Transcript-1 (36)

pdf

School

Kent State University *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

22070

Subject

History

Date

Oct 30, 2023

Type

pdf

Pages

Uploaded by MajorHummingbirdMaster1100

Slide 1 Timeline of U.S. Environmental History Carolyn Merchant establishes some key events in U.S. environmental history. Here, I’ll give a short overview of the impact these events had in American history.

Slide 2 Earliest settlement to 1878 1776 1785 earliest settlement colonial period ~13000 BP agricultural impacts grow Land Ordinance survey 1803 Louisiana Purchase Emerson/Transcendentalism Hudson River School George Catlin Manifest Destiny Gold Rush Walden Civil War Homestead Act Land Grant Act 1850 1872 Yellowstone NP Timber Culture Act Free Timber Act Powell/arid lands IDEALIZE NATURE & NATIVE AMERICANS ORGANIZING LAND & ENCOURAGING SETTLEMENT KEY EVENTS LEADING TO EXPANDED SETTLEMENT THE FRONTIER Let’s take a look at Merchant’s timeline. I don’t expect you to know specific details here, but it’s important to understand how events fall in relationship to each other and how they relate to shifts in how Americans interact with their environment. As we look back to the earliest settlements in North America, native peoples have long interacted with and modified the environment, primarily for agricultural purposes. As we learned from the Pristine Myth, Europeans arrived to find an already-changed continent. European arrival, and particularly the independence of the U.S. in 1776, led to one of the organization of land and encouragement of settlers, first in the Midwest and later in the Great Plains. The philosophy of Manifest Destiny strongly influenced how Americans interacted with the environment as they moved westward with key events like the Louisiana Purchase and Gold Rush. At the same time, even as they consumed more and more resources and turned more and more land into farmland, there were movements afoot that sought to preserve nature, that idealized both ”wilderness” and the Native Americans who lived there. This movement, influenced heavily by the writings of preservationist John Muir, led to the creation of the first U.S. National Park, Yellowstone, in 1872.

Slide 3 1885-1951 1900 1885 1925 1950 Adirondack Preserve Division of Forestry Dawes Act Desert Lands Act Sierra Club FJT/Frontier Forest Management Right of Way Act Reclamation Act Antiquities Act Conservation Movement Hetch Hetchy Dam approved Extinction of the passenger pigeon New Deal TVA Soil Conservation Act BLM Water Pollution Control Act Sand County Almanac Nature Conservancy PRESERVATION ORGANIZING LAND & ENCOURAGING SETTLEMENT CONSERVATION THE FRONTIER TURNING POINTS REGULATION The late 1800s saw some additional preservation movements, but more commonly conservation, where resources were managed by the U.S. government. There was a continued push to give away land and encourage the farming of land, even and especially arid land that struggled to support crops. A few key events in the early 1900s, though, set up a strong conservation movement that led to support of both improving and preserving land for recreation, paid for in part of the funds from the New Deal. The late 1940s saw the first attempt to regulate pollution, and the Sand County Almanac and the founding of the Nature Conservancy suggested increased support for protection and management of natural resources.

Your preview ends here

Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version

Access to all documents
Unlimited textbook solutions
24/7 expert homework help

Slide 4 1952-2000 1975 1950 Silent Spring Clean Air Act Wilderness Act Water Quality Control Act Wild and Scenic Rivers Act Indian Civil Rights Act Population Bomb Santa Barbara Oil Spill NEPA EPA Earth Day Clean Air Act Endangered Species Act Environmental Justice/Warren Co Montreal Protocol Exxon Valdez Clean Air Act+ 2000 PRESERVATION TURNING POINTS REGULATION The 1950s and 60s shifted decidedly towards increased regulations, as works like Silent Spring and The Population Bomb drew people’s attention, and oil spills now shown in color photos and on TV showed the impacts of humans on the environment. The Montreal Protocol, in particular, was a turning point as a global agreement signed by the U.S. to reduce CFCs, the cause of the hole in the ozone layer that threatened human health. So many more events and laws could be included here, especially as we move toward modern history (Love Canal comes to mind, as a pollution event that drove regulation), but this list by Merchant is a great starting point for understanding U.S. environmental history.