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

Environmental History, Oct 2003 by Diamant, Rolf

The precedent of the Olmsted National Historic Site and this integrated concept of park management were very much on the minds of the planners for the new Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. In 1993, the National Park Service and the Woodstock Foundation, with the assistance of the Library of Congress, cosponsored a conservation stewardship workshop that brought together fifty scholars and practitioners to define broad outlines of the stewardship story to be told at MBRNHP. The workshop developed three fundamental guidelines for interpretation:

* ground interpretation in the specific identity of the place by presenting the historic and evolving relationship between the land and the Marsh, Billings, and Rockefeller generations that shaped it and have been its stewards;

* reflect the complex past of conservation and its dynamic and vital legacy; and

* affect the future by stimulating, provoking, teaching, and inspiring appropriate stewardship.

The workshop also emphasized the importance of demonstrating stewardship through park management, working in partnership on programs that focused on landscape conservation and stewardship, and launching outreach efforts that would carry the conservation message beyond the boundaries of the park.7

Joining the planning team in 1995, I began a close and enduring collaboration with David Donath, president of the Woodstock Foundation and executive director of the Billings Farm & Museum. David brought to the plan years of experience operatingthe museum, deep knowledge of Vermont's environmental history, and extensive relationships within the community of Woodstock and the wider museum community.8 We worked to make the plan a useful blueprint for future development of the national historical park and the Billings Farm & Museum. The NPS and the Woodstock Foundation agreed that instead of a remote intermodal shuttle and orientation center proposed in an earlier draft of the plan, the National Historical Park would share the existing parking area and space at the visitor center at the Billings Farm & Museum. This evolving common vision of cooperation gave rise to a concurrent investment strategy: a commitment of public funds for NPS rehabilitation of the 1895 Carriage Barn to house park exhibits, conferencing spaces, collections storage, and offices would match a commitment of private funds to enhance the visitor center at the Billings Farm & Museum with new exhibits, a new film, and a theater.9

TEXT AND CONTEXT

PERHAPS OUR most challenging task was to ground the park interpretive program in a clear historical context. Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park's enabling legislation provided an excellent foundation:

* To interpret the history and evolution of conservation stewardship in America;

* To recognize and interpret the contributions and birthplace of George Perkins Marsh, pioneering environmentalist, author of Man and Nature, statesman, lawyer, and linguist;

* To recognize and interpret the contributions of Frederick Billings, conservationist, pioneer in reforestation and scientific farm management, lawyer, philanthropist, and railroad builder, who extended principles of land management introduced by Marsh;