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

by Dennis Drabelle (Author)

Featured in the Wall Street Journal's 2021 Holiday Gift Books Guide
Finalist of the 2021 Marfield Prize

Wallace Stegner called national parks "the best idea we ever had." But where did the idea originate? Before Yellowstone, with nothing to put up against Europe's cultural pearls--its cathedrals, castles, and museums--Americans came to realize that their plenitude of natural wonders might compensate for the dearth of manmade attractions. That insight guided the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted as he organized his thoughts on how to manage the wilderness park centered on Yosemite Valley, at first a state-owned precursor to the national park model of Yellowstone. Haunting his thoughts were the cluttered and carnival-like banks of Niagara Falls, which served as an oft-cited example of what should not happen to a spectacular natural phenomenon.

Olmsted saw city parks as vital to the pursuit of happiness and wanted them to be established for all to enjoy. When he wrote down his philosophy for managing Yosemite, a new and different kind of park, he had no idea that he was creating a visionary blueprint for national parks to come. Dennis Drabelle provides a history of the national park concept, adding to our understanding of American environmental thought and linking Olmsted with three of the country's national treasures. The Power of Scenery tells the fascinating story of how the national park movement arose, evolved, and has spread around the world.

Author Biography

Dennis Drabelle is a writer and former attorney. During the 1970s he was counsel to the assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks. His books include Mile High Fever: Silver Mines, Boom Towns, and High Living on the Comstock Lode and The Great American Railroad War: How Ambrose Bierce and Frank Norris Took on the Notorious Central Pacific Railroad.