Middle Park Syndrome: Securing a Place for Provincial and State Park History in Canadian and US Conservation History

• In Event: Mediating politics and culture through parks in North America and Scandinavia

Abstract

As Ney C. Landrum points out in The State Park Movement in America: A Critical Review, state and provincial parks occupy a ‘central position’ in the park and outdoor recreation spectrum between national parks and municipal or city parks. Similar to a middle child, these park middlemen have garnered very little attention from environmental historians in comparison to their park counterparts. National parks, like a first-born, receive the most attention, both popularly and academically. City parks, on the other hand, enjoy a playful and fruitful connection to urban history that ensures higher historiographical coverage. Provincial and state parks have largely been ignored by historians because, as Keith Carlson and Jon Clapperton have pointed out, they lack a centralized, and thus easily analyzable, centralized structure like that which binds national parks. Focusing on the provincial park systems of Alberta and Ontario and the state park systems of Idaho and Pennsylvania, this paper uses a comparative format to explore the overlooked role of state and provincial parks in North American environmental history. This paper looks at three significant focal points from which environmental historians can begin to tame provincial and state park history and bring it into the broader conservation history dialogue. Firstly, this paper looks at the evolution of provincial and state park systems and the way in which the location and character of the parks changed throughout the twentieth-century to accommodate societal desires for accessibility and the further democratization of recreation. Secondly, this paper will look at how provincial and state parks have acted as regional instruments of ecological restoration, not just islands of preservation. Thirdly, this paper will look at opportunities that provincial and state parks provide for illuminating the role of non-elites in environmental and conservation history.

Author

• Jessica Marie DeWitt, University of Saskatchewan