Customer Reviews

Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction

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The National Park Service's (NPS) 1918 statement of policy says that "in the construction of roads, trails, buildings and other improvements, particular attention must be devoted always to the harmonizing of these improvements with the landscape" (123). Linda Flint McLelland's Building the National Parks explains how this was done in the early days of the NPS. Over and over again, the book reminds readers that such improvements, especially those in the Civilian Conservation Corps era, were built so that the landscape was not injured and so they would, as much as they could, blend in to the natural environment.

The volume's explanation of the early construction of campgrounds is one of the more interesting examples of how early NPS landscaping attempted to lessen the impact on the environment. Plant pathologist E.P. Meinecke, known as the father of the modern campground, discovered that human activity caused a myriad of ecological problems and therefore applied his understanding of plant ecology to campground planning and design (279). Meinecke chose campground sites by type of soil, density of vegetation and then "divided up into individual campsites of legitimate sizes, each one offering approximately as much privacy, shade, and other advantages as the other (278). Environmentally conscious readers will hopefully think twice before camping somewhere outside an established campground.

The book presents facts and statistics well, but doesn't tell an engaging story. For instance, the volume lists the overall park visitation statistics from 1914 to 1918, which demonstrates a significant rise, but never offers any analysis on why those numbers augmented. Many journalism professors tell their students to "show, don't tell." McLelland's text tells, but doesn't show. Many pages feel like an organized list of particulars in paragraph form, offering little or no analysis. The pictures and their accompanying captions tell the best story. When investigating landscapes and landscape elements, visual presentation shows more and leaves a more lasting impression than any page of text.

Building the National Parks' title is somewhat misleading. The book also discusses landscaping in numerous state parks across the country. "Building Yosemite and Other Selected National Parks" would not be a far-fetched title as McLelland chronicles nearly every landscape decision at Yosemite and doesn't give other deserving national parks equal share. Perhaps 1916-1940 should be placed in the title after "construction," since that period is the book's focus. The last chapter covers the history of landscaping since 1940 and proves itself as a fascinating portion of the volume, explaining that the "naturalistic harmonies" in NPS landscape design once strictly adhered to have been thrown by the wayside with emphasis on functionality and safety rather than aesthetics (462-467). It goes to show that the period of 1916-1940 was truly the golden age of the national parks.