AA-2026-C15DF4
On the image
A uniformed ranger stands among tall conifers addressing a semicircle of children seated on the ground, the kind of outdoor nature program that the National Park Service and state park systems expanded aggressively in the postwar decade on the theory that American children, newly prosperous and increasingly suburban, needed to be formally reintroduced to the outdoors they were no longer accidentally wandering into. The ranger has his hands on his hips in the posture of a man who has explained the difference between a fir and a spruce many times and has made peace with doing so many more. The children are arranged with the cooperative attention of a school group that has been told this counts as education, which in the 1950s was enough to produce a reasonable facsimile of listening. The program was part of a broader mid-century civic faith that wilderness appreciation, if delivered in structured forty-five-minute increments by a man in a uniform, would produce conservation-minded citizens — a hypothesis the following decades would test with mixed results.
Visually related — by likeness
Park Ranger Nature Talk with Children in Conifer Forest, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-C15DF4. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/park-ranger-nature-talk-with-children-in-conifer-forest-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026C15DF4,
title = {Park Ranger Nature Talk with Children in Conifer Forest, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-C15DF4},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/park-ranger-nature-talk-with-children-in-conifer-forest-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Park Ranger Nature Talk with Children in Conifer Forest, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-C15DF4 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/park-ranger-nature-talk-with-children-in-conifer-forest-1950s ER -
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