Journal of Historical Geography, 22, 4 (1996) 460–472

Social reform through parks: the American CivicAssociation’s program for a better America

Terence Young

The American Civic Association, an urban, elite organization based in Harrisburg,Pennsylvania, and Washington DC, provided a major impetus to the creation of theNational Park Service in 1916. The association had actively involved itself with nationalparks for nearly a decade before 1916 despite the fact that most members lived farfrom the national parks in the West. This article argues that the concern of the AmericanCivic Association for national parks sprang from its conviction that parks comprisedvehicles for reforming society. They dismissed the differences in scale between nationaland urban parks as irrelevant to the ability of parks to affect society. All properlyorganized parks offered means to improve America. They characterized the reformedsociety that would follow on the heels of a national park system as healthy, wealthy,equal and patriotic, the same qualities that they attributed to a post-urban park society.The significance of the national parks for the American Civic Association, therefore,came from the presumed ability of these parks, like all parks, to foster a better America.

1996 Academic Press Limited

The American Civic Association (ACA), a private, eastern-based organization thatoriginated in the “City Beautiful” movement at the end of the nineteenth century,receives honorable mention in histories of America’s national parks and of the NationalPark Service for the organization’s technical contributions, financial support, and steadylobbying in favour of parks. Indeed, one scholar declares that “the Park Service Actstands in one light as a monument to . . . [the] American Civic Association”.[1] However,the minimal attention paid to the motives of the ACA regarding the national parksleaves a puzzle. The ACA had its major offices in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, andWashington DC, and the membership lived far from the closest national park, Yel-lowstone. So, why did this group of urban elites, that had actively promoted urbanparks in the 1890s, go on to champion national parks during the two decades after1900, and become a major impetus to the creation of the National Park Service in1916? The involvement of the American Civic Association with national parks seemsparadoxical, but it followed as a logical component of an intellectually unified program.The reformers of the ACA saw parks, at any scale, as vehicles to improve society byfostering their vision of an ideal moral order. At first, they focused on urban parks,but they soon promoted the idea of national parks because a country filled with avariety of parks would make a better America.

Beauty and the good society

In 1904, the American Parks and Outdoor Art Association (APOAA) and theAmerican League for Civic Improvement (ALCI) merged to form the American Civic

4600305–7488/96/040460+13 $25.00/0 1996 Academic Press Limited

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Association. The several thousand members of the ACA included socially prominent,powerful individuals such as the landscape architect and urban planner, Frederick LawOlmsted, Jr., the director of Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum, Charles Sprague Sargent,the sociologist of play, Charles Zueblin, and the mayor of San Francisco, James D.Phelan. J. Horace McFarland, the outspoken president of the ACA from its inceptionuntil he resigned the office in 1924, served as the primary “voice” for the organization.[2]

The American Civic Association achieved substantial influence through publishingand organizational activities. It printed and distributed numerous ephemera includingbulletins, pamphlets, notices, and postcards. At the annual convention, the groupdiscussed civic issues such as parks, and officials, including the President of the UnitedStates, Secretaries of the Interior, state governors, officials of local governments andprivate organizations, and academics, presented their views. The personal efforts of themembers of the ACA also made the organization effective. McFarland spoke tirelesslyand wrote voluminously; he once described himself as “much inclined to explode onpaper”. At various times, the five members of the Board of Directors consisted ofbankers, philanthropists, mayors, authors, ministers, and landscape architects, amongothers. The larger Advisory and Executive Boards identified issues, provided or-ganizational support, and developed policy opinions for the directors and president.More importantly, they “ran the local campaigns back in Boston, Buffalo, Hartford,Ithaca, Topeka, Seattle, Houston, Colorado Springs, Kalamazoo, and Columbia, SouthCarolina”. Whenever the ACA decided to promote an issue, these well-positionedmembers, who knew how to effect change, quickly sought out and organized localsupport.[3]

The American Civic Association began as one of the many late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century social-reformer groups that Boyer refers to as “positive en-vironmentalists”. The organization embraced the environmentally deterministic viewthat the character of society flowed from its surroundings. “It is but a truism to saythat man is profoundly even though unconsciously influenced by his environment”,declared McFarland in The Outlook. “Yet the truism needs to be said again and again,for though it is believed in the abstract, it is continually forgotten, neglected, or despisedin the concrete.” Like other positive environmentalists, the members of the ACAbelieved they could reform America by “improving” the settings of daily life.[4]

Although the American Civic Association had diverse goals, its basic environmentalimperative, to develop beauty wherever possible, followed the approach of other CityBeautiful groups. They argued that beauty “created a positive environment capable ofinfluencing human thought and behavior”. Whether urban, rural, or natural, beautypromoted goodness, whereas ugliness led to evil. As “an education in beauty developsa love of . . . moral order”, wrote McFarland, “so [an] education in ugliness tendstowards moral decadence”. The ACA implemented its agenda to beautify the en-vironment through numerous projects to make riverfronts and housing attractive, plantstreet trees, remove billboards, and create parks.[5]

