Visited: Sunday, September 4th, 2011
This park - technically, a National Historic Park; it might be the first so-designated NPS site we've been to - is the only site in Vermont, and not one I understood before visiting. There's a wonderful movie, shown near Billings Farm (which is not park of the NPS site), which does a very nice job of explaining the site and how - over 200 years - it served a common theme.
George Perkins Marsh, the author of Man and Nature, was born at the site, and was an early American conservationist, as well as a scholar and diplomat. He sold the site to...
Frederick Billings, a president of the Northern Pacific railroad, and the gentleman for whom Billings, Montana is named. In some ways, Billings is the odd-man-out; he did a number of things that had positive environmental impacts, but he wasn't really as much of an activist, for his time, as either Marsh or Rockefeller. Speaking of whom, Billing's granddaughter married...
Laurence Rockefeller, who alone among John Rockefeller Jr.'s sons, continued the environmental work of his father, contributing to 20 national parks.
And thus, three different men all lived on this Woodstock, VT property, all having significant positive impact to the environment, through their writings and actions. The film explaining this was _excellent_. The visitor center isn't extensive, but it's nicely done. And the grounds looked nice, though they're still recovering from Irene so we didn't go exploring.
No comments:
Post a Comment