Olmsted National Historic Site Commemorates the 150th Anniversary of Olmsted’s Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove Report

Brookline, Mass. — On Sunday morning, August 9 at 10:00 am, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site joins with the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Friends of Fairsted to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Olmsted’s Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove report. The event takes place outdoors at the Arnold Arboretum, by a giant sequoia specimen in the Arboretum’s tree collection. Visitors can bring along a cushion, blanket or low chair for comfortable seating. They are urged to take the MBTA to Forest Hills station or park along Bussey Street. They should enter at the Bussey Street or Walter Street Gates, from which they will be directed to the event location. The event is free.

Frederick Law Olmsted wrote Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865 when he was in California during the latter stages of the Civil War. He had been appointed chairman of the California state commission set up to administer Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove, lands granted in 1864 to California by the Federal government to be preserved forever for the public’s benefit. As Chairman of the Yosemite Commission, Olmsted wrote the report to express ideas he felt were critical to the administration of these lands. These ideas have remained at the core of our national parks movement ever since.

The report’s ideas include government’s “political duty” to protect and “lay open” for everyone our nation’s scenic landscapes, the central role of such places in promoting physical and mental health of our citizens, and our shared responsibility to care for such lands for future generations. The Yosemite Report has been called the “first intellectual argument ever made for national parks and still the best.”

The August 9 event, Planting the Seed for Our National Parks: The 150th Anniversary of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Yosemite Report, will recapture the sense of Olmsted’s first oral presentation of the report on August 9, 1865. Dayton Duncan, Emmy Award-winning writer and producer of the popular PBS series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, will offer reflections on the report’s significance and will join other guests in reading excerpts. Local performers the Maliotis Chamber Players (flute ensemble) and Diane Edgecomb and Margot Chamberlain (Celtic harp and voice) will round out the program.

Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site (Olmsted NHS), located at 99 Warren Street, was the Brookline, Massachusetts home and office of America’s premier parkmaker and the designer of the Emerald Necklace park system. Olmsted’s firm remained at this location for nearly a century and was involved with roughly 6,000-projects around the United States and Canada. Now administered by the National Park Service (NPS) as one of its 407 sites around the United States, Olmsted NHS was the country’s first full-scale professional landscape architecture office.

Olmsted NHS joins with the rest of NPS, the National Park Foundation, and numerous partners in celebrating the 2016 centennial of the National Park Service. For further information on the National Park Service centennial celebration that has begun this year, please visit http://www.nps.gov/subjects/centennial/index.htm or www.findyourpark.com.

For further information on Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site or this event, please visit www.nps.gov/frla or call 617-566-1689. For directions to the Arnold Arboretum and to the event venue, please visit arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5209. Please also visit www.emeraldnecklace.org and www.friendsoffairsted.org for information on the other event co-sponsors.