The Library of Congress's General Collection and Rare Book and Special Collections Division are represented in this collection by 62 books and pamphlets, most in searchable text as well as page-image form. These works have been chosen for this collection from among the several million volumes in these divisions of the Library because they particularly illuminate the spectrum of themes, issues, and influences that defined American conservationism in its formative years: the major theoretical and philosophical statements that shaped conservationists' thought and feeling; the evolution of conservation policy and the growth of conservation awareness in the public mind, including the importance of such correlative issues as public lands management, forestry, Western irrigation, and the development of inland waterways, and the role of public activities such as Arbor Day observance; the potent literary and aesthetic currents that re-imagined the natural world as a source of recreation, contemplation, sensuous enjoyment, sympathetic moral tutelage, and spiritual inspiration, and the ramification of this cultural sensibility in a variety of modes from popular nature and travel literature to the invention of national parks; the related growth of popular interest in birds and other wildlife and their protection; the critical role of patrician sportsmen and other private individuals as conservation advocates, notably through the establishment of private organizations espousing game and wilderness preservation; and the definitive influence of science and technology, whether in geographic exploration, natural resource management, formative developments in ecology and conservation-related biology, or in the first stirrings of concern to gauge and manage the impact of environmental pollution on human welfare. The significance of conservation policy developments at the state level is exemplified in a case file of documents on New York's efforts to preserve the beauty of Niagara Falls; while a small archive of material documenting the Hetch Hetchy controversy exposes the strengths and contradictions of the American conservation movement as it reached its first maturity and patterned its identities for the century to come.
The collection also includes two bibliographies compiled in 1912--one by the Library of Congress, the other by the Department of the Interior--that direct the reader to a full range of contemporary material on natural resource conservation and on the national parks, much of which is still accessible to researchers in the collections of the Library of Congress and elsewhere. Additional bibliographies of Library resources related to early conservation history are appended below.
The following is a topically-organized list of materials included in this collection that have been drawn from the Library's General Collection and Rare Book and Special Collections Division:
1. CONTEMPORARY BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Dept. of the Interior. List of National Park Publications. 1912.
2. CONSERVATION POLICY AND PUBLIC EDUCATION
Gregory, Mary
Huston. Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation. 1911.
Van Hise, Charles Richard. The Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States. 1910.
3. CONSERVATION POLICY: CONFERENCES, COMMISSIONS AND CONGRESSES
Addresses and
Proceedings of the First National Conservation Congress. 1909.
Report of the NationalConservation Commission, vol. 1, 1909.
4. NATIONAL FORESTS AND FORESTRY
Fernow, Bernhard. Economics of Forestry. 1902.
Hough, Franklin B. On the Duty of Governments in the Preservation of Forests. 1873.
Muir, John. Our National Parks. 1901.
6. IRRIGATION
Powell, J[ohn]
W[esley]. Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States.
1879.
Smythe, William E. The Conquest of Arid America. 1900.
7. INLAND WATERWAYS
Quick, Herbert.
American Inland Waterways. 1909.
8. PUBLIC LANDS
Proceedings of
the Public Land Convention held in Denver, Colorado, June 18, 19, 20, 1907.
1907.
Report of the Public Lands Commission. 1905.
9. WILDLIFE, BIRDS, AND THEIR PROTECTION
Bird-Lore, Vol.
I. 1899.
Hornaday, William Temple. Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation. 1913.
10. ARBOR AND BIRD DAYS
Babcock, Charles A. Bird Day: How to Prepare for It.
1901.
Egleston,
N[athaniel] H[illyer]. Arbor Day Leaves. 1893.
11. POLLUTION CONTROL AND "HUMAN CONSERVATION"
Flagg, Samuel B.
City Smoke Ordinances and Smoke Abatement. 1912.
Richards, Ellen H. Conservation by Sanitation. 1911.
12. PRIVATE CONSERVATION ORGANIZATIONS
Publications of
the Sierra Club, nos. 1, 2, and 3: Articles of Association...[etc.];
Sierra Club Bulletin, Vol. I, No. 1; Sierra Club Bulletin, Vol. I,
No. 2; 1892-1893.
13. SPORTSMEN AS CONSERVATIONISTS
Grinnell, G.B., ed.
American Big Game In Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club.
1904.
14. SCENIC AND TRAVEL WRITING
Bowles,
Samuel. Our New West. Records of Travel Between the Mississippi River and the
Pacific Ocean. 1869.
Hammond, Samuel H. Wild Northern Scenes; or, Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and Rod. 1857.
King, Clarence. Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada. 1902.
Table Rock Album and Sketches of the Falls and Scenery Adjacent. 1850.
15. LITERARY AND AESTHETIC ATTITUDES
Austin, Mary.
The Land of Little Rain. 1903.
Magoon, Elias Lyman, et al. The Home Book of the Picturesque. 1852.
Van Dyke, John Charles. The Mountain: Renewed Studies in Impressions and Appearances. 1916.
16. POPULAR NATURE WRITING
Burroughs, John.
In the Catskills. 1910.
Sharp, Dallas Lore. The Lay of the Land. 1908.
Thompson, Ernest Seton. Wild Animals I Have Known, and 200 Drawings. 1898.
17. SCIENTIFIC AND MILITARY EXPLORATION
Bunnell, Lafayette
Houghton. Discovery of the Yosemite and the Indian War of 1851, Which Led to
That Event. 1892.
Dutton, Clarence E[dward]. The Physical Geography of the Grand Canon District. 1882.
18. ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION-RELATED BIOLOGY
Clements, Frederic
E. Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation.
1916.
19. THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS
Bailey, L[iberty]
H[yde]. The Holy Earth. 1915.
Marsh, George P[erkins]. Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. 1864.
Muir, John. The Mountains of California. 1894.
Muir, John. My First Summer in the Sierra. 1911.
Pinchot, Gifford. The Fight for Conservation. 1910.
Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate. Man and the Earth. 1905.
Thoreau, Henry D[avid]. Excursions. 1863.
20. STATE-LEVEL CONSERVATION EFFORTS: THE NEW YORK NIAGARA EXAMPLE
Carter, James
C[oolidge]. The Reservation of Niagara. An Address Delivered at the
Celebration of the Opening of the Niagara Reservation. 1885.
21. THE HETCH HETCHY CONTROVERSY
Branson, Isaac
Reichelderfer. Yosemite Against Corporation Greed; Shall Half of Yosemite
National Park be destroyed by San Francisco?. 1909.
Hetch Hetchy Reservoir Site. Hearing before the Senate Committee on Public Lands, 1913. 1913.
Hetch Hetchy Dam Site. Two Hearings before the House Committee on the Public Lands, 1913. 1913.
Those who are able to visit the Library in person may also be interested in
some of the General Collection's and Rare Book and Special Collections
Division's many additional resources on the early history of American
conservationism and its cultural matrix, as suggested by the titles on the
following lists:
1. Scenic and Wilderness Travel
Literature
2. The Nature Essay
3. Popular Ornithology
4.
Sportsmen and Conservationism
5. State-Level
Fish and Game Conservation Measures
6. Arbor and
Bird Day Observance
7. Nature and Wilderness as
Recreational Resources
8. The Hetch Hetchy
Controversy
9. State-Level Conservation
Initiatives Following the Governors' Conference of 1908
10. Juvenile Nature Literature and Nature Pedagogy