"sport gentlemen" to go to anyone of a number of resorts and camps that were built to provide hunting and fishing experiences. The weeks in the "wilderness" at camps and lodges, many of them luxurious, became the device by which these men, and occasionally their wives and families, re-engaged themselves with nature.
I will now speak ofanother component of scenery, without which every landscape is defective -it is water. Like the eye in the human countenance, it is a most expressive feature: in the unrippled lake, which mirrors all surrounding objects, we have the expression of tranquility and peace - in the rapid stream, the headlong cataract, that of turbulence and impetuosity, in this element of scenery, what land is so rich?
Thomas Cole, "Essay on American Scenery" 1835
Much of this movement may have been initiated by aging Civil War veterans who sought to recreate their military camp experience by returning to the field to do battle with fish and game. By the 1870s, the pages of Scribners, Harpers, and other national magazines were filled with stories and illustrations of fishing camps where groups of men sat around campfires and relived the day's activities - as many of them had done in uniform more than a decade before. These magazines were soon followed by more specialized publications that focused on the hunter or the excursionist, Field and Stream and Outing Magazine being among the better known of the type.
In the early twentieth century these wilderness experiences, now available to the middle classes, began to diminish in quality. Much of the game and the fish that these men came to enjoy and to exploit were no longer plentiful. By the early 1900s, both the white-tailed deer and the native brook trout had all but vanished from Pennsylvania's forests and streams. Simultaneously, Pennsylvania and other states began to propagate trout in hatcheries; these were then stocked in streams that no longer supported naturally sustaining popUlations, providing the illusion that the waters were still pure, that the wilderness experience was available to every man and not just to the few who could afford a distant trip to the back countries of Maine, Canada, or the West.
1. Bear Run-before 1900 Pennsylvania's rich coal deposits, old growth forests, and fertile soils in the southwestern regions of the state were explOited well into the twentieth century. This work was not an enhancement to the scenery. Farming, logging and mining reduced much of the native forest to bare eroded hills, gouged holes in the hillsides, and polluted streams; still, the idea of the picturesque countryside continued to lure city dwellers eager to renew themselves in the fresh country air. After the Civil War, many narrow-gauge logging railroads, including the line that connected to the Bear Run Valley, criss-crossed valleys bringing timber to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Passenger trains were sometimes associated with these railroads, but the railways were largely for the convenience of the logging operation. Still, they were often the lifelines for other activities in the region. Using the railroads and roads built to transport goods, adventurous vacationers could reach this previously inaccessible landscape. In the late 1800s, one of the consequences of the national boom in fishing camps and vacation
An Interpretation and Management Plan for the Landscape of Fallingwater
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