Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea by Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr

Reviewed by: Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea by Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr Adam Wesley Dean Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea. By Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr. (Amherst, Mass.: Library of American Landscape History, 2022. Pp. [vi], 186. $28.00, ISBN 978-1-952620-34-8.) The recent release of Megan Kate Nelson’s excellent Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America (New York, 2022) and Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr’s Olmsted and Yosemite: Civil War, [End Page 155] Abolition, and the National Park Idea signals a resurgence of scholarly interest in one of the oldest topics in environmental history—the origins of national parks. Olmsted and Yosemite is a truly wonderful book that deserves to be read widely by scholars, undergraduates, and the general public. Diamant and Carr explain the intellectual origins and lasting impact of Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1865 “Preliminary Report upon the Yosemite and Big Tree Grove,” known as the “Yosemite Report” for short (p. 7). They find the report so significant to U.S. history writ large that they include the entire document in an appendix at the end of the book. This source amplifies their main argument that the convergence of campaigns for urban parks, especially Central Park in Manhattan, and the radical social changes wrought by the Civil War guided the passage of the Yosemite Act in 1864. In the words of Diamant and Carr, “the Yosemite Grant was a direct consequence of the war and related to the political and social revolution that the conflict fueled” (pp. 54–55). Chapter 1 covers Frederick Law Olmsted’s involvement with the design of Central Park and with antislavery politics in the 1850s. Olmsted believed that investing in public parks, “built by free—not slave—labor, affirmed republican values at a time when they were most threatened” by a slave South dedicated to expansion (p. 23). This chapter also covers Yosemite’s early history, including the long-standing Indigenous presence in the region and the roles of figures including Thomas Starr King, Jessie Benton Frémont, and Frederick Billings in promoting wider knowledge of the area’s beauty. The second chapter details the creation of Yosemite as a public park, Olmsted’s role as its first commissioner, and his famous Yosemite Report. Much of this story is well known, but Diamant and Carr break new ground by contrasting Olmsted’s vision for Yosemite with that of John Muir. They explain that Olmsted “did not see Yosemite Valley as John Muir did, as an imagined and sanctified wilderness,” but “understood it in aesthetic terms and found a unique and powerful composition of landscape effects” (p. 57). Lost on Olmsted and, indeed, later visitors was the fact that the parklike atmosphere of the Yosemite Valley in the 1860s was the product of regular controlled burns by Native Americans. Olmsted’s design ideas (which went largely unimplemented) emphasized landscape protection, unobtrusive pedestrian paths to the park’s best views, and improving the road between the steamboat landing at Stockton, California, and the Yosemite Valley. Olmsted believed a better road would make visiting Yosemite more affordable and prevent development in the valley by enabling the transportation of food and supplies from elsewhere. Chapter 3 begins by correcting long-standing assumptions that Olmsted’s Yosemite Report had no impact on later national park development. Olmsted presented the report in 1865 before an assembly of eastern dignitaries and reporters visiting Yosemite and published part of it in 1868 amid a national debate about private land claims in Yosemite. Diamant and Carr argue that Olmsted’s work on Yosemite also influenced his later work on Niagara Falls. The chapter then explores the origins of Yellowstone National Park, emphasizing that the “designation of a national park, in the era of Reconstruction, was concomitant with rising public expectations for the national government,” and [End Page 156] positing that the “framers of the Yellowstone legislation were also well aware of California’s shortcomings in managing Yosemite” (p. 88). The chapter concludes with a review of key developments in national park history, exploring the role of the Yosemite Report in the Hetch...