The Conservation Movement

Between 1850 and 1920, concern for the natural world emerged as a complex and broadly popular political and cultural movement in the United States. Newly urbanized Americans were becomingly increasingly aware of the importance of nature as an economic, aesthetic, and spiritual resource, especially as they became convinced that nature's resources were imperiled by industrialization. This movement led to unprecedented public and private initiatives to ensure the conservation of natural resources and the preservation of wildlife and of land. By the turn of the twentieth century, Wisconsin had become a center of conservation thinking and activity in the United States.... more...

Original Documents and Other Primary Sources

	Recollections of John Muir in Prairie du Chien, 1860-61.
	Madison boasts the nation's first fish hatchery
	The CCC tackles forest fires in Northern Wisconsin, 1934
	Increase Lapham surveys Wisconsin's trees, 1858
	Constitution of the Wisconsin Game Protective Association, 1900
	A Lake Geneva home becomes a refuge for native plants and birds
	A Guide to CCC Camps in Wisconsin, 1937
	Progressive-era conservation efforts, 1917-1922
	Wisconsin's earliest forest conservation plea, 1867
	The Forestry Commission urges the creation of a state forest system, 1898
	A conservation education camp opens in Eagle River
	John Nolen drafts a plan for a state park system in 1909
	The Killing of Chief Joe White (Gishkitawag), 1894
	Increase Lapham examining a meteorite, ca. 1868
	Pictures of John Muir
	Smokey Bear visits Milwaukee in 1954
	Birdseye view of the first Wisconsin Fish Hatchery
	A CCC recruitment poster, 1939
	Pictures of the cutover lands in northern Wisconsin
	30 original manuscript letters of John Muir, 1861-1914
	A visit to John Muir in his dorm room, ca. 1862.
	John Muir's younger brother recalls their boyhood.

Primary Sources Available Elsewhere

	Aldo Leopold evaluates compulsory conservation education, 1937
	La Crosse citizens unite to save Grandad Bluff
	The first textbook on conservation in the United States, 1910
	Wisconsin Blue Books
	John Nolen outlines the La Crosse park system in 1911
	Excerpt from the first conservation textbook, 1910
	John Muir describes his youth and early scientific curiosity
	John Muir's letters to his Wisconsin mentor
	Art work of the Mississippi Valley in 1899

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