At first, they focused on urban parks, but the American Civic Association soonenlarged its scope to county (or regional) and state parks. They recommended non-urban parks in their publications; structured their organization to support them; andgave numerous speeches in favour of them. The bulletin of the Park Department forNovember, 1904, for example, carried an article in favour of “Outer Park Systems”;similar efforts followed. In 1910, their Clipping Sheet applauded the pioneering effortsof Wisconsin to systematically survey its lands before creating parks. The efforts of theACA to support state parks led to the creation of their own “Department of Nationaland State Parks” by 1912. In 1914, Alfred C. Clas, a member of the Milwaukee County

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Park Commission, spoke on “The Consolidation of City and County Parks” at theconvention of the ACA. The ACA’s expanded interest in parks also extended to thenational parks shortly after the founding of the ACA. In 1906, the Clipping Sheetdiscussed the organization’s involvement in a “renewed effort” for a national park inthe southern Appalachian Mountains.[6]

The American Civic Association incorporated all types of parks in their reformagenda because they believed that a given park comprised the local expression of amore durable concept. In 1910, the address of McFarland to the ACA conventiontreated the various types of parks as similar, although arrayed within a clearly framedhierarchy.

[M]unicipal or local parks . . . are the basic items in a rational and necessary parkproblem. Next in importance . . . we may consider county parks. . . . The county parkidea has grown out of the territorial limitations in closely settled communities. . . . Whilethe county serves the unit—the one man, the one child who finds it good—just as doesthe city, it extends, combines, and increases scope and economy. [A county park] cantake and hold great scenic items not easily available to a city. . . . State parks simplyextend the idea of the county park. The state can secure, make accessible and maintainvast areas that will . . . serve directly as beneficent public parks . . . [And i]f, when anatural wonder is found to be of national importance and to need national protection,it may be properly controlled by the nation.

To McFarland and other members of the ACA, the underlying park idea remainedconstant, even as a given park reflected the local physical and social conditions.[7]

This view flowed from the judgment that all parks were analogous; if they sharedparticular features, then they shared social impacts. A comparison of the views of theAmerican Civic Association towards urban and national parks illustrates this analogy.According to ACA literature, urban parks consisted of three fundamental elements.First, parks contained primarily natural, rather than artificial, elements: animals, trees,shrubs, flowers, grass, and water. Second, parks had scenic beauty: scenery pleased theeye because it contained nature, itself beautiful, and artistic arrangement enhanced thebeauty inherent in constituents such as trees and grass. Third, the park served as aplay area for all ages, especially for young people. According to McFarland, theproper park “has its intensive development in modern playgrounds—those first aids toendangered American childhood”. When the three elements—nature, scenery, andplay— were combined properly, they created the ideal of the ACA, the “service park”.National parks included the same three elements. First, they preserved plants, animals,rocks, and water along with the second element, outstanding “natural wonders” orscenery. Third, national parks functioned as America’s “larger playgrounds. Everythingthat the limited scope of the city park can do as quick aid to the citizen, they are readyto do more thoroughly, on a greater scale.” To the ACA, national parks formed serviceparks writ large.[8]

According to the American Civic Association, a service park performed a valuablesocial function; it “act[ed] immediately and favorably on the . . . community”. Theorganization stressed this social utility because its opponents often dismissed parks as“mere ornaments”. “It is only upon the basis that suitable recreation facilities are anindispensable means toward preventing life-loss and time-loss to productive industrythat we may argue to the main body of our citizens that parks are worth while.” Inthe address of McFarland to the ACA convention in 1912, he emphasized that “merepride of possession cannot justify in democratic America, the removal from developmentof upward of five millions of acres of the public domain” as parkland. The national

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parks must add “something of value to the life or the resources of the nation”. Thatsomething, according to the ACA, was the ability of parks to foster a moral order andreform a rapidly urbanizing America.[9]

Parks and moral order

The canon of the American Civic Association recognized cities as cluttered, crowded,trash-strewn, haphazardly arranged, and visually disagreeable; this made them America’sugliest places. Their ugliness, said the ACA, explained the moral failings of urbansociety. “The education in ugliness that is constantly proceeding through the . . . assaultsof the billboards is not an education which tends toward the production of goodcitizens.” Instead, the organization held that an ugly environment logically produceda poor, disorderly society. To combat this effect, they asserted that beauty could serveas the reformers tool. Therefore, they began a “Crusade Against Ugliness” in America’scities.[10]

The Association believed that urban parks would create a reformed society thatexhibited four “virtues”. These came in two pairs: the first two—“public health”and “prosperity”—addressed material concerns, whereas the latter two—“democraticequality” and “social coherence”—addressed normative issues. According to the ACA,the absence of parks produced a society with such “vices” as disease, poverty, inequity,and crime. In contrast, beautiful, natural scenery and play facilities in parks eliminatedthese social ills.[11]

