The first eloquent expression of the need to conserve public lands for all, lauded by Ken Burns.
When Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan visited Yosemite National Park, they called out Fredrick Law Olmsted as a major inspiration for their film, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. Later, the two collaborated on a foreword for a reprinting of Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 186 5-a must-read for anyone interested in the national parks and public lands.

Frederick Law Olmsted wrote this remarkable and prescient report to convince the governor of the new State of California to support conserving Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for all citizens, not just for "a very few, very rich people." No statement has been more foundational to what is arguably America's finest contribution to the world-the idea of national parks.
Pristine natural landscapes, Olmsted observed, provide people with "refreshing rest and re-invigoration." They are good-perhaps essential-for the soul. Which is why, he noted, they have most often become the exclusive domain of any society's most privileged classes. Olmsted believed a great democracy had a greater obligation: "to provide means of protection for all its citizens in the pursuit of happiness." In deliberately borrowing from our nation's founding document, which proclaims that the "pursuit of happiness" is among the inalienable rightsof every human being, Olmsted infused the national park idea with its most enduring principle.
All of Olmsted's many reasons for creating public parks are as pertinent today as they were when he first wrote them nearly 150 years ago. During times of great income inequality as well as threats to public lands, reading and sharing the forward-thinking work of Frederick Law Olmsted is both an act of conservation and of dissent toward forces that would threaten America's best idea.
This gorgeous new gift edition of Olmsted's report features the foreword by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, an introduction by Olmsted scholar Victoria Post Ranney, and woodblock illustrations by Della Taylor Hoss, who long resided in Yosemite and illustrated its tremendous trees.

Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove

$21.50