Nature's Army: When Soldiers Fought for Yosemite
2002; Oxford University Press; Volume: 89; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3092421
ISSN1945-2314
AutoresMarguerite S. Shaffer, Harvey Meyerson,
Tópico(s)American Environmental and Regional History
ResumoThe established canon of national park histories lauds a handful of high-minded preservationists including John Muir, Robert Marshall, and Aldo Leopold, among others, for defending undeveloped wilderness and defining the national park idea in the United States. Harvey Meyerson seeks to recover historical memory and redress that established canon by recounting the role of United States Army officers in protecting Yosemite National Park. In presenting a detailed history of the “Old Army” of nineteenth-century westward expansion and how it came to administer the park during its first twenty-five years, Nature's Army traces the origins of preservation and national park policy to the unique environmental ethic embraced by West Point-trained U.S. Cavalry officers. On May 17, 1891, Capt. Abram Epperson “Jug” Wood, commander of I troop, Fourth U.S. Cavalry, marched into the Wawona mountain valley to assume his duty as first acting superintendent of Yosemite National Park. for the next two decades, following the precedent set in Yellowstone, members of the United States Army surveyed, policed, and administered the park. In the absence of an established civilian government work force to manage Yosemite, U.S. Cavalry officers and their troops blazed trails, mapped, marked park boundaries, constructed roads, evicted trespassing herds of sheep and cattle, monitored tourists, and improvised park policy. Through this process they not only shaped Yosemite National Park as a physical entity but also transformed the national park idea into a functioning political reality.
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