Postcard US-9371772

The grandeur of the American West inspired the idea of national parks. There, vast landscapes, still untouched by development filled the eye. Artists, authors, and scientists struggled to capture the beauty they encountered and to record and share their discoveries. But they worried. What would happen when westward expansion arrived on the doorstep of the wilderness?

Artist George Catlin, during an 1832 trip to the Dakotas, was perhaps the first to suggest a novel solution to this fast-approaching reality. Indian civilization, wildlife, and wilderness were all in danger, wrote Catlin, unless they could be preserved "by some great protecting policy of government...in a magnificent park.... A nation’s Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild[ness] and freshness of their nature’s beauty!"

Thanks for this insight,