The belief in the power of urban parks to foster these virtues did not originate withthe American Civic Association. Park advocates in San Francisco had made a similarclaim at least as early as the 1860s, and members of the APOAA, one of the predecessororganizations to the ACA, followed suit. However, the conceptual ties between parksand the virtues were variable. Individuals posed different versions, and, typically, nosingle individual expressed all four. Examples drawn from the APOAA and the ACAreveal the types of connections commonly said to link the four virtues with publicparks.[12]

The connections between public health and parks tended to follow two lines: parksimproved health by “uplifting” either the mind or the body. Orlando B. Douglas, aphysician and member of the APOAA, saw the body as the primary beneficiary.

The relation of public parks to public health may not admit of mathematical de-monstration, yet an intimate and vital relation does exist. Park literature and health-board reports contain many tables and illustrations . . . of the importance of parks incities . . . where miasmatic and other diseases prevailed; of lives saved by pure air andsunshine . . . of the conservation of vital and effective force, and of other hygienic . . .services rendered by public parks.

Conversely, Frank H. Nutter linked parks to the health of the mind. From hisperspective, parks provided “quiet contact with nature . . . [and therefore] extend asoothing influence to . . . the anxious mind distracted with the worries of daily life andlabors”. In both cases, these advocates of parks believed that people reduced theirchances of illness when they visited parks.[13]

The ability of urban parks to bring prosperity also followed two themes. Firstworkers, whether managers or labourers, produced more goods or services after visitingparks because they no longer experienced physical or mental fatigue. Parks were placeswhere “wasted energies [are] restored and general efficiency promoted.” Parks did notconstitute public extravagances; instead, investment in them produced wealth through

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greater worker productivity. In addition to these gains, parks contributed other wealthto city taxpayers who financed them. According to Andrew H. Green, a powerfulmember of Central Park’s board of commissioners, city parks “have a very practicaland utilitarian value in attracting inhabitants to the city and enhancing real estatevalues”. Landowners in the immediate vicinity of parks benefited directly because ofthe limited amount of land nearby. The value of proximate properties often climbedrapidly and stayed high once a park opened. Prosperity also spread beyond theimmediate vicinity of the park; L. E. Holden, editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer,detailed the mechanism for this diffusion. As a park raised the value of nearby property,the city received higher property tax revenues; other citizens benefited because thegovernment could reduce the need for city-wide taxes. Thus, despite the expenses ofbuilding and maintaining a park, “the influence of the park . . . tends to lessen thegeneral tax of a city instead of increasing it”.[14]

In addition to their material concerns about public health and prosperity, theAmerican Civic Association coupled urban parks to the norms of democratic equalityand social coherence. Parks helped to keep society non-hierarchical, they argued; parkswere “for all the people, high and low, rich and poor, without distinction, with equalrights and privileges for every class”. Parks improved society because they “are greatcivilizers; they are great equalizers”. At the same time, the members of the ACA didnot see this equality as applying to just any level. The ACA valued parks because they“equalize up [to the level of ACA members], not down. They lift people to a higherlife”. Parks raised social standards, thus bringing the values of the larger society intoconformity with those of the park-advocating elite.[15]

Urban parks also helped reduce crime, the sign of an incoherent society; juvenilesreceived special attention. McFarland told listeners that Chicago had “discovered thetruth as to this relation between crime and disorder and the small park and socialcenter. It is a departing relation [that is, subject to distance decay]; for in 1909 it wasdiscovered that within a half-mile radius of her twelve [parks] . . . juvenile delinquencyhad decreased 44 per cent, while in the same year it had increased 11 per cent in thecity as a whole.” Crime often arose from a lack of recreational opportunities, themembers of the American Civic Association argued. Faced with the alternative of apark, a child would choose to play in a park rather than commit crimes. A city withan abundance of beautiful, landscaped, service parks would become a healthy, wealthy,equitable, and crime-free society. “It is incontrovertible”, declared McFarland to thenation’s governors in 1908, “that peace and health and good order are fostered in parksin proportion as they represent scenic beauties.”[16]

The virtues of national parks

Because the American Civic Association assumed that all types of parks sharedfundamental characteristics, they easily extended their belief that urban parks fosteredvirtues to the national parks. If anything, the greater naturalness and scenic beauty ofthe national parks gave them superior capacity to reform society, and potentially, theycould serve as effectively as a playground. The ACA members took the pair of virtuesthat comprised their material concerns, public health and prosperity, and extendedthem largely unchanged from the urban parks to the national parks. In 1911, writingto Secretary of the Interior, Richard H. Ballinger, McFarland opined that the nationalparks had a purpose “as agencies for promoting . . . public health through the use andenjoyment by the people”. On another occasion, he employed the mind–body division

