(Left) Night at Valley View by Albert Bierstadt
Olmsted, who chaired the California state commission that administered the lands set aside in the 1864 Yosemite Grant, wrote this report articulating principles for managing scenic landscapes generally and Yosemite in particular.
Both programs gave members of the millennial generation important roles to honor the centennial goal of engaging “the next generation of park visitors, supporters, and advocates.” And they took the opportunity to remind everyone of the “founding principles” of our national parks movement as we prepare for our agency’s second century.
Dayton Duncan, Emmy Award-winning writer and producer of PBS’s The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, has called Olmsted’s Yosemite report “the first intellectual argument for national parks, and still the best.” While the report got suppressed for political reasons through the efforts of some of Olmsted’s fellow commissioners, it nevertheless influenced the evolution of our national parks and preservation of our scenic landscapes.
Olmsted would call upon these ideas in the 1880s when he advocated for the preservation of the New York side of Niagara Falls and wrote a general plan for the design and management of the Niagara Reservation. Olmsted’s son Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. would incorporate key ideas from the Yosemite report in the purpose section of the 1916 Organic Act, for which he was the lead author. And, according to Duncan, “we have found our way to Olmsted’s views” articulated in his report, despite its suppression.
Several months ago, staffs from Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in the Boston area and Yosemite National Park began discussions about holding companion public readings of Olmsted’s Yosemite report to help call attention to the report’s significance in the history of national parks. They agreed to be in regular contact and help publicize the two events together via social media, using the hashtag #Olmsted150.
The two parks later teamed up to promote a trip across country by Gerry Wright, a longtime Boston parks advocate who portrays Frederick Law Olmsted in a one-man play he wrote. Wright stopped at several NPS units along the way, including Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, Niagara Falls National Heritage Area, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Lincoln Home National Historic Site, and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, before participating in Yosemite’s commemoration.
On the East Coast, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site and partners held its commemoration outdoors at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, an Olmsted-designed landscape that is part of Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system. The particular area chosen was a grove of conifers right near the arboretum’s tallest of six giant sequoias in its tree collection. Ethan Carr, co-chair of the board for the National Association for Olmsted Parks, Shaun Eyring, chief of resource planning and compliance for Northeast Region, and Dayton Duncan discussed the report’s history, meaning, and continuing relevance.
The highlight of the event was ten people, including five youth representing Frederick Law Olmsted’s Stewards of the Future, the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation’s Branching Out, Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park’s Recreation interns, and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy’s Green Team, reading aloud important portions of Olmsted’s report.
Local flute ensemble the Maliotis Chamber Players of Boston Flute Academy performed three pieces during key moments, and Tom Woodward, president of the Friends of Fairsted, announced the finalists and winners of the Inspired by Olmsted visual art of creative writing contest this past spring. Open to Boston area high school students, this contest, which was developed by the park’s I&E staff and supported by the Friends, asked students to respond to four excerpts from the report through two-dimensional art or the written word. A crowd of roughly 160 attended the Planting the Seed for Our National Parks event.
On the West Coast, Yosemite staff and partners, including the Yosemite Conservancy, commemorated the 150th anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted’s landmark report with park visitors at a ceremony outdoors in Yosemite Valley.
Ranger Dean Shenk shared with the audience the historical significance of Olmsted’s report in the context of Olmsted’s vital role as the first commissioner of the Yosemite Grant. To highlight the next generation of park stewards, Yosemite youth program participants and rangers Moses Chun, Alejandra Guzman, and Jessica Rivas read passages from the report. During the readings, a quintet of musicians from the Mariposa Symphony Orchestra played original music that was composed specifically for the event and inspired by Olmsted’s words.
Yosemite was honored to also have Gerry Wright in attendance for the afternoon ceremony, portraying Olmsted and sharing his inspiration and motivations for writing the report. That evening, visitors were also treated to a special theater performance by Wright of his one-man play Frederick Law Olmsted: Passages in the Life of an Unpractical Man. Wright performed in front of a sold-out theater audience, sharing Olmsted’s life and the circumstances that led to the writing of his report, as well as his successful career designing and creating parks across the country.
Both park events highlighted the centrality of Olmsted’s ideas of government’s “political duty” to preserve and make available to all American’s scenic landscapes, the profound effect of such places on people’s physical and mental health, the fundamental right of the people in a democracy to have access to such places for “the pursuit of happiness,” and the stewardship responsibility to ensure that these places will be there for the benefit of future generations.
Submitted by Mark Swartz, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Kristen Kosick, Yosemite
For more information on Yosemite National Park by Frederick Law Olmsted : THE YOSEMITE VALLEY AND THE MARIPOSA BIG TREE GROVE By Frederick Law Olmsted 1865
Source: NPS
