Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea

Author:   Rolf Diamant ,  Ethan Carr
Publisher:   Library of American Landscape History
ISBN:  

9781952620348


Pages:   192
Publication Date:   10 March 2022
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
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Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea


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"How the work and writings of Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of American landscape architecture, inspired the creation of parks to benefit the public. During the turbulent decade the United States engaged in a civil war, abolished slavery, and remade the government, the public park emerged as a product of these dramatic changes. New York's Central Park and Yosemite in California both embodied the ""new birth of freedom"" that had inspired the Union during its greatest crisis, epitomizing the duty of republican government to enhance the lives and well-being of all its citizens. A central thread connecting the apparently disparate phenomena of abolition, the Civil War, and the dawn of urban and national parks is the life of Frederick Law Olmsted. Before collaborating on the design of Central Park, Olmsted had traveled as a journalist through the Southern states and published firsthand accounts of the inhumane conditions he found there, arguing that slavery had become an insurmountable obstacle to national progress. In 1864, he was asked to prepare a plan for a park in Yosemite Valley, created by Congress to redefine and expand the privileges of American citizenship associated with Union victory. His groundbreaking Yosemite Report effectively created an intellectual framework for a national park system. Here Olmsted expressed the core tenet of the national park idea and park making generally: that the republic should provide its citizenry access to the restorative benefits of nature. His vision was realized with the passage in 1916 of legislation that created the National Park Service, drafted in large measure by Olmsted Jr. and based on the ideas and aspirations fully expressed fifty years earlier in his father's report.The National Park Service has been slow to embrace the senior Olmsted's role in this history. In the early twentieth century, a period of ""reconciliation"" between North and South, National Park Service administrators preferred more anodyne narratives of pristine Western landscapes discovered by rugged explorers and spontaneously reimagined as national parks. They wanted a history disassociated from urban parks and the problems of industrializing cities and unburdened by the legacies of slavery and Native American dispossession.Marking the bicentennial of Olmsted's birth, the forthcoming book sets the historical record straight as it offers a new interpretation of how the American park--urban and national--came to figure so prominently in our cultural identity, and why this more complex and inclusive story deserves to be told."

Full Product Details

Author:   Rolf Diamant ,  Ethan Carr
Publisher:   Library of American Landscape History
Imprint:   Library of American Landscape History
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 2.60cm , Length: 23.80cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9781952620348


ISBN 10:   1952620341
Pages:   192
Publication Date:   10 March 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

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Reviews

"""Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.'s extensive legacy is familiar, but this book opens new avenues of appreciation and knowledge. The authors skillfully weave the story of the many people across the country who vigorously worked towards the creation of Yosemite Park, describing a surprising nexus where support for the Union and the abolition movement resulted in passage of a bill setting aside Yosemite and Mariposa Grove, paving the way for our National Parks.""--Janet Gracyk ""Eden, Spring 2022"" ""There are many explanations as to how the idea of National Parks originated. One theory is it spontaneously arose around a campfire in Yosemite National Park. Another is that conservationist John Muir or President Teddy Roosevelt came up with it. But in a new book, Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea, Ethan Carr, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, and Rolf Diamant, a professor at the University of Vermont, argue that the work and writings of Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of American landscape architecture, inspired the creation of parks to benefit the public...instead of considering National Parks distinct from urban parks, they should both be understood as part of the same broad movement towards public spaces. And Olmsted was a key figure in advancing this movement.""--Jared Green ""The Dirt, April 4, 2022"" ""Diamant and Carr are renowned for their knowledge of Olmsted and the period in which he lived. Their revision of popular history is compelling... their research is comprehensive and persuasive...you will learn a lot from Olmsted and Yosemite, about American history, politics, and of course, about the extraordinary Frederick Law Olmsted.""-- ""Garden Club of America, Library Recommends, April 2022"" ""Diamant and Carr convincingly make the case that the Yosemite Grant can and should be placed in the context of the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the consequent remaking of government.""--John Miles ""National Parks Traveler, May 3, 2022"" ""This is a thoughtful and nuanced treatise that proposes a new origin story for the emergence of the American park movement that changed the face of the United States and influenced international park practice. The authors met their stated goal to examine the development of the broader park idea both before the Civil War and in the ferment of the postwar period framed by the life and career of Olmsted Sr. As a final enticement to readers, the volume includes the full text of Olmsted's Preliminary Report upon the Yosemite and Big Tree Grove (August 1865). I strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in this topic pick it up and read it.""--Brenda Barrett ""Living Landscape Observer, April 27, 2022"""


Diamant and Carr are renowned for their knowledge of Olmsted and the period in which he lived. Their revision of popular history is compelling... their research is comprehensive and persuasive...you will learn a lot from Olmsted and Yosemite, about American history, politics, and of course, about the extraordinary Frederick Law Olmsted. -- Garden Club of America, Library Recommends, April 2022 Diamant and Carr convincingly make the case that the Yosemite Grant can and should be placed in the context of the Civil War, the end of slavery, and the consequent remaking of government. --John Miles National Parks Traveler, May 3, 2022 Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.'s extensive legacy is familiar, but this book opens new avenues of appreciation and knowledge. The authors skillfully weave the story of the many people across the country who vigorously worked towards the creation of Yosemite Park, describing a surprising nexus where support for the Union and the abolition movement resulted in passage of a bill setting aside Yosemite and Mariposa Grove, paving the way for our National Parks.--Janet Gracyk Eden, Spring 2022 This is a thoughtful and nuanced treatise that proposes a new origin story for the emergence of the American park movement that changed the face of the United States and influenced international park practice. The authors met their stated goal to examine the development of the broader park idea both before the Civil War and in the ferment of the postwar period framed by the life and career of Olmsted Sr. As a final enticement to readers, the volume includes the full text of Olmsted's Preliminary Report upon the Yosemite and Big Tree Grove (August 1865). I strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in this topic pick it up and read it. --Brenda Barrett Living Landscape Observer, April 27, 2022 There are many explanations as to how the idea of National Parks originated. One theory is it spontaneously arose around a campfire in Yosemite National Park. Another is that conservationist John Muir or President Teddy Roosevelt came up with it. But in a new book, Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea, Ethan Carr, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, and Rolf Diamant, a professor at the University of Vermont, argue that the work and writings of Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of American landscape architecture, inspired the creation of parks to benefit the public...instead of considering National Parks distinct from urban parks, they should both be understood as part of the same broad movement towards public spaces. And Olmsted was a key figure in advancing this movement. --Jared Green The Dirt, April 4, 2022


Author Information

Rolf Diamant is a landscape architect, adjunct associate professor of historic preservation at the University of Vermont, and former superintendent of five national parks including Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. He is coeditor and contributing author of A Thinking Person's Guide to America's National Parks (George Braziller, New York, 2016.) and regularly contributes to the journal Parks Stewardship Forum. In his spare time, Rolf has led small boat trips in kayaks and white-water rafts from Alaska's Brook Range to the coast of New England. Ethan Carr, FASLA, is professor of landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an international authority on America's public landscapes. He is author of Wilderness by Design: Landscape Architecture and the National Park Service, Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma, and The Greatest Beach: A History of Cape Cod National Seashore, lead editor of Public Nature: Scenery, History, and Park Design, and coeditor of Volume 8 of The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted. Carr consults with landscape architecture firms developing plans and designs for historic parks of all types.

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