Making America's Public Lands: The Contested History of Conservation on Federal Lands

National Archives Museum
Online

In the United States, the federal government owns more than a quarter of the nation’s landscape—nearly 640 million acres, or more than a million square miles, which, if consolidated, would make it the 10th largest nation on earth. Primarily managed by four federal agencies—the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service—American public lands have been central to developing the American economy, state, and identity. The history of these lands intersects with critical components of the American past—namely nature, politics, and economics. From the beginning, the concept of “public” has been the subject of controversy, from visions of homesteaders realizing the ideal of the Jeffersonian republic to western ranchers who use the open range to promote a free enterprise system, to wilderness activists who see these lands as wild places, free from human encumbrance. Environmental historian Adam Sowards synthesizes public lands history from the beginning of the republic to recent controversies.