A Brief History of Conservation

A Brief History of Conservation

By Adam R. Moore

“So Betty and I thought for a while and talked for a while, and then established the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, presenting to it the pond, the knoll, and every natural prospect.” So wrote Henry Beetle Hough in describing the origin of the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation in his 1975 memoir Mostly on Martha’s Vineyard. Yet where does Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation fit within the broad history of the American Conservation movement?

To answer, one might cross the Island and travel to the Cranberry Lands of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). The Cranberry Lands are found in the vast Lobsterville moors, a tumbling, windswept peninsula of bogs and ponds and dunes, a land of cranberries and beach plums and bayberries, and still the only place that I have ever seen an American bittern. On Cranberry Day, Wampanoag families still go the bogs to gather cranberries. The Cranberry Lands are a Wampanoag example of the oldest form of American conservation, that of a shared natural resource available to the community.

Traveling back from Aquinnah, one might venture down the Quansoo Road, and arrive at the Hancock-Mitchell House at Quansoo Farm, a well-preserved example of one of the oldest colonial-era houses on Martha’s Vineyard. Step inside, and note the planks in the borning room or the white pine roofers in the attic. These planks are wide, noticeably wide, yet none are wider than two feet. Why? Because during the reign of William and Mary, the British Crown adopted the Broad Arrow Policy for the American colonies. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter of 1691, all white pines “of the diameter of twenty-four inches and upwards at twelve inches off the ground” were reserved for the exclusive use of the Admiralty. These white pines were marked with three hatchet marks in the form of an arrow. In 1776, the flag of the Massachusetts Navy bore the image of a white pine and the words, “An Appeal to Heaven.”

The Navy continued to play an important role in American conservation, with the first federal set-aside of land for the preservation of forests occurring in 1828. In that year, President John Quincy Adams set aside the Naval Live Oaks Reservation, now a part of Gulf Islands National Seashore, near Pensacola, Florida, specifically to reserve its live oaks for the shipbuilding needs of the growing United States Navy.

Around that time, a strong national spirit around the importance of conservation was building, and the seeds were sown for what we now recognize as the American conservation movement.

Interest also grew locally in land conservation and agricultural improvement. If one ventured north from Quansoo, through the idyllic center of West Tisbury, one passes the Grange Hall, and about a mile further north, one passes the fairgrounds and current home of the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society. Founded in 1859, the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society reflected the interest of the Island community in better farming techniques and in conserving land. It was in 1860, before the very similar Middlesex Agricultural Society, when Henry David Thoreau delivered his lecture “The Succession of Forest Trees,” which laid the foundation for what we now know as forest ecology.

In 1864, Vermont scholar and diplomat George Perkins Marsh published the seminal Man and Nature. In the same year, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln gave to California for preservation as a park Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. A year later, Frederick Law Olmsted wrote the first report on this now-protected landscape. In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was created, making it the very first National Park in the nation and in the world.

Thereafter interest in conservation surged, especially during the Progressive Era, from the 1890s through the 1920s. In 1891, Congress enacted a law that enabled the President to set aside land as Forest Reserves, which later became the National Forests. This time period also saw the blossoming of a great many citizen conservation organizations, and it is within this realm that Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation squarely sits.

In 1891, at the recommendation of landscape architect Charles Eliot, the Massachusetts legislature created The Trustees of Reservations to protect scenic landscapes for public viewing, just as a museum protects and displays art. Thus was born the first land trust in the nation. In 1895, the Connecticut Forestry Association was founded to reforest the denuded, cut-over landscape of industrial, post-agricultural Connecticut. In 1896, Founding Mothers Harriet Lawrence Hemenway and Minna Hall created the Massachusetts Audubon Society, now MassAudubon, to protect birds what were being killed for plumage to adorn fashionable hats. These organizations were among many founded across the nation during this period.

The American conservation movement continued to grow with the establishment of the Forest Service in 1905. In 1908, to conserve the last population of the heath hen, the Heath Hen Reserve was created on Martha’s Vineyard. Sadly, the heath hen went extinct, and its home today is now known as the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest. In 1916, the National Park Service was created. During this time many state parks and state forests and associated agencies were created as well. During the years of the Great Depression and leading up to the beginning of World War II, the Civilian Conservation Corps offered meaningful work to unemployed young men on conservation land across the entire country.

Henry and Betty Hough purchased the Sheriff’s Meadow in 1958 and hoped to give it to one of the conservation organizations active at the time, which would have included the Trustees of Reservations, MassAudubon, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. However, the Houghs learned that no organization desired to own the property, as it was rather small, close to town, and lacked an endowment. Undaunted, the Houghs created Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, and gave the Sheriff’s Meadow to it.

In founding Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, the Houghs founded a local land trust, which is also known as a land conservancy. As the Foundation grew in the size and scope of its holdings, so the land trust movement grew in the United States, and also on the Island. The Vineyard Conservation Society – also in part a local land trust—was founded in 1965 by Henry Hough and Richard Pough, who had also helped found The Nature Conservancy in 1951. The Vineyard Open Land Foundation, both land planner and land trust, was founded in 1970. The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank Commission, a public land conservation agency, was founded through a citizen campaign and act of the Massachusetts legislature in 1986.

Land trusts are non-profit, citizen conservation organizations that own land for conservation and hold conservation easements over the land of others. Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation is now a member of the Land Trust Alliance, a nationwide organization serving all land trusts of all sizes. Today, land trusts protect 56 million acres of land across the United States. In 2019, Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation finds itself in the land trust segment of the American conservation movement, a segment that has grown over the past 128 years and is thriving today.

Photo by Stephen Chapman