Conservation Over 250 Years

Throughout the United States’ 250 years as a nation, some people always have been interested in conservation. The greatest success in protecting natural areas, though, seems to have resulted from widespread interest generated by a person, group or event.

Then as now, those swings have taken place amid the tension between the ideas of preserving natural areas as they are, using natural resources to the fullest, and seeking a compromise of sustainable use and living.

THE BEGINNINGS

Indigenous people served as the first stewards of the land now making up the United States. For several thousand years before European explorers and settlers arrived, they lived sustainably on the landscape.

The conservation work we know today has its roots in the mid-1800s with the efforts to protect the unique natural beauty of the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias trees. The efforts of conservationists, journalists and artists inspired members of Congress to pass the Yosemite Grant Act, which president Abraham Lincoln signed in 1864. The law gave the State of California the management responsibility for the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove with the condition the state protect the areas and make them available for public enjoyment, the National Park Service (NPS) said on its Yosemite National Park website, https://www.nps.gov/yose/index.htm. Congress passed a bill making it the nation’s third national park in 1890.

People admire the Yellowstone Canyon and Great Fall of the Yellowstone River about 1931 in Yellowstone National Park, the first American national park. (From Library of Congress collections)

People admire the Yellowstone Canyon and Great Fall of the Yellowstone River about 1931 in Yellowstone National Park, the first American national park. (From Library of Congress collections)

On March 1, 1872, the U.S. government chose to protect another unique landscape when it created Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in this country and in the world, the NPS said on the park’s website, https://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm?pubDate=20250716.

The action followed the Hayden Expedition’s exploration of the Yellowstone park area in 1871, the NPS said. Their reports, and the visual images produced by a photographer and two artists on the expedition team, caused a surge of interest in the area among scientists and the public.

EARLY 1900S

Indiana author and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter exposed a nationwide audience to the joys in nature through her books. The first of her novels, “The Song of the Cardinal,” was published in 1903. More novels and nonfiction books soon followed.

America had a combined total of 35 national parks and national monuments when Congress created the National Park Service in 1916 to manage them, the NPS said.

The year 1916 also marked the birth of Indiana’s state park system. Indianapolis businessman Colonel Richard Lieber, who for several years had promoted the idea of a state park system, recommended the state do so to celebrate its centennial in 1916, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) noted on its website, https://www.in.gov/dnr.

About the same time, newspaper columnist Juliet Strauss, who wrote for newspapers in Indianapolis and Rockville, Ind., began advocating for the state to save and protect the Turkey Run property in Parke County, which was going up for sale, the DNR website said.

The efforts of Lieber and Strauss contributed to McCormick’s Creek in south-central Indiana opening as Indiana’s first state park on July 4, 1916, the DNR said. Turkey Run State Park opened a year later.

Beginning in 1929, a series of financial crises plunged the United States into the Great Depression.

By the early days of 1933, more than 15 million men, or more than 25 percent of the U.S. population, had become jobless, according to the nonprofit group CCC Legacy, which preserves the history and legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). To put people back to work, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration created some government-funded work programs, including the CCC.

About 3 million young men worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the Great Recession. (From Library of Congress collections)

About 3 million men served in the CCC during its existence from 1933 to 1942, CCC Legacy said on its website, https://ccclegacy.org. The men built 711 new state parks, improved 800 additional state and national parks, constructed 3,470 fire lookout towers, and built about 97,000 miles of fire roads, the website said. They planted an estimated 2.3 billion to 3.5 billion trees, treated forests for disease and insect pests, and battled wildfires. CCC crews also accomplished an array of other work, including building roads and bridges, stocking 636 million fish, and improving streams.

THE 1960S

World War II brought an end to the CCC as the nation focused on winning the war. After the war, building and development kicked into high gear.

The costs of that all-in approach, including significant air and water pollution, began showing themselves in the 1960s and 1970s.

Author Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring,” published in 1962, became one of the first efforts to call attention to the environmental destruction. The book, which attracted substantial public interest, details the immense hazard created by DDT use, including contamination of foods and links to cancer, genetic problems and species’ deaths, the Natural Resources Defense Council said on its website, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring. Many credit “Silent Spring” with launching the modern environmental movement.

Species threatened by DDT use included our national symbol, the bald eagle.

In 1969, the highly polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio.

