BROADCASTS.com

The Book of the National Parks

by Robert Sterling YARD (1861 - 1945)

Yosemite, the Incomparable, continued

Robert Sterling Yard was an American writer, journalist, and wilderness activist. Born in Haverstraw, New York, Yard graduated from Princeton University and spent the first twenty years of his career in the editing and publishing business. In 1915, he was recruited by his friend Stephen Mather to help publicize the need for an independent national park agency. Their numerous publications were part of a movement that resulted in legislative support for a National Park Service (NPS) in 1916. Yard worked to promote the national parks as well as educate Americans about their use. Creating high standards based on aesthetic ideals for park selection, he also opposed commercialism and industrialization of what he called "America's masterpieces". In 1935, he became one of the eight founding members of The Wilderness Society and acted as its first president from 1937 until his death eight years later. Yard is now considered an important figure in the modern wilderness movement.In the preface to this book, published in 1919, he writes, "In offering the American public a carefully studied outline of its national park system, I have two principal objects. The one is to describe and differentiate the national parks in a manner which will enable the reader to appreciate their importance, scope, meaning, beauty, manifold uses and enormous value to individual and nation. The other is to use these parks, in which Nature is writing in large plain lines the story of America's making, as examples illustrating the several kinds of scenery, and what each kind means in terms of world building; in other words, to translate the practical findings of science into unscientific phrase for the reader's increased profit and pleasure, not only in his national parks but in all other scenic places great and small." (summary from wikipedia)

---

Listen next episodes of The Book of the National Parks:
A Pageant of Creation , A Pageant of Creation, continued , Crater Lake's Bowl of Indigo , Desert Spectacles , Glaciered Peaks and Painted Shales , Glaciered Peaks and Painted Shales, continued , Historic Monuments of the Southwest , Lafayette and the East , Lassen Peak and Mount Katmai , McKinley, Giant of Giants , Mount Rainier, Icy Octopus , Mount Rainier, Icy Octopus, continued , Rock Records of a Vanished Race , The Grand Canyon and Our National Monuments - On the Scenery of the Southwest , The Healing Waters , The Heart of the Rockies , The Muir Woods and Other National Monuments , The Proposed Roosevelt National Park , The Rainbow of the Desert , The Sedimentary National Parks - On Sedimentary Rocks in Scenery , The Volcanic National Parks - On the Volcano in Scenery , Three Monsters of Hawaii , Yellowstone, A Volcanic Interlude , Yellowstone, A Volcanic Interlude, continued