People Behind the Parks

One of the most fundamental aspects of the United States is the fact that, time and again, ordinary Americans exhibit extraordinary effort in service of conservation. Yet, like the idea of freedom itself, the concept of the national park has been repeatedly tested, is constantly evolving, and is full of contradictory tensions: between individual rights and the community, local and national interests; between preservation and exploitation, the sacred and the profitable; between one generation’s immediate desires and the next generation’s legacy.

As white Americans expanded westward during the 1800s, they came upon landscapes of such breathtaking and unusual beauty that written descriptions of the lands were sometimes assumed by people in the East to be works of fiction. Eventually, there emerged a belief that these special places, along with other, more widely known lands in the east, should be kept untarnished by development and commerce so that all people could experience them forever. In this lesson, students work in small groups to research individuals who worked to preserve these places as national parks.

Objectives: Students will: 

• Read about a major contributor to the development of national parks;
• Identify the key elements of this person’s contribution;
• Synthesize these key elements into a plaque that represents this person’s contributions to visitors;
• Speak about any controversial elements of this person’s contributions.