"Protecting wild places was once a radical idea. It still is."
"In 1916, a group of conservation-minded individuals set out to do something radical.
Concerned about the ravages of development and tourism in Maine, George B. Dorr, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and Charles W. Eliot pursued the creation of a national park. They established a corporation to buy up thousands of acres of wild forest, wetlands, and freshwater ecosystems. These they offered to the federal government in exchange for a commitment to preservation. President Woodrow Wilson agreed, and in 1916 he announced the Sieur de Monts National Monument—the precursor to Acadia, the nation’s first national park established by a private gift.
In his book, The Sieur de Monts National Monument and Its Historical Associations, Dorr celebrated the park’s creation as “not a purchase by the government but a gift from citizens ... guarded in beauty and made free to all.”
This act, to dedicate wild lands for public use and protection, was driven by a universal ideal: that wild places exist not for the profit of a few but as a public commons and a social good. It took over a century after the birth of the United States for that ideal to gain hold in American life. The country’s first “public park” was created after a team including artists and photographers captured images of transcendent beauty in northern Wyoming’s landscapes, which enamored the nation. They inspired President Ulysses S. Grant to establish Yellowstone National Park in 1872. But those early efforts to create public lands came at a cost: They often displaced Indigenous peoples—one reason the conservation movement has evolved to better center Native American voices and partnerships."
Jonathan Hahn reports for Sierra magazine September 8, 2025.
SEE ALSO:
"Public Lands Are on the Line" (Sierra)
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