Olmsted and Yosemite
Civil War, Abolition, and the National Park Idea
Based on the LALH book by Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr, Olmsted and Yosemite explores the origins of America’s national park idea, as expressed in Olmsted’s 1865 Yosemite Report. This unprecedented concept of federally mandated parkland was part of the Lincoln administration’s efforts to expand the privileges of American citizenship in the new Republic.
The National Park Service has been slow to embrace Olmsted’s role in this history, preferring instead more anodyne narratives of pristine Western landscapes discovered by rugged outdoorsman like John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. Olmsted and Yosemite sets the historical record straight by offering a new interpretation of how the American park—urban and national—came to figure so prominently in our cultural identity.