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Making Space: Sacred, Public And Private Property In American National Parks, Adina Langer

Honors Papers

The origins of America's national park movement lay in the intellectual and political milieu of the 19th century, when American artists, writers and politicians, conscious of a relatively short national history, longed for tangible symbols of a unique national identity. Historian Louis Warren argues, for example, that:

"Whereas the English, French, and Italian peoples could point to ancient ruins, cathedrals that were hundreds of years old, and traditions of arts and letters that went back almost to the dawn of Christianity, American culture was, by comparison, very new. Many found the material to fill this gap in America's monumental landscapes, …