Social reform through parks: the American Civic Association's program for a better America

Abstract

The American Civic Association, an urban, elite organization based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC, provided a major impetus to the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. The association had actively involved itself with national parks for nearly a decade before 1916 despite the fact that most members lived far from the national parks in the West. This article argues that the concern of the American Civic Association for national parks sprang from its conviction that parks comprised vehicles for reforming society. They dismissed the differences in scale between national and urban parks as irrelevant to the ability of parks to affect society. All properly organized parks offered means to improve America. They characterized the reformed society that would follow on the heels of a national park system as healthy, wealthy, equal and patriotic, the same qualities that they attributed to a post-urban park society. The significance of the national parks for the American Civic Association, therefore, came from the presumed ability of these parks, like all parks, to foster a better America.