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associated with urban parks when noting that the national parks promoted health.“Every one of us”, declared McFarland to a conference of state governors, “recognizesthe renewing of strength and spirit that comes from even a temporary sojourn amidst[the] natural scenic delights [of the national parks]”. Continuing, he argued that peopletook “delight” in viewing natural scenery and finished with the sarcastic observationthat “who of us, tired with the pressure of Twentieth Century life, fails to take refugeamid the scenes of natural beauty, rather than to endeavor to find that needed rest in amining village?” Nothing quite like a trip to Yosemite or Yellowstone could give onemore “vigor”.[17]

In addition to health, the national parks promoted prosperity, and tourism offeredthe mechanism to achieve the gains. The American Civic Association commonly citedtwo features of tourism; both recognized the fluidity of capital. First, the ACA claimedthat tourism itself generated wealth: “tourist traffic is one of the largest and mostsatisfactory means of revenue a nation can have”, declared Richard Watrous, ACAsecretary, during congressional hearings. “The tourist leaves large sums of money inthe country he visits but takes away with him in return for it nothing which makes thenation poorer.” The most popular tourist spots, he noted, gained wealth rapidly; forexample, “[t]he pine woods of Maine are estimated to bring a revenue of$40,000,000 each year on account of the visitors they attract”. Foreign tourists, especiallyfrom Europe, brought wealth into the United States. “National parks are one of thebest means of attracting this tourist traffic and every dollar, therefore, which is spent[by the federal government] on the national parks may be considered an investment”rather than an expense. At the same time, the ACA knew that World War I in Europehad cut foreign tourism to the United States to insignificant numbers. The nationalparks, however, offered a second, more immediate link to prosperity; they kept Americanwealth from fleeing to places of beauty in other countries. In 1915, a flyer of the ACAnoted that Canada had recently invested millions of dollars in the development of itsparks for tourism. That investment had “yield[ed] rich revenues . . . that . . . have comelargely from American tourists. . . . These financial returns to Canada . . . might for thegreater part have remained in this country if the United States had been as zealous indeveloping its national parks”. The ACA, therefore, proposed to stop this erosion ofAmerican prosperity; the national parks comprised the tools to retain the nation’swealth.[18]

While the treatment of material virtues and national parks coincided with views ofthe American Civic Association on urban parks and the moral order, their position onnormative virtues and national parks diverged. They did not see national parks associally “equalizing” environments. Instead, the ACA argued that national parks servedas a source of the public’s sense of citizenship; as a democracy, the United States neededparks available to large numbers of its citizens. In 1908, McFarland declared that “wecan not . . . safely overlook the necessity for retaining . . . God’s glory of mountainsand vale, lake, forest and seaside, His refuge in the very bosom of nature, to which wemay flee from the noise and strain of the market-place for that renewing of spirit andstrength which can not be had elsewhere”. True, McFarland noted, the privileged didnot necessarily need national parks because they could continue to travel to Europefor natural scenery. “[B]ut that will not avail our toiling millions. ‘Beauty for the few,no more than freedom or education for the few,’ urges William Morris; and who shallsay that our natural beauty of scenery is not the heritage of all and a plain necessityfor good citizenship?” Speaking to the ACA convention in 1911, President WilliamHoward Taft affirmed this weak version of the connection between national parks and

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equality. “I am in favor of equality of opportunity [rather than social position], and Iresent an exclusion for the enjoyment” of the national parks by “the people.”[19]

While the American Civic Association had viewed urban parks as contributors tosocial coherence through the creation of a crime-free society, national parks fosteredpatriotism. This new virtue fused elements of both democratic equality and socialcoherence. Like democratic equality, patriotism was not hierarchical because people ofall social backgrounds should feel an equal amount of attachment to the nation.Patriotism also was similar to social coherence because it led Americans to strugglefor, rather than against, each other. For the ACA, the national parks comprised thevenue for building patriotism. “[While t]he primary function of the national forest isto supply lumber. . . . The parks are the nation’s reserve for the maintenance of individualpatriotism and federal solidarity.” To McFarland, the national parks built this patriotismthrough their beautiful scenery. “Consider the essential value of one of America’sgreatest resources—her unmatched scenery.” It constituted a fundamental resourcebecause

the true glory of the United States must rest, and has rested, upon a deeper foundationthan that of her purely material resources. It is the love of country that lights and keepsglowing the holy fire of patriotism. And this love is excited primarily by the beauty ofthe country.

