Giving Thanks - Day Three
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 focus on those men and women who took steps to protect and improve the lives of future generations who would call western Pennsylvania home.
Otto Jennings
Otto E. Jennings exemplified the naturalists of his time, traveling incessantly, investigating the nooks and crannies of the region and cataloguing the flora of western Pennsylvania as both his vocation and avocation. Early in his career, he was appointed Custodian of Botany at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1904, becoming Curator of Botany in 1915 and Director of the Museum in 1945. At the same time, he started teaching at the University of Pittsburgh and served as Head of the Department of Biological Sciences from 1935 until he retired in 1947. In the 1950s until his death in 1964, Jennings served as Chief Naturalist for Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and advocated for the protection of places like Ohiopyle, Raccoon Creek, and what would become known as Jennings Blazing Star Prairie in Butler County – places that he had explored and knew harbored some of the region's most unique flora and natural communities. His collaboration with artist Andrey Avinoff produced the two volume Wildflowers of Western Pennsylvania and the Upper Ohio Basin ; the excellent illustrations from that work appearing in many of WPC's calendars over the years. Our photo today of a blazing star ( Liatris spicata ) was taken by Paul Wiegman at Jennings's Blazing Star Prairie – an area that WPC purchased and transferred to the Bureau of State Parks as a natural area and example of one of the “fingers” of prairie that extended into Pennsylvania from the Midwest. more information…
Frank W. Preston, Ph.D.
Born in 1896, Frank William Preston was by training an engineer, receiving his B S.and Ph.D. in Engineering at London University and eventually founding his own company – Preston Laboratories – for glass research, establishing in the small community of Meridian near Butler. He and his company devised a completely new type of glass-melting furnace for Corning Glass that made Corelle ware possible. The landscape of western Pennsylvania fascinated Dr. Preston and he walked and mapped the gravel moraines, prowled the gorges and streams, and worked out the sequences and extent of great glacial lakes, giving them distinctive names – Lake Arthur, Lake Edmund, Lake Watts – all in tribute to the late Edmund Watts Arthur, eminent Pittsburgh attorney and distinguished essayist, naturalist, and geologist. He identified the glacial spillways, described how the great gorge of Slippery Rock Creek was probably eroded in weeks, rather than centuries, as the waters of Glacial Lake Arthur broke through at Portersville Station, freeing a mighty cascade that would have dwarfed the Johnstown flood. Preston located glacial erratics, visited kettle hole bogs, and deduced the routes used by mammoths and mastodons to cross Muddy Creek valley more information...
Graham Netting
M. Graham Netting, one of the “ten patriots” or founders of what would become the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, was born in Wilkinsburg in 1904. He possessed a broad knowledge and expertise in Herpetology, Geography, Museology and was an ardent conservationist. In the field of herpetology, he specialized in the salamanders of Appalachia and worked as Curator of Herpetology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History from 1932 to 1954. He also served as assistant director of the museum (1949), and director from 1954-1975. Under his direction, the Museum established the Powdermill Nature Reserve – a research facility which went on to feature on e of the country's premier bird banding programs. From 1944 to 1963, Graham Netting was a part-time associate professor of Geography, with a specialty in zoogeography and urban geography at the University of Pittsburgh. While there, he wrote the book, Geography of Pittsburgh. In 1950, Netting became director and secretary of the Greater Pittsburgh Parks Association, which became the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1951. more information...
The Kaufmanns, Frank Lloyd Wright and Fallingwater
Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann contracted Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater at their favorite spot on Bear Run in Fayette County. Fallingwater is recognized as one of Wright's most acclaimed works. It is a supreme example of Frank Lloyd Wright's concept of organic architecture which promotes harmony between man and nature through design so well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings became part of a unified, interrelated composition. Wright embranced modern technology to achieve this, designing spaces for living which expressed architecturally the expansive freedom of the American frontier. more information...
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