Late in the 19th century virtually every home had a viewer for 3-D stereographs of a West that looked like a fable. They strongly influenced President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to make the Kings Canyon area a national park. Then in the 1930s, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), a staunch conservationist who had grown up near the windswept dunes of Golden Gate Park, lobbied Congress and sent the government a book of his photographs of the southern Sierra Nevada range. William Henry Jackson’s 1871 photographs of Yellowstone helped persuade Congress to establish the first national park in 1872. Later in the century, Carleton Watkins’s 1861 photographs of Yosemite contributed heavily to Lincoln’s decision in 1864 to secure the valley forever “for public use, resort and recreation,” the first time any government anywhere set aside land to benefit the public. In the early 19th century, Thomas Cole placed the eastern wilderness - his beloved Catskill Mountains - on walls. Most citizens were first introduced to the wilderness by images. BOSTON - Ah, wilderness! It’s our answer to Europe’s cathedrals, our proof of a unique national identity.
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