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The epic saga of Big Basin began in the late 1800s, when the surrounding communities saw their once "inexhaustible" redwood forests vanishing. Expanding railways demanded timber as they crisscrossed the nation, but the more redwoods that fell to the woodman's axe, the greater the effects on the local climate. California's groundbreaking environmental movement attracted individuals from every walk of life. From the adopted son of a robber baron to a bohemian woman winemaker to a Jesuit priest, resilient campaigners produced an unparalleled model of citizen action. Join author Traci Bliss as she reveals the untold story of a herculean effort to preserve the ancient redwoods for future generations.
The first park ranger in the world was appointed in California in 1866. Galen Clark was chosen as "Guardian of Yosemite," at what was then Yosemite State Park, and the concept of rangers to protect and administer America's great nature parks was born. The tradition continued in 1872 with the establishment of the first national park at Yellowstone. From the earliest days, park rangers have been romanticized; they are explorers, outdoorsmen, tree lovers, animal protectors, police officers, nature guides, and park administrators. The park ranger has become an American icon, whose revered image has maintained itself to this very day.
Americans have long cherished romantic images of the frontier and its colorful cast of characters, where the cowboys are always rugged and the ladies always fragile. But in this book, Peter Boag opens an extraordinary window onto the real Old West. Delving into countless primary sources and surveying sexological and literary sources, Boag paints a vivid picture of a West where cross-dressing—for both men and women—was pervasive, and where easterners as well as Mexicans and even Indians could redefine their gender and sexual identities. Boag asks, why has this history been forgotten and erased? Citing a cultural moment at the turn of the twentieth century—when the frontier ended, the United States entered the modern era, and homosexuality was created as a category—Boag shows how the American people, and thus the American nation, were bequeathed an unambiguous heterosexual identity.
California was one of the first states in the nation to have a state park system. While a general history of the system up to 1980 has been written, the history of interpretation in the California Department of Parks and Recreation (more commonly know as California State Parks) had never been documented and analyzed in a single focused study. Of particular interest is how the evolution of interpretation in the California state park system compares to that in the rest of the United States, especially the National Park Service. Data for this thesis was gathered from many sources. For the history of California State Parks interpretation these included the department document archives and photographic archives, the California State Archives, the Center for Sacramento History, California State Parks publications, and private collections of department documents made available to the author. The author also conducted three oral history interviews with past department employees. These oral histories will be deposited in the California State Parks Archives, in both digital recording and transcript form. The national context was also researched using a wide variety of sources. The website of the National Association for Interpretation and a publication from that organization provided a broad overview of the development of interpretation in the United States, as did seminal works on interpretation theory written throughout the twentieth century, and historical books and journal articles on interpretive techniques, trends, and issues. Additional information, especially on specific interpretive methods, came from the National Park Service. The study reveals that interpretation became increasingly professionalized in California State Parks throughout the twentieth century, as it did nationwide during the same period. In virtually all cases, interpretive techniques, training and planning lagged behind the National Park Service--usually about a decade behind. The main reason for this seems to be chronically insufficient funding and staffing to carry out programs, not a lack of knowledge of what was occurring in the National Park Service and other agencies. In the case of distance learning, California State Parks was a pioneer, and still is ahead of the National Park Service and other park agencies in the nation in having a system-wide organized program of distance learning.
"The story behind the naming of important mountains, counties, rivers, cities, lakes, capes, bays"--Cover.
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