Environmental concerns

The Gilded Age was an age of exploitation rather than environmental concerns. The nation’s seemingly inexhaustible natural resources of land, timber, and minerals were consumed with little thought of future needs. There was no government plan for the intelligent use of land and its resources. If they appeared to hinder “progress,” flora and fauna were ruthlessly eliminated. The bison (buffalo) were virtually annihilated, and the prairie sod was “busted” and farms expanded into areas suitable only for grazing, with the blessing of those who believed erroneously that rain followed the plow. Forests were clearcut and were not reseeded, while the extraction of coal and minerals scarred the earth and polluted the waters.

Intelligent planning was also absent in the rapid development of Gilded Age cities. As they grew, their problems multiplied with devastating effects on the environment. Smoke from factories and domestic stoves polluted the air, and water was often contaminated by raw sewage. Owing to its steel mills, Pittsburgh was renowned as “the smokey city” and was notorious for its impure water, drawn from the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. These rivers were polluted by hundreds of thousands of upstream residents. As a result, the death rate from typhoid fever in Pittsburgh was seven times that of New York City. Cities combined overcrowded housing and bad water with inadequate parks and nonexistent playground facilities.

A few developments, however, pointed toward a society more in harmony with nature. Although created to help the mining industry meet the demands of an expanding economy, the U. S. Geological Survey, established in 1879, showed that forest, water, and mineral resources were not infinite. Two years earlier in 1877, Carl ScHURZ, the German-born reform-minded secretary of the interior, aware of the scientific management of European forests, pleaded with Congress to preserve and manage rationally “all timber-lands still belonging to the United States.” Rejecting what Senator James Gillespie Blaine called “the land laws of Prussia,” Congress passed the giveaway Timber and Stone Act, which sold valuable forests for $2.50 an acre to speculators, who often filed fraudulent claims. Even though the National Forest Reserve program began in 1891, it was not until the 20th century, after timber barons had illegally gobbled up much of the valuable timberland, that Schurz’s conservation ideas were adopted.

Fortunately, the federal government did preserve as national parks a few points of breathtaking natural beauty. Yellowstone National Park (1872), Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks (1890), and Mount Rainier National Park (1899) were reserved for the people and offer a glimpse of the nation’s pre-Columbian environment. Ironically, even the establishment of the Mount Rainier park was rooted in exploitation. It had been part of the Northern Pacific

Old Faithful erupting in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 1883. Photograph by Frank Jay Haynes (Library of Congress)

Railroad’s land grant, but its timber was worthless and its farmland nonexistent. James J. Hill, who controlled the Northern Pacific, swapped its 450,000 acres of prospective park land for the same acreage in valuable timberland.

There were a few bright spots in the usually dismal urban landscape of the Gilded Age. Noting the crucial importance of the environment for cities, Henry David Thoreau observed that “a town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it.” Some cities did establish parks, where land was available. Frederick Law Olmsted, the Gilded Age’s outstanding landscape architect, planned several of these urban oases. On the same wavelength as Thoreau, Olmsted believed in the therapeutic value of landscape. Pastoral scenery with a mix of meadow, groves, and lakes created a peaceful sanctuary “with a sufficient number of trees about it. . . to completely shut out” the bustle and stress of the city. In Brooklyn, New York, his conception of the broad, tree-lined Eastern and Ocean Parkways, radiating from Prospect Park, with walks, bridle and bicycle paths, and a central space for vehicles, extended (some of) the natural beauty of the park, while beckoning people to it. But Gilded Age parks were usually near affluent neighborhoods and remote from urban slums. By 1900 a few schoolyards were made available for play, but children who were not working usually played in the streets. Housing conditions in slums were so appalling that Alfred Tredway White began the American housing-reform movement in 1877 by building the Home Buildings in Brooklyn. His third large-building complex, the Riverside Buildings, constructed in 1890, featured a total environment with a community bathhouse, park, playground, and music pavilion.

The Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 gave Americans a vision of what the city of tomorrow might be. Its carefully planned “White City” combined order and grandeur and stood in stark contrast to the grime, crime, constriction, and confusion of contemporary Gilded Age cities. The White City anticipated the rise of a City Beautiful movement with plans for urban reconstruction along environmental friendly lines.

See also buffalo, extermination of; cities and urban life; CoNSERVATIoN.

Further reading: Charles E. Beveridge and Paul Roche-leau, Frederick Law Ol-msted: Designing the American Landscape (NewYork: Universe Publishing, 1998); Roderick Nash, The American Environment: Readings in the History of Conservation (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968); Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography of Frederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).