Reflections on environmental history with a human face: Experiences from a new national park

Environmental History, Oct 2003 by Diamant, Rolf

IN 1998, A NEW national park opened to "interpret the history and evolution of conservation stewardship in America." The inspiration came from Mary F. and Laurance S. Rockefeller, who generously gave their 550-acre estate in Woodstock, Vermont including lands, buildings, and collections, to become Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (MBRNHP).1

This essay is intended to provoke thought and reflection on the management of historic places and the challenge of making them exciting, relevant centers of learning. It is not intended as an administrative or comprehensive history, but rather a personal perspective of a work in progress-the making of a national park. Several events and programs are described in detail, others are mentioned in passing, and some may have been neglected inadvertently.

The property that is today Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park was originally the home of Woodstock native George Perkins Marsh, author of Man and Nature (1864)-considered one of the seminal texts of environmental thinking. In Man and Nature, Marsh wrote about the essential interrelationship between the health and integrity of human communities and the everyday landscapes that sustain them. Marsh's work, particularly his writings on forest and watershed management, had a profound influence on the nascent conservation movement in the United States and in many countries around the world.

The park also is named for Frederick Billings, a lawyer and president of the Northern Pacific Railroad (1879-1881) who was involved in the early efforts to create Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks. After years in the West (1849-1864), Billings returned from San Francisco to Woodstock to build his estate on several eroded hill farms including the property where Marsh had grown up. Billings, a believer in material progress, social engineering, experimentation, and education, committed himself to establishing a model farm on the Marsh property, and a scientific forest on the worn-out and deforested slopes of Mount Tom. Billings began his forestry work in 1874. He thus created one of the earliest planned and scientifically managed forests in the United States.

In 1983, Frederick Billings's granddaughter, Mary French Rockefeller, and her husband, conservationist Laurance Rockefeller, established the Billings Farm & Museum on historic agricultural lands of the Billings estate. The Billings Farm & Museum is a living museum of Vermont's rural past, as well as a working dairy farm.2 MBRNHP was established by legislation in 1992, when the Rockefellers conveyed the estate's upland residential and forest land to the people of the United States. The park includes the 550-acre working forest, as well as formal and woodland gardens, sixteen structures (most prominent is the 1805 Marsh family residence, significantly remodeled and enlarged by Frederick Billings), and a large and diverse museum collection with more than 23,000 inventoried objects associated with the Billings and Rockefeller families. The collection features American landscape paintings by such nineteenth-century artists as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederick Kensett, and Asher B. Durand-who had a powerful influence on the conservation movement.

Laurance Rockefeller served as conservation adviser to five presidents from Dwight Eisenhower through Gerald Ford. He also served as chair of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, which in the 1960s contributed to the creation of the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Wilderness Act, and the National System of Scenic Rivers. For Rockefeller, the first conservationist to be awarded the congressional Gold Medal, the creation of this national park and the Billings Farm & Museum were capstones of a lifetime championing national parks, historic preservation, and conservation. The two sites embody his and Mary's devotion to the continued stewardship of this land. The close operating relationship between MBRNHP and the Billings Farm & Museum also exemplifies Laurance S. Rockefeller's strong commitment to public/private partnerships and his belief that the most sustainable arrangement ensuring the continued stewardship of the historic Billings estate lay in the collaboration of the National Park Service and the Woodstock Foundation.3

Given this extraordinary opportunity to interpret the history of conservation stewardship, the National Park Service (NPS) faced several fundamental questions in shaping a meaningful and effective program for the new park. How could the NPS ground the new park's interpretation in the specific identity of the place and the stewardship of the Marsh, Billings, and Rockefeller generations, while also recognizing the broad diversity of stewardship experiences in a larger regional, national, and international context? Could the NPS define the concept of stewardship in a way that people could easily understand, and that could encourage them to reflect on the meaning of stewardship in their own lives? What would be the key ideas behind interpretive efforts-what sort of stories would be told and what kinds of exhibits and programs would be used to tell them? How could the park speak effectively to a local audience visiting the site, and also reach a regional, national, and international audience through methods other than site visits? How could the partnership with the Billings Farm & Museum enrich the visitor's experience and create opportunities for mutual success? Where could additional partnerships be developed to demonstrate the collaborative nature of successful conservation in today's world? In other words, could the park (through its stewardship practices and relationships with people) model the behavior it is interpreting ? And last, but not least, how could the park begin to realize Laurance Rockefeller's hope that "the message and vision of conservation stewardship and its importance for the future will, once again, go out across the nation from the hills of Vermont."4