ABSTRACT
The practice of land conservation and historic preservation were each impacted by the emergence of the environmental movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Where President Lyndon Johnson could sponsor a White House conference on natural beauty in 1965, by 1971 President Richard Nixon could reference the “enhancement of the cultural environment” as a goal for all federal agencies, reflecting an expanded vision of how historic properties should be enumerated, evaluated, and cared for. Individual advocates and government agencies each played their role in adapting to this new ecological approach, one that embraced a panorama of resources while maintaining the conventional wisdom that the conservation of scenic, natural, and historic resources was the perfect prescription for modern society’s ills. At the dawn of the Reagan administration, it seemed clear that the solution to the crisis of need, time, and money was a more integrated approach to the conservation of valued historic landscapes.
