Book ID: CBB001420363

Making Rocky Mountain National Park: The environmental history of an American treasure (2013)

unapi

Frank, Jerry J. (Author)


University Press of Kansas


Publication Date: 2013
Physical Details: xiv + 253 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

On September 4, 1915, hundreds of people gathered in Estes Park, Colorado, to celebrate the creation of Rocky Mountain National Park. This new nature preserve held the promise of peace, solitude, and rapture that many city dwellers craved. As Jerry Frank demonstrates, however, the park is much more than a lovely place. Rocky Mountain National Park was a keystone in broader efforts to create the National Park Service, and its history tells us a great deal about Colorado, tourism, and ecology in the American West. To Frank, the tensions between tourism and ecology have played out across a natural stage that is anything but passive. At nearly every turn the National Park Service found itself face-to-face with an environment that was difficult to anticipate--and impossible to control. Frank first takes readers back to the late nineteenth century, when Colorado boosters--already touting the Rocky Mountains' restorative power for lung patients--set out to attract more tourists and generate revenue for the state. He then describes how an ecological perspective came to Rocky in fits and starts, offering a new way of imagining the park that did not sit comfortably with an entrenched management paradigm devoted to visitor recreation and comfort. Frank examines a wide range of popular activities including driving, hiking, skiing, fishing, and wildlife viewing to consider how they have impacted the park's flora and fauna, often leaving widespread transformation in their wake. He subjects the decisions of park officials to close but evenhanded scrutiny, showing how in their zeal to return the park to what they understood as its natural state, they have tinkered with its features--sometimes with less than desirable results. Today's Rocky Mountain National Park serves both competing visions, maintaining accessible roads and vistas for the convenience of tourists while guarding its backcountry to preserve ecological values. As the park prepares to celebrate its centennial, Frank's book advances our understanding of its past while also providing an important touchstone for addressing its problems in the present and future"-- "Challenging the view that national parks are sanctuaries separate from human-built society, Frank's environmental history of Colorado's iconic Rocky Mountain National Park reveals how nature was constructed to accommodate consumerism yet still plays an unplanned role in visitors' experiences. The reader learns not only what changes were made but also why they occurred, with much of the park's history understandable as a contest between tourism and ecology vying to impose their competing models.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Douglas W. Dodd (2015) Review of "Making Rocky Mountain National Park: The environmental history of an American treasure". Journal of American History (pp. 269-270). unapi

Review Keiter, Robert B. (2014) Review of "Making Rocky Mountain National Park: The environmental history of an American treasure". Environmental History (pp. 587-588). unapi

Review Skillen, James R. (2014) Review of "Making Rocky Mountain National Park: The environmental history of an American treasure". American Historical Review (p. 1717). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001420363/

Similar Citations

Book Philpott, William; (2013)
Vacationland: Tourism and Environment in the Colorado High Country (/isis/citation/CBB001420365/)

Book Rothman, Hal; Miller, Char; (2013)
Death Valley National Park: A History (/isis/citation/CBB001422339/)

Book Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela; (2014)
The Nature of Childhood: An Environmental History of Growing up in America since 1865 (/isis/citation/CBB001422358/)

Book Benjamin Wilkie; (2020)
Gariwerd: An Environmental History of the Grampians (/isis/citation/CBB747309718/)

Chapter Blavascunas, Eunice; (2013)
Signals in the Forest: Cultural Boundaries of Science in Białowieża, Poland (/isis/citation/CBB001420344/)

Article O'Brien, William E.; Njambi, Wairim Ngar iya; (2012)
Marginal Voices in “Wild” America: Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and “Nature” in The National Parks (/isis/citation/CBB001202113/)

Book O. Alan Weltzien; (2016)
Exceptional Mountains: A Cultural History of the Pacific Northwest Volcanoes (/isis/citation/CBB606577407/)

Book Sinclair, Anthony; (2012)
Serengeti Story: Life and Science in the World's Greatest Wildlife (/isis/citation/CBB001421438/)

Book Jeffrey P. Shepherd; (2019)
Guadalupe Mountains National Park: an environmental history of the Southwest borderlands (/isis/citation/CBB370794172/)

Book Laubach, Stephen A.; (2014)
Living a Land Ethic: A History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve (/isis/citation/CBB001422346/)

Book Andrew Denning; (2015)
Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History (/isis/citation/CBB064408937/)

Book Lewis, Michael L.; (2007)
American Wilderness: A New History (/isis/citation/CBB000930098/)

Thesis Carlson, Charles Royal; (2012)
Some Philosophical Origins of an Ecological Sensibility (/isis/citation/CBB001567408/)

Book Grusin, Richard A.; (2004)
Culture, Technology, and the Creation of America's National Parks (/isis/citation/CBB001035594/)

Book Schneider, Daniel; (2011)
Hybrid Nature: Sewage Treatment and the Contradictions of the Industrial Ecosystem (/isis/citation/CBB001221124/)

Authors & Contributors
Finney, Carolyn
Weltzien, O. Alan
Alice Kim
Nicole C. Lautze
Benjamin Wilkie
Jeffrey P. Shepherd
Concepts
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
Environmental history
National parks and reserves
Ecology
Environmentalism
Tourism
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
Ancient
20th century, late
20th century, early
Places
United States
Colorado (U.S.)
Rocky Mountains (U.S.)
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Pacific Northwest (North America)
Hawaii (U.S.)
Institutions
Grampians National Park
United Nations
United States. National Park Service
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment