-Hetchy Valley.

2. Send a copy of the letter to President William H. Taft.

3. See personally if possible, or write to, the Seantors [sic] and Congress-men from your State, and as many others as you can reach, requesting them to vigorously oppose any bill having for its object the confimation [sic] of the Garfield permit to flood Hetch-Htchy Vally [sic], and request them to favor legislation to protect our parks from invasion, and particularly to favor improving the Yosemite Park....

Search on debate, Hetch Hetchy, and Muir to find persuasive arguments for and against conservation issues of the day.

3) Journal Writing

Several interesting examples of journals and journal-like documents are included in the collection. Students can review these documents, then write and illustrate their own nature journals or travel journals.

For example, students might research The Harriman Alaska Expedition: Chronicles and Souvenirs May to August 1899. This was the private souvenir album created by members of a scientific expedition to the Alaskan coast in the summer of 1899. The expedition party included the family of railroad magnate Edward Harriman (who funded the trip) and scientific, literary, and artistic thinkers who contributed to the album.

Students might also read passages from travel journals such as Ramblings through the High Sierra, in which Joseph Le Conte describes a five week horseback and camping trip to the Yosemite Valley and the High Sierras in the summer of 1870.

The Falls of Niagara Currier & Ives. [c1868]

Students might also discover The Table Rock Album [1850] which published entries from public albums provided at Table Rock, a site for tourists viewing Niagara Falls in the mid-nineteenth century. (Table Rock has since tumbled into the Falls). The album records impressions of ordinary men and women seeing the beauty and grandeur of wild American scenery. One entry says:

(page 95) In the evening I again visited the Cataract to behold it by moonlight. Taking my seat on a projecting rock, at a little distance from the Falls I gazed till my senses were almost entirely absorbed in the contemplation of this most magnificent scene. Although the shades of night increased the sublimity of the prospect, and ėdeepened the murmur of the falling flood,ķ the moon, in placid beauty, shed her soft influence upon the mind, and mitigated the terror of the scene. The thunders which bellowed from the abyss, and the brilliancy of the falling waters, which glistened like molten silver in the moonlight, seemed to exhibit in absolute perfection the rare union of the beautiful and sublime.

-- Thomas Day

Search on album and journal to find writings, logs, sketches, and reminiscences of travel and nature.