Wilderness
by Design
Landscape Architecture and the National Park Service
by
Ethan Carr
Just
published by University of Nebraska Press, Wilderness by Design
is an important new history of the physical development of America's
national parks. This comprehensive study examines the place of our
national parks in the larger context of the American park movement
and in the history of planned "park development," or landscape
architecture. Park planning and design practices are traced from
their origins in private estate and municipal park design to their
application in larger scenic reservations, particularly in Grand
Canyon, Glacier, and Mount Rainier national parks.
The importance of landscape architecture to the history of national
parks relates to the public's use and perception of the parks. Wilderness
by Design examines the roads, trails, overlooks, and other carefully
planned and designed works of landscape architecture that convey us
through and mediate our experience with the most awesome wilderness
areas of North America. These designed landscapes have only recently
begun to command the attention of park managers and historic preservationists
as significant historic resources.
The National Historic Landmark districts described in this book are
the finest examples of what National Park Service landscape architects
achieved in the 1920s and 1930s: the creation of a middle ground between
excesses of commercialism and of exclusivity in the management of public
lands. In an era of increasingly strident extremes, the historical partnership
of landscape architecture and the National Park Service may yet serve
as a viable precedent for preserving scenic landscapes by planning for
limited recreational uses in wild areas.
Ethan Carr is a historical landscape architect at the Denver Service
Center. Wilderness by Design was written for the Park
Historic Structures and Cultural Landscape Program (NPS, Washington
Office), as the National Historic Landmark Theme Study of National Park
Service Landscape Architecture. The historic landscapes described in
the book have been designated National Historic Landmarks by the Secretary
of the Interior as a result of this study.
University
of Nebraska Press, March 1998, 384 pp. 8 drawings, 2 maps, 45 photographs,
index.
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