Giving Thanks
We set aside this Thanksgiving weekend (Nov. 25-28) as a time to give thanks not only for the resources we share in western Pennsylvania, but for the conservationists who worked to protect them for future generations.
Today we feature three national environmentalists who served as the spark for the conservation movement in America. While others, like Henry David Thoreau and Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Grover Cleveland, preceded the three below, we feel these three brought together the principles of the modern environmental movement as we know it today.
Theodore Roosevelt was born in 1858 in New York and became the youngest President of the United States at the age of 43, following the 1901 assassination of then 25th President William McKinley. Known as the “trust buster,” Roosevelt also had a lifelong interest in natural history and studied the subject at Harvard University. It's been said that what made Roosevelt so important to the environmental movement is that he had both the passion for America's natural resources and the power to protect them. As President, Roosevelt was responsible for creating the National Wildlife Refuge Program, the United States Forest Service and eighteen National Monuments including the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest. In total, his administration set aside 235 millions acres. more information...
J. Horace McFarland was born in McAlisterville, Juniata County, Pa. on September 29, 1859. He lived most of his life in Harrisburg, and is an almost forgotten hero of the “city beautiful” preservation movement at the turn of the 20th Century. McFarland was the driving force behind modern improvements to Harrisburg in the early 1900s, including the City Island water filtration plant, Riverfront Park, Wildwood Lake (and associated flood control projects) and paved streets. This was at a time when city residents routinely dumped garbage and ashes into the Susquehanna River and died of typhoid fever. more information …
Gifford Pinchot , often referred to as the Father of American Conservation, was born in 1865 in Connecticut and became the first chief of the United States Forest Service. Pinchot first managed the forests of the vast estate of George Vanderbilt's Biltmore in North Carolina and was appointed to the National Forest Commission by President Grover Cleveland. President Theodore Roosevelt named Pinchot as chief of the newly formed United States Forest Service in 1905. In this post, Pinchot formed the modern ideas of sustained, efficient use of natural resources leading to the conservation movement. In the 1920s, Pinchot was elected Governor of Pennsylvania.more information...
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