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A painting of a steamship on the Mississippi River.

A Fundamental Boundary: What the Mississippi River Means to America

On the meaning and use of rivers and other waterways.
by Boyce Upholt via Literary Hub on June 11, 2024
Republican debate.

What the Republican Debates Get Wrong About the Puritans

Pence invoked them at the Republican debates, but a true reckoning with their history provides a different vision of the nation’s future.
by Peter C. Mancall via Zócalo Public Square on September 27, 2023

America's National Parks Were Never Wild and Untouched

Montana's emblematic Glacier National Park reveals the impact of human history and culture.
by Adam M. Sowards via Zócalo Public Square on June 11, 2018
A snowcapped mountain surrounded by forest reflects in a lake at North Cascades National Park.

Remembering What the Parks Forgot

On memory, erasure, and the return of indigenous presence.
by Ryan W. Booth via Perspectives on History on July 2, 2025
A woman peering into the cave of Sarah Bishop c. 1900.

The Curious History of New England’s Hermit Tourism

From Revolutionary War-era recluses to 1920s roadside attractions, meet the solitary figures who turned isolation into a destination.
by Ryan Shea via Atlas Obscura on June 13, 2025
The logo for Canada Lumber.
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French Canadians in the New England Woods

French Canadians held a distinct position in an American labor landscape in which experts viewed different “races” as being suited to different kinds of work.
by Livia Gershon, Jason L. Newton via JSTOR Daily on June 5, 2025
Mountainous Alaska landscape.

Trump’s Push to Control Greenland Echoes US Purchase of Alaska From Russia in 1867

The tale of how and why Russia ceded its control over Alaska to the U.S. 150 years ago is actually two tales and two intertwining histories.
by William L. Iggiagruk Hensley via The Conversation on January 8, 2025
John Muir.

What a Young John Muir Learned In the Wisconsin Wilderness

The Scottish-born naturalist’s early years in the United States.
by Amanda Bellows via Literary Hub on June 14, 2024
Earth First! protestors on a pond, and getting arrested.

Earth First!

Earth First! was founded in 1980 to defend wildlife and wilderness areas more directly and uncompromisingly than most environmental groups.
by Daniel Vollaro via AdirondackLife on April 22, 2024
People on Mason's Island
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Island in the Potomac

Steps from Georgetown, a memorial to Teddy Roosevelt stands amid ghosts of previous inhabitants: the Nacotchtank, colonist enslavers, and the emancipated.
by Amelia Roth-Dishy via JSTOR Daily on February 7, 2024
Two men hiking.

Jews in the Wilderness

One man's role in shaping the nation's best-loved long-distance footpath reminds us of the close bonds that Jews have formed with the North American landscape.
by Michael Hoberman via Tablet on January 24, 2024

The War on Ecoterror

Environmental radicalism, left and right.
by Gaby del Valle via The Drift on November 8, 2023
Ring of color that evokes a hole chiseled into rock.

Portholes

Tracing markers from near and distant past and unspooling the narratives about the imprints we leave on the planet for what they say about the future.
by Anna Badkhen via Emergence Magazine on October 23, 2023
A herd of bison running.

Speaking Wind-Words

Tracing the transformation of the Great Plains to the widespread belief in “manifest destiny,” and weighing the power of words to shape landscapes.
by Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder via Emergence Magazine on August 17, 2023
Hikers view the sunrise from a mountaintop.

Why the Famed Appalachian Trail Keeps Getting Longer — and Harder

As America has transformed, so too has its famous footpath. Less than half the A.T. remains where it was originally laid.
by Lizzie Johnson, Lauren Tierney via Washington Post on July 27, 2023
Carter at the Dedication of a New Solar Water Heating System for the White House Roof.

Unheralded Environmentalist: Jimmy Carter’s Green Legacy

In 1978, Carter protected 56M Alaskan acres, tripled wilderness lands, championed conservation, and foresaw climate risks, leaving a lasting green legacy.
by Kai Bird via Yale E360 on March 23, 2023
Polar bear walks across melting ice in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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Did One Photograph Change the Fate of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge?

What the political fight over a photo teaches us about the power of art, grassroots activism and images.
by Finis Dunaway via Made By History on March 3, 2023
A Coal miner, his wife and two of their children in Bertha Hill, West Virginia, September 1938.

How Black Folks Have Built Resilient Spaces for Themselves in US Mountains

Did you know that there was a hidden utopia of formerly enslaved people located in the mountains of Appalachia?
by Cameron Oglesby via Earth In Color on February 1, 2023
Sketched portrait of Kim Stanley Robinson in front of a line drawing of the Sierra Navada landscape

Seeing Mars on Earth

Kim Stanley Robinson on how the High Sierra has influenced his science fiction.
by Kim Stanley Robinson, Jon Christensen via High Country News on May 24, 2022
Floral wallpaper, c. 1875. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Collection, gift of Harvey Smith.

Flower Power

On the women who kickstarted the ecological restoration movement in America.
by Laura J. Martin via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 18, 2022
Herd of bison

Reopen the American Frontier

Let us let the ghosts of the megafauna rise, but let us leave the old imperialists to lie in their graves undisturbed.
by Jason Morgan via The American Conservative on March 1, 2022
Portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted (detail), 1895, by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925); The Artchives/Alamy Stock Photo.

The Man Who Built Forward Better

Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape creations, especially his urban parks, remain a vital part of our present.
by Witold Rybczynski via The Hedgehog Review on March 1, 2022
Drawing of a dying tree. The tree is losing its needles and the trunk is frayed.

The Tallest Known Tree in New York Falls in the Forest

The white pine known as Tree 103 had lost the dewy glow that it had back in 1675.
by Susan Orlean via The New Yorker on January 18, 2022
Old-time black and white pictures of Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir with a modern city background

How American Environmentalism Failed

Traditional environmentalism has lacked a meaningful, practical democratic vision, rendering it largely marginal to the day-to-day lives of most Americans.
by William Shutkin via The MIT Press Reader on August 31, 2021

America’s Conflicted Landscapes

A nation that identifies itself with nature begins to fall apart when it can no longer agree on what nature is.
by David E. Nye via The MIT Press Reader on April 20, 2021
One of Yellowstone's infamous hot springs.

The Lost History of Yellowstone

Debunking the myth that the great national park was a wilderness untouched by humans
by Richard Grant via Smithsonian on January 5, 2021
Painting of the rocky mountains

How ‘America the Beautiful’ was Born

The United States’ unofficial anthem, a hymn of love of country.
by Jill Lepore via National Geographic on November 3, 2020
Forest on fire with two firefighters spraying water

A Note from the Fireline

Climate change and the colonial legacy of fire suppression.
by Jordan Thomas via The Drift on October 21, 2020
Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir ride horses in Yosemite.

Are National Parks Really America's Best Idea?

On the iconic conservation legacy of Theodore Roosevelt and the perception that the national parks and monuments he created were previously untouched and empty.
by David Gessner via Outside on August 6, 2020

Pulling Down Our Monuments

The Sierra Club's executive director takes a hard look at the white supremacy baked into the organization's formative years.
by Michael Brune via Sierra Club on July 22, 2020
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