Date on Senior Honors Thesis
5-2021
Document Type
Senior Honors Thesis
Degree Name
B.A.
Department
History
Degree Program
College of Arts and Sciences
Author's Keywords
Environmental History; Western History; Environmental Ethics; Wilderness; Intellectual History
Abstract
This thesis examines how Early American environmental groups— Romantic Transcendentalists, Preservationists, and Conservationists— interpreted wilderness. The paper argues nineteenth-century Romantic-Transcendental Preservationists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and later John Muir understood American Wilderness as an Eden that ought to be preserved and left untouched. In the early twentieth century, Forester Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt argued against preservationist attitudes toward wilderness, arguing wilderness ought to be wisely used in order to generate prosperity for current and future generations. The thesis illustrates how two different approaches to land use emerged as the United States responded to the impacts of Westward expansion: (1) the romantic-transcendental preservation ethic and (2) the resource conservation ethic. By analyzing preservation and conservation texts and congressional hearings regarding land use in policies in the West, the thesis tracks how wilderness became a symbol of American identity. During the Roosevelt Administration, the social contract between humans and nature was signed into law and ideas on wilderness were transformed into United States Land Use Policy. Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt expanded the United States Public Land system and established federal protection of wilderness.
Recommended Citation
Paulovich, Arabella A, "The idea of wilderness and United States land use policy: American Transcendentalism, preservation, and conservation, 1835-1914." (2021). College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses. Paper 240.
Retrieved from https://ir.library.louisville.edu/honors/240
Lay Summary
This thesis examines how Early American environmental groups— Romantic Transcendentalists, Preservationists, and Conservationists— interpreted wilderness. The paper argues nineteenth-century Romantic-Transcendental Preservationists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and later John Muir understood American Wilderness as an Eden that ought to be preserved and left untouched. In the early twentieth century, Forester Gifford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt argued against preservationist attitudes toward wilderness, arguing wilderness ought to be wisely used in order to generate prosperity for current and future generations. The thesis illustrates how two different approaches to land use emerged as the United States responded to the impacts of Westward expansion: (1) the romantic-transcendental preservation ethic and (2) the resource conservation ethic. By analyzing preservation and conservation texts and congressional hearings regarding land use in policies in the West, the thesis tracks how wilderness became a symbol of American identity. During the Roosevelt Administration, the social contract between humans and nature was signed into law and ideas on wilderness were transformed into United States Land Use Policy. Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt expanded the United States Public Land system and established federal protection of wilderness.
