Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation

by Karl Jacoby

Overview

Crimes against Nature reveals the hidden history behind three of the nation's first parklands: the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. Focusing on conservation's impact on local inhabitants, Karl Jacoby traces the effect of criminalizing such traditional practices as hunting, fishing, foraging, and timber cutting in the newly created parks. Jacoby reassesses the nature of these "crimes" and provides a rich portrait of rural people and their relationship with the natural world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520282292
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/22/2014
Edition description:	First Edition, 1, With a New Afterword
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Karl Jacoby is a professor in the Department of History and in the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. He is the author of Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xi

List of Tables xiii

Preface xv

Introduction: The Hidden History of American Conservation 1

Part I Forest: The Adirondacks

1 The Re-creation of Nature 11

2 Public Property and Private Parks 29

3 Working-Class Wilderness 48

Part II Mountain: Yellowstone

4 Nature and Nation 81

5 Fort Yellowstone 99

6 Modes of Poaching and Production 121

Part III Desert: The Grand Canyon

7 The Havasupai Problem 149

8 Farewell Song 171

Epilogue: Landscapes of Memory and Myth 193

Afterword 199

Chronology of American Conservation 205

Notes 209

Bibliography 273

Index 299