Environmental History
5/27/15 – 100 Years of Town Forests
This year, Vermont is celebrating 100 years of town forests. Town forests are just that – tracts of forest managed by the town, something that sounds so simple that it’s easy to forget their significance. I have fond memories of tromping through our town forest growing up in Ferrisburgh; it is on Shellhouse Mountain, a… Read the Rest »
5/13/15 – Go Fish
Looking at an image of (renowned Washington governor) Isaac Stevens, two things come to mind. First, he has a striking resemblance to Brad Pitt. Second, he looks like a man that gets what he wants, come hell or high water. As the first Territorial Governor of Washington and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Stevens did… Read the Rest »
5/6/15 – Early Snow Surveys
While reading correspondence from the Bureau of Reclamation recently, SHRA researchers came across indications that some of the earliest snow surveys, dating back to the early 1920s, were conducted in the Boise River watershed. This piqued our interest in the early history of snow surveys and how technological developments have improved their accuracy. At a… Read the Rest »
4/8/2015 – Thinking Like a Historian
Last night, over dinner with my aunt and uncle, who were visiting from Massachusetts, we got into a discussion about the historical research we do at SHRA, its links to current environmental issues, and methodology, something that sounds boring and mundane, but something that had us sitting around the dinner table far into the evening…. Read the Rest »
4/1/15 – Hite’s Cove
Every early March my thoughts turn to Hite’s Cove, a steep-sided canyon along the South Fork of the Merced River just west of Yosemite National Park. For those living in the small town up the road from Hite’s Cove, as I did for three years, there is no better place to spot early spring wildflowers…. Read the Rest »
3/25/15 – Fishing with Brando
The Indian Affairs series in the Washington State Department of Fisheries central files was probably the last place we’d have looked for a reference to Hollywood, yet there was Marlon Brando’s name, as plain as day. In 1964, we learned, Brando participated in a fish-in along with a Puyallup tribal leader, defying Washington state law… Read the Rest »
2/25/15 – Snowflake Bentley
A recent article in The Vault, Slate’s history blog, on illustrations of snowflakes from the 1860s caught our eye at SHRA, especially because it referenced Wilson Bentley, a figure better known to all Vermont school children as Snowflake Bentley.[i] Bentley, a farmer from Jericho, Vermont, followed the exquisite snowflake drawings of the 1860s with the… Read the Rest »
2/16/15 – White Pine Camp
This winter I had the chance to spend time in a historic part of the Adirondack Mountains of New York. Adirondack Park – the largest state-level protected area in the continental United States and the largest National Historic Landmark – covers much of northeastern Upstate New York and played an essential role in the environmental… Read the Rest »
2/9/15 – Wolf Reintroduction
While not a find in the archives, we’ve just reached the 20th anniversary of a landmark event in environmental history: the reintroduction of wolves to Idaho and Yellowstone. In what a recent Idaho Statesman article called “one of the most controversial wildlife projects of the century,” in 1995 and 1996, 66 wolves were live-trapped in… Read the Rest »
2/4/15 – Visiting History: Yuma, AZ
Editor’s Note: Today’s blog is courtesy of SHRA researcher HannaLore Hein. All photo credits are hers. In December 2014, I was fortunate enough to visit Yuma, Arizona. To some people’s surprise, the city is actually known for many things and has a lot to offer both tourists and locals alike. Located in the southwest corner of… Read the Rest »