Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park
A Legacy of Stewardship in Vermont's Green Mountains
 Vermont’s Green Mountains, with their forested hills, small farms, and picturesque villages, have not always been as beautiful
and as green. After the American Revolution, settlers poured into Vermont. By the mid-1800s most of Vermont’s forests had been cut down,
causing severe erosion and flooding. Vermonters faced their first environmental crisis.
George Perkins Marsh
One of the first to respond to this crisis was George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882). As a child on his family’s farm in Woodstock, Marsh became a
keen observer of nature. After serving several terms in Congress in the 1840s, Marsh traveled the lands of the Mediterranean as an American
diplomat and saw first-hand how the actions of humans had "brought the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon." On his last
diplomatic mission to Italy, Marsh distilled his observations into a classic book, Man and Nature (1864). His careful analysis of the human
impact on nature and his eloquent plea for responsible land stewardship made this book one of the founding texts of the environmental
movement.
 Frederick Billings
In 1869 the Marsh family farm was purchased by Frederick Billings (1823-1890), a Vermont native who had made his fortune as an attorney in San
Francisco during the California God Rush. Returning to Vermont he found barren hills, silted rivers, and a devastated countryside.
Billings set out to build a farm that would serve future generations as a model of wise stewardship. He imported purebred Jersey cows, and he
developed one of the nation’s first programs of scientific forest management, so that, in Billings’s words, "many a barren hillside will once
more glow with the glorious autumn foliage, and the quiet village will see itself back in its old life and power." After his death in 1890,
Billings’s plan was sustained by three generations of remarkable women, first by his wife, Julia and their three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and
Laura, and then by Billings’s granddaughter, Mary French.
The Rockefeller Family
The marriage of Mary French and Laurance S. Rockefeller in 1934 brought together two families with a strong commitment to conservation. The
Rockefeller family had generously created or enhanced over 20 national parks, and Laurance S. Rockefeller inherited his family’s love for the
land. As a trusted advisor to five American presidents he helped to make conservation and outdoor recreation an essential part of the national
agenda. Together Laurance and Mary made the gift that established Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park as Vermont’s first national
park.
A Vision for the Park
 "…there is a mandate to invent an entirely new kind of park. It must be one where the human stories and the natural history are
intertwined; where the relatively small acreage serves as an educational resource for the entire National Park Service and a seedbed for
American environmental thought; and where the legacy of American conservation and its future enter into dialogue, generating a new
environmental paradigm for our day." John Elder, Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont,
from remarks at the park’s opening ceremony.
Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park is the only national park to tell the story of conservation history and the evolving
nature of land stewardship in America. The park operates in partnership with the Woodstock Foundation, Inc., and the adjacent Billings Farm &
Museum. The park interprets the historic home of the Marsh, Billings, and Rockefeller families, their conservation work and stewardship of the
forest landscape, and the emergence of an American conservation ethic. The 550-acre woodlands continue to be managed for protection of natural
resources, education, recreation, sustainable forestry, historic character, and scenic beauty.
Stewardship
The National Park Service established the Conservation Study Institute here in 1998 to foster collaborative conservation as it applies to our
nation’s natural and cultural heritage. The institute is a forum for professionals to share best practices, cultivate leadership, and maintain a
dialogue on present and future trends. Through a wide variety of programs, participants stay current with the evolving field of conservation,
enhance partnerships, develop innovative methods of community engagement and place-based education, and plan strategies for the 21st
century.
"We must conceive of stewardship not simply as one individual’s practice, but rather as the mutual and intimate relationship extending
across generations, between a human community and its place on earth." – John Elder, Inheriting Mount Tom, 1997
| 