This resource reformed society in the same environmentally deterministic fashion thatled to the other virtues. “[I]n safeguarding and stimulating the essential virtue ofpatriotism, the beauty of the American park stands forth as most of all worth while.”[20]

A system to reform the nation

On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law “An Act to Establisha National Park Service [NPS], and other purposes” that created a unified system outof the disparate national parks. The American Civic Association had operated as a keyplayer in the effort to create the park service through speeches by McFarland andothers, publications and conference sessions that endorsed national parks, and or-ganizing support of influential publications such as The New York Times and TheOutlook. The extraordinary sway of the ACA led a committee of the United StatesHouse of Representatives to call McFarland and Richard B. Watrous to Washingtonto testify as experts on a bill that President Wilson would soon sign. The only othersasked to testify at this hearing included Stephen T. Mather, then Assistant to theSecretary of the Interior and the future first NPS Director, Robert Sterling Yard, thefuture head of the National Parks Association, and Representative John E. Raker ofCalifornia. The ACA had started its efforts to support the formation of a nationalpark service 6 years prior to the hearing. Secretary of the Interior, R. A. Ballinger, hadbecome aware in 1910 of the interest of the ACA in national parks and had soughttheir assistance to systematize the parks and to create a “Bureau of National Parks”.McFarland had readily agreed to help.[21]

During the years preceding the passage of the National Park Service Act in 1916,the government had created parks on an ad hoc basis; no central concept united them.“There is no consistent theory of legislation with regards to the National Parks”,declared Interior Secretary Walter Fisher to the convention of the American CivicAssociation in 1912. Parks came into existence only when charismatic individuals tookextraordinary measures. More importantly, the parks had “no consistent theory of parkadministration”. A superintendent could apply a policy that a successor might reverse,

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while other superintendents might never implement (or even hear of) the policy. Theact made systematic the creation and administration of parks, and the ACA supportedthe creation of a national park service because their urban park experiences had taughtthem that systematization improved the ability of parks to reform society.[22]

In its infancy, the American Civic Association had taken the emphases of the “GoodGovernment” movement on municipal professionalization and effective management,and applied them to urban park systems; it found the results satisfactory. City gov-ernments, like the federal level, had at first created urban parks one at a time withouta purpose and an organized plan for development and access. Chicago, for example,had three separate but concurrent park commissions during much of the nineteenthcentury. This lack of co-ordination led cities to have one, or sometimes two, large parksthat were “often practically inaccessible to those who need[ed] them”. Buffalo becamethe first city to provide parks for the largest number of users through a centraladministration and plan. In 1869, the city simultaneously acquired sites for three parksthat it developed to provide access for a large segment of the population: a waterfrontpark near the most densely populated part of town; a setting to the east for “gregarious”activities; and a large, scenic park on the northern edge of the city. Other cities followedsuit, especially when the ACA and its antecedent organizations prompted them. By1911, urban park systems became the rule rather than the exception. “The mostimportant advantage of a systematic plan,” observed George Frederick Kunz at thetime, “is that the successive improvements will be made in conformity with it, and willthus tend towards its ultimate realization . . . into a harmonious whole.”[23]

When Ballinger’s call for help came in 1910, the American Civic Association leaptat the opportunity to apply Good Government principles to national parks. AsMcFarland noted in a letter to C. R. Miller at the New York Times, “Having hadintimate acquintance with municipal parks, and realizing their beneficent effect inpromoting . . . good order . . . , it seemed to me logical and reasonable that the federalgovernment should handle its vast park areas as a city of 50,000 handles its very limitedpark areas.” McFarland, along with the other members of the ACA, believed that theprinciple of systematization applied to national parks; the chief difference between thetypes of parks merely reflected scale, a secondary issue. Systematization would enhancethe ability of national parks to reform America if, like urban parks before them, it ledto standardization, development, and improved access.[24]

A standardized park needed spatial integrity and uniform management; accordingto the American Civic Association, the federal government had failed on both counts.Although the territory of urban parks had frequently expanded during the nineteenthcentury, they had seldom shrunk or included features associated with a city; theboundaries had held against external encroachment. Bounding, however, had failed toprotect the national parks from intrusions. The area of Yosemite National Park haddiminished in 1904, and the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley as a reservoir for thecity of San Franscisco had commenced in 1913. Similary, Sequoia National Park hadopened for electrical generation in 1902.[25]

The American Civic Association argued that a territory cannot protect itself. Someonemust control the boundaries; that meant a central park board or commission and asingle superintendent or director, features usually found in an urban park system.McFarland forcefully identified the lack of clear superintendence of national parks inan address in 1912; “Nowhere in official Washington can an inquirer find an office ofthe National Parks, or a desk devoted solely to their management.” A director neededresponsibility for all national parks; thus, the National Park Service included an officeof director at the start in 1916. The ACA also had promoted the formation of a park

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board that the director could consult. In the address in 1912, McFarland had calledfor a national park system with a director “aided by a commission of nationalprominence and scope”. Such boards helped the superintendent develop policies andcommunicate with higher authorities. This commission had become such a commonfeature of other parks systems that Frank A. Waugh, another ACA member andProfessor of Landscape Gardening at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, re-commended four urban park designers, Jens Jensen, Warren Manning, Frederick LawOlmsted, and John Olmsted, for such a park commission. No board appeared in theNational Park Service Act of 1916, despite the support of the ACA; nevertheless, someparks had local boards to advise the superintendent.[26]

