A State of Green
The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park is the first site dedicated to the ethics of conservation and land stewardship.
BY RYAN DOUGHERTY
Vermont is known as the "Green Mountain State," a wonderland of rural beauty and unspoiled countryside. Had it not been for the work of three conservation-minded families, however, Vermont may not have remained as picturesque.
Settlers flooded into Vermont after the American Revolution, and by the middle of the 19th century, most of the state's forests had been destroyed. This caused drastic erosion and flooding—a true environmental crisis.
One of the first to respond to the crisis was George Perkins Marsh, now considered one of the world's foremost environmental thinkers. He grew up in the early 1800s on the farm that later became the center of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont.
Marsh quickly fell in love with nature, learning to identify native trees at a very young age. Many years later, while serving in the Vermont legislature and the U.S. Congress, Marsh lectured about the consequences of unfettered logging, lamenting the resulting changes in land and water.
He witnessed the profound impact humans had on the environment of the Mediterranean. Human activity there, Marsh said, had "brought the Earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon."
In 1864, Marsh poured his observations into a classic book, Man and Nature: Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, which analyzed the impact of humans on the environment and promoted responsible land stewardship. It was a watershed text for the environmental movement.
Marsh then served as U.S. minister to the newly united Kingdom of Italy until shortly before his death in 1882.
One of Marsh's Woodstock neighbors, Frederick Billings, had purchased the Marsh property in 1869. Billings made his first fortune as an attorney in California during the Gold Rush.
Returning to Vermont, he observed unhealthy rivers and lakes, a dilapidated countryside. Billings bought the Marsh property to establish a farm that would provide future generations with an example of wise stewardship. Billings made his second fortune as a railroad tycoon in the 1870s. He supported the practice of replanting trees along railroads—a progressive conservation practice for the time.
In Woodstock, he developed one of the nation's first programs of professional forest management, based on Marsh's environmental principles.
"Many a barren hillside will once more glow with the glorious autumn foliage," he said, "and the quiet village will see itself back in its old life and power."
Billings died in 1890, but his goal was sustained by three generations of women—first by his wife, Julia, then their three daughters, and finally by his granddaughter, Mary French.
Mary French married Laurance S. Rockefeller in 1934, uniting two families committed to conservation. The Rockefellers had established or enhanced more than 20 national parks, and Laurance shared his family's convictions.
A trusted advisor to five American presidents, he helped place conservation and outdoor issues on the national agenda. Laurance and Mary gave their land to the United States in 1992.
It is the first national park to tell both the story of conservation history and the evolving process of land stewardship in America. It is as Laurance Rockefeller had envisioned.
"The message and vision of conservation stewardship and its importance for the future will once again go out across the nation," he once said, "from the hills of Vermont."
RYAN DOUGHERTY is publications coordinator