In fall 1976, The Niagara Gazette newspaper began reporting on toxic substances from an old chemical landfill that had begun seeping into the basements of homes in the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, N.Y., according to a timeline compiled by the libraries of State University of New York at Buffalo. The high rate of miscarriages and birth defects among Love Canal area residents eventually led officials to close two schools and to help residents evacuate the neighborhood.

The situation at Love Canal spurred national concern about toxic chemical dumps and storage sites.

Young women sell organic soil during an Earth Day event in the early 1970s in New York City. The event founded in 1970 continues to encourage people to take care of our planet. (From Library of Congress collections)

In 1969, after a huge oil spill near Santa Barbara, Calif, Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson recruited a young activist, Denis Hayes, to organize teach-ins on college campuses about the dangers of pollution and the need to protect the environment. They soon named the effort Earth Day, it says on the Earth Day website, https://www.earthday.org/history. They held the first Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970.

In the Fort Wayne area, a small group of conservation-minded people founded ACRES Land Trust in March 1960. The state’s oldest local land trust, ACRES now protects and manages more than 8,700 acres in northeast Indiana, southern Michigan and northwest Ohio, the organization said in the Summer 2026 issue of its publication The Quarterly.

ACRES members also led efforts that resulted in passage of the Indiana Nature Preserve Act in 1967, it said at https://acreslandtrust.org.

1970S AND BEYOND

A series of environmental laws and actions followed during the succeeding decades.

Smog shrouds the George Washington Bridge between New York City and New Jersey in the early 1970s. (From Library of Congress collections)

In 1970, growing public concern about pollution led the U.S. government to create the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to pass the Clean Air Act to combat smog in industrial areas, the EPA said on its website, www.epa.gov. The Clean Air Act received major revisions in 1977 and 1990 to improve its effectiveness and to address more recently identified problems, such as acid rain and damage to the atmosphere’s ozone layer, the website said.

In 1972, Congress passed major amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, which then became known as the Clean Water Act, the EPA website said. The revised law took major steps to regulate pollutant discharges into waterways and also provided funding to assist communities with building sewage treatment plants.

In 1973, the EPA banned DDT use. The same year, the Endangered Species Act began protecting rare and threatened species from further decline or extinction.

From 1972 through 1975, ACRES Land Trust founding members Jane and Tom Dustin saw their environmental advocacy succeed on projects to ban phosphate detergents from Indiana waterways, establish what is now Indiana Dunes National Park in northwest Indiana, and create Fox Island County Park southwest of Fort Wayne.

In 1980, the U.S. government launched the Superfund program to safely clean up the worst sites where toxic chemicals had been dumped or stored.

In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Program formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which began assessing and monitoring the world’s changing climate.

From the early 1980s through about 2010, former Vice President Al Gore focused national and international attention on the need to address climate change. The work by Gore, who served in Congress before becoming vice president, has included promoting low-carbon technologies, working with scientists on solutions, and training people to advocate for solving the climate crisis, it says on his website, https://algore.com.

In 1982, Indiana launched its NonGame Wildlife Fund to support conservation of rare and endangered species. Projects using the fund have included research on threatened species and the reintroduction of the bald eagle and other wildlife.

In 1990, members of four local conservation groups encouraged Paul McAfee to found Little River Wetlands Project. The nonprofit now protects more than 1,300 acres of wetland areas in the Little River valley between Fort Wayne and Huntington.

In 1992, the state also founded what is now called the President Benjamin Harrison Conservation Trust. Sales of the state’s Environmental license plate fund the trust. Grants from the trust have been used to conserve more than 71,200 acres statewide, the DNR website said.

In recent decades, conservation activity nationally and statewide has ebbed and flowed as the country experienced the Great Recession and changes in political leadership.

THE FUTURE

People still are interested in nature.

They flocked to the outdoors during the early years of the COVID pandemic. It offered a safe place to be with others and a verdant escape from their walled isolation at home. Visitors continue to pour into many national parks.

People have united in growing numbers around the country to oppose plans to build data centers near them. A vocal group also pushes for change in the use of chemicals, additives and high levels of processing in foods.

At the same time, some people seem willing to support oil and natural gas drilling, mineral extraction, logging and recreational use of conserved land if it brings jobs for their area or if they will save money on utility bills, fuel or groceries.

At the moment, it doesn’t seem clear whether public interest will swing toward more conservation or less.

What we know from the past, though, is one person or group can spark public support for a local, state or national conservation project or issue. That spark can be you.