Systematization also entailed common park development, and this included the designof the national parks as playgrounds, similar to that role of urban parks. “The[superintendent] in a National Park . . . must have a primary conception of the functionsof the park as the nation’s playground’, wrote McFarland to Henry Graves, ForestService Director, in 1911. Because the national parks were “young” and “undevelopedto any considerable extent”, their value to the nation as reforming environmentsremained “potential, more than instant”. Each park required transportation, lodging,and opportunities for recreation. Without the combination of scenic beauty andplayground, the national parks would fail as service parks that promoted virtue. Astandard system would bring all the parks to an equal state of development and socialeffectiveness.[27]

Systematization of the national parks also appealed to the American Civic Associationbecause, along with Interior Secretary Walter Fisher, they believed it made parks “moreaccessible to the public”. “The time has come when the federal government . . . needsa park plan”, protested McFarland, “the parks are not located with any definite orconsidered relations to accessibility, nor are they distributed with any relation topopulation”. The ACA, however, spent little time lobbying the railroads to constructmore direct lines or encouraging the creation of roadways for autos. Instead, theyfocused on the purported ability of a park system to “increase their number”, thus,more parks, by themselves, improved access. McFarland’s experience in his home townof Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had convinced him that systematization led to an increasein the number of parks. The park board, influenced by McFarland, located each newpark near residents distant from existing parks. Once these reforming environmentswere strategically placed, the board believed society would rapidly improve.[28]

The same issues applied to the national parks. When the struggle started for anational park system, parks were distant and difficult to use. The nearest was “fifteenhundred miles west of the national centre of population in Indiana.” The AmericanCivic Association believed that the location of new parks nearer existing transportationlines improved access. McFarland, for example, began to support the creation of RockyMountain National Park shortly after he joined the fight for a park system. At thetime, he noted that “[t]he Yosemite and the Yellowstone are conveniently accessiblefrom the Pacific Coast, but require long journeys from the east and from the middlewest. Even from Denver, for instance, it requires two days and two nights to reach theYellowstone.” People could reach the proposed Rocky Mountain Park in only 4 hoursby train and auto from Denver; thus, it would become “the most accessible nationalpark . . . a thousand miles nearer the center of population in the United States thanany equivalent park now existing.”[29]

The creation of new parks nearer the eastern centers of population offered a secondmeans to increase access. The literature of the American Civic Association had promotedthe formation of eastern national parks as early as 1906. They envisioned a single park

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“extending through the western portions of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, andparts of the mountainous districts of Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.” The ACAalso wanted a smaller park in the White Mountain region of New Hampshire. McFarlandrepeated this message in an address to the nation’s governors in 1908. After the ideaof a national park system had been broached, McFarland articulated a more complexvision in 1912. He imagined three additional national parks in the densely populatedareas of the East: a “national reservation” at Niagara where a state park alreadyexisted; the “Lincoln Memorial National Park” that would join “the lovely forestsbetween Washington and Baltimore and Annapolis to the Potomac”, and a “WashingtonMemorial National Park” that would include historic Mt. Vernon and once againstretch to the Potomac. Although none of these came to fruition, the ACA had plantedand nurtured the seeds for future successes. In the 1990s, parkways extend fromWashington to both Baltimore and Mt. Vernon, while the list of national parks in theEast includes Acadia, Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, and Everglades, alldeveloped after the inception of the National Park Service.[30]

A better America

The national parks and their systematization held deep significance for the AmericanCivic Association; three beliefs motivated their support for the creation of the NationalPark Service. First, they believed the public would have increased access to nationalparks. This improved access would result from the creation of eastern national parks,as well as the placement of new parks nearer existing transportation lines. Second, theybelieved systematization would ensure that all national parks became service parks, theideal parks that were natural, scenic, and settings for play. As environmental determinists,the members of the ACA viewed the “service park” as the definitive, effective en-vironment. Third, they believed that the NPS would bring spatial integrity and uniformmanagement to all national parks. Systematization presumably created a centraladministration that in the future would protect the territorial integrity of the parksand eliminate areal reductions and encroachments.

The concern of the American Civic Association for national parks sprang from theirenvironmentalist conviction that parks offered vehicles for reforming society. Theydismissed the differences in scale between national, state, regional, and urban parks asirrelevant to the capacity of parks to affect society. All parks were analogous, and theACA utilized them as the means to transform America. The society that followed onthe heels of a national park system they believed would have characteristics of health,wealth, equality, and patriotism. To the members of the ACA, the national parks hadsignificance because of their putative ability, like all parks, to create through naturalscenic beauty this urban organization’s idea of the good society.

Studies in Landscape ArchitectureDumbarton OaksWashington DC 20007U.S.A.

