Dennis Drabelle - The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the Origin of National Parks

Tracing the national park concept back to Thoreau, the artist George Catlin, and even Edmund Burkes notion of the sublime, Drabelle gives us a vivid portrait of perhaps the most influential proponent of landscape preservation: the ubiquitous Frederick Law Olmsted. This absorbing book is a feast of ideas, anecdotes, and insights and a welcome reminder that the national parks were already a great idea when Theodore Roosevelt was still in short pants.

Gary Krist, New York Timesbest-selling author of The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles

Engaging and entertaining. Drabelles stitching-together of the loose threads of American thought that shaped not only Frederick Law Olmsteds vision of nature and the salve it could provide to the public but also the origin of the national parks is a compelling and inspiring read. The Power of Sceneryadds as much to our current conversations about the future of Americas parks as it illuminates their creation.

Michael W. Childers, author of Colorado Powder Keg: Ski Resorts and the Environmental Movement

Publication supported by a grant from

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

as part of the Urban Haven Project

Dennis Drabelle

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln

2021 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image: Yosemite Fallsby Thomas Hill. In the public domain.

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Drabelle, Dennis, author.

Title: The power of scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted and the origin of national parks / Dennis Drabelle.

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021015299

ISBN 9781496220776 (hardback)

ISBN 9781496230133 (epub)

ISBN 9781496230140 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : Olmsted, Frederick Law, 1822-1903. | National parks and reservesUnited StatesHistory. | ConservationistsUnited StatesBiography. | Yosemite National Park (Calif.)History. | Yellowstone National ParkHistory. | Niagara Falls State Park (N.Y.)History. | United StatesEnvironmental conditions19th century. | BISAC : HISTORY / United States / 19th Century | NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection

Classification: LCC SB 482. A 4 D 73 2021 | DDC 363.6/80973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015299

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

In memory of my grandmothers, Claudia Franklin Drabelle and Mabel Boyer

Parks are so widespread todayas green spaces designed and maintained in cities or as wild tracts preserved in a more or less natural state by governments all over the worldthat they seem to be an age-old feature of civilized life. In fact, before the nineteenth century, urban parks open to all were rarities, and public wilderness parks did not exist. The first example of the latter, Yosemite state park in California, wasnt established until 1864; Americas and the worlds first national park, Yellowstone, followed eight years later.

This book is an attempt to explain where the idea for national parks came from. The answer given by the great American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was the Genius of Civilization.