National Park Roads ― A Legacy in the American Landscape

In this richly illustrated book, park historian Davis takes the reader all the way back to the beginning of park road construction, which is really back to the invention of the “park.” The reader learns of passages through the grounds at Versailles as well as carriage drives through London's Hyde park. Soon the text turns to America, and the National Park story gets underway. Of special note is the discussion of the constant tension between those pushing for better access to the parks and those who thought they were better off the fewer people could access them. There are a great many lovely illustrations; notable among them are the photographs of roads being built through utter wilderness in the early 1900s. Eventually, the reader learns about the modernization of the roads (much of which we see today) and the struggle for balance between use (such as by different modes of use such as bicycles and horses) and overuse. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Timothy Davis, a historian with the U.S. National Park Service, has published and lectured widely on America’s national parks. He is the coeditor, with Todd Croteau and Christopher Marston, of America’s National Park Roads and Parkways: Drawings from the Historic American Engineering Record.