AcknowledgmentsThe research for this article was supported by two NEH Faculty Development Grants throughthe College of Liberal Arts, Clemson University and a grant from the Geppert Fund, Associationof American Geographers. The author thanks Patricia Kellner, James Miller, Garth Myers, andthree anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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Notes[1] R. Shankland, Steve Mather of the National Parks (New York 1951) 104. Other typical

histories include H. Albright, The Birth of the National Park Service: the Founding Years,1913–33 (Salt Lake City 1985); H. Huth, Nature and the American: Three Centuries ofChanging Attitudes (Lincoln 1972); B. Mackintosh, The National Parks: Shaping the System(Washington, DC 1985); R. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd edition (NewHaven 1982); A. Runte, National Parks: the American Experience, 2nd edition (Lincoln1987); D. Swain, The passage of the National Park Service Act of 1916 Wisconsin Magazineof History 50 (1966) 4–17. The exception to the rule is E. Morrison, J. Horace McFarland:a Thorn for Beauty (Harrisburg PA 1995) 173–193, who investigates at length the involvementof the ACA in the national parks and the National Park Service. Nevertheless, the bookspends little time addressing the cultural significance of the parks.

[2] W. Wilson, J. Horace McFarland and the City Beautiful movement Journal of Urban History7 (1981) 315–341 and Morrison, op. cit. also consider McFarland the dominant figure inthe American Civic Association.

[3] On the widespread influence of the ACA see Morrison, op cit., passim. Quotes in ibid., 95,103

[4] P. Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge 1978) 220–251;J. H. McFarland, Education in ugliness (printed manuscript 1908) 856 In J. HoraceMcFarland Papers (hereafter McF Pap), MG-85, Pennsylvania Historical and MuseumCommission

[5] W. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore 1989) 29; McFarland, Education inugliness, 856; Morrison, op. cit.

[6] Andrew Wright Crawford, Outer park systems of America, in Items of Park News, No.2—November 1, 1904 (Hartford 1904) 21–26; State park project is indorsed American CivicAssociation Clipping Sheet (April 24, 1909) 7–8; National parks American Civic AssociationSeries 11, No. 6 (December 1912) 1; A. Clas, The consolidation of city and county parks.in Program, Tenth Annual Convention, McF Pap, 8; National parks in the east AmericanCivic Association Clipping Sheet 21 (July 1906) 1

[7] McFarland, Are stage parks worth while? (typed manuscript 1910), 5–9, McF Pap[8] Argument by analogy takes the position that if an object a has qualities 1, 2, and 3 plus

abilities 4, 5, and 6 then if object b has qualities 1, 2, and 3 it should also have abilities 4,5, and 6. McFarland, Are national parks worth while? American Civic Association Series 11(1912, 6) 24, 26. For more on the national parks as playgrounds see C. W. Buchholtz, Thenational park as a playground Journal of Sport History 5 (1978) 21–36. The comparison ofurban to national parks is the best one because the former were the oldest, most developedtype of park and generally viewed as the standard for larger parks. Although urban squareswith vegetation predate the United States, they were not the model for non-urban parks.The first urban park in the United States of the type that interested the ACA was CentralPark in New York City. The site was acquired in 1856, and it is generally regarded as theprototype for the others. D. Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape: the Redefinition of CityForm in Nineteenth-century America (Baltimore 1986) 77

[9] McFarland, Are national parks worth while? 24–25; McFarland, Are state parks worthwhile? 3; McFarland, Are national parks worth while? 23

[10] McFarland, Letter to Editor, Jersey City Journal, March 21, 1908, McF Pap[11] Ibid.[12] T. G. Young, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and the search for a good society, 1865–1880.

Forest and Conservation History 37 (1993) 4–13.[13] O. B. Douglas, The relation of public parks to public health, in Second Report of the

American Park and Outdoor Art Association (Boston 1899) 126; F. H. Nutter, Parks forsmall cities and villages, in American Civic Association, Park Department, Items of ParkNews, No. 2 (Hartford 1904) 27

[14] McFarland, Letter to Enos Mills, March 24, 1911, McF Pap, 1; A. H. Green, Saving NiagaraAmerican Park and Outdoor Art Association 7 (1904, 4) 13; L. E. Holden, Parks as investmentsand educators, in First Report of Park and Outdoor Art Association (Washington D.C. 1897)44–45

[15] A. Cowan, The use and management of public parks, in First Report of Park and OutdoorArt Association (Washington D.C. 1897) 23; Holden op. cit. 48

[16] McFarland, Are national parks worth while? 24; McFarland, Address by J. Horace

471AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION

McFarland, President of the American Civic Association In Proceedings of a Conference ofGovernors in the White House, Washington, D.C., May 13–15, 1908 (New York 1972) 154

[17] McFarland, Letter to Richard A. Ballinger, January 3, 1911, McF Pap 2; McFarland,Address by J. Horace McFarland, 156

[18] Watrous was citing a Canadian park report when he made this statement. He consideredthem the model for America’s parks. See U.S., Sixty-Fourth Congress, First Session, Houseof Representatives, Hearing before the Committee on the Public Lands on H.R. 434 and H.R.8668, Bills to Establish a National Park Service and for Other Purposes, April 5 and 6, 1916(Washington 1916) 8. On the success of the Canadians, see American Civic Association-Special News Service, Our National Parks (Washington D.C. 1915) 2. In National Parks,Runte apparently misunderstands the ACA on the issue of national parks, prosperity, andlabor efficiency. He notes McFarland’s congressional hearing testimony in 1916 that nationalparks, like urban parks, increase prosperity by promoting worker productivity but does notrecognize the historic support of the ACA for this view. According to him, McFarland’sreference to increased prosperity from more productive workers was a reversal by the ACA.On the contrary, the ACA had been referring to the link between parks and prosperity fromthe beginning. McFarland’s testimony was not the act of “desperation” imagined by Runtebut consistent with the ACA’s treatment of parks as a continuum. Runte, op. cit. 101.McFarland’s testimony is in U.S., op cit. 52–60

[19] McFarland, Address by J. Horace McFarland, 156; W. H. Taft, President Taft’s addressAmerican Civic Association Series 11 (1912) 17

[20] McFarland, Are national parks worth while? 25–28; McFarland, Address by J. HoraceMcFarland, 153. For more on nationalism and the parks see A. F. Hyde, An AmericanVision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture, 1820–1920 (New York 1990); Runte,op. cit.; and M. Shaffer, See America first: tourism and national identity, 1905–1930(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University 1994)

[21] For speeches, see McFarland, Address before White House Conservation Conference, May14, 1908, Washington D.C. McF Pap; McFarland, Are national parks worth while? McFPap; or, McFarland, The Economic Destiny of the National Parks: an Address by J. HoraceMcFarland (Washington 1917). For a typical ACA publication, see National Parks AmericanCivic Association Series 11, No. 6 (December 1912). A typical convention included, forexample, speakers such as the five who spoke on the national parks in 1914: Mark H.Daniels, Superintendent of the National Parks and Landscape Engineer; J. B. Harkin,Commissioner of Dominion Parks, Canada; Clarence J. Blanchard, U.S. ReclamationService; Enos A. Mills, Estes Park (a part of the future Rocky Mountain National Park);and Lawrence F. Schmeckebier, Chief of the Division of Publications of the Department ofthe Interior. They are listed in: American Civic Association, Program of the Tenth AnnualConvention of the American Civic Association, December 2, 3 and 4, 1914, McF Pap 10–11.On influencing publishers see, for example, McFarland, Letter to C. R. Miller of The Times,November 24, 1911, McF Pap; McFarland, Letters to Harold J. Howland of The Outlook,January 1, 1912 and January 9, 1912, McF Pap. U.S., op cit. Richard Watrous mentionsBallinger’s effort to involve the ACA in U.S., op. cit. 3; and Morrison, op. cit. 175–176.Ballinger’s version of a national park system never came to fruition

[22] W. Fisher, Address of Hon. Walter L. Fisher, American Civic Association Series 11 (1912)19

[23] See Jon C. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870–1900(Baltimore 1984) 132–214 on the professionalization and “extralegal molding” of urbangovernment during the “good government” movement. On Chicago’s park commissions seeG. E. Holt, Private plans for public spaces: the origins of Chicago’s park system, 1850–1875Chicago History 8 (1979) 173–184. On the lack of access see E. R. L. Gould, Park areasand open spaces in cities American Statistical Association NS 2, 3 (1888) 61. See Schuyler,op. cit. 130–131 on Buffalo. G. F. Kunz, Appendix one: American city parks, in AmericanScenic and Historic Preservation Society, Annual Report (Albany, New York 1911) 504

[24] McFarland, Letter to Miller, 1[25] A. Runte, Yosemite: the Embattled Wilderness (Lincoln 1990); L. Dilsaver and W. C. Tweed,

Challenge of the Big Trees (Three Rivers, California 1990)[26] McFarland, Are national parks worth while? 28–29; F. Waugh, Letter to J. Horace McFar-

land, December 27, 1911, McF Pap 2[27] McFarland, Letter to Henry S. Graves, February 21, 1911, McF Pap 2; McFarland, Are

national parks worth while? 28

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[28] W. L. Fisther, op. cit. 4; McFarland, Letter to Editor, 13; American Civic Association-Special News Service, loc. cit.; Morrison, op. cit. 82–85

[29] McFarland, Are national parks worth while? 28; McFarland, Letter to Richard A. Ballinger,July 20, 1910, McF Pap 1; McFarland, Letter to R. B. Marshall, January 31, 1913, McFPap 1–2

[30] National parks in the east, loc. cit.; McFarland, Are national parks worth while? 30; E.McKinsey, Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime (New York 1985)