Richard West Sellars


Biography

A former historian with the National Park Service, Richard Sellars is the author of "Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History," which became the catalyst for the Natural Resource Challenge, a multi-year budget initiative by Congress to revitalize natural resource management and science in the national parks.

Preserving Nature, which has received international notice, is a critical study of the conflicts between traditional scenery-and-tourism management and emerging ecological concepts in the national parks, spanning the period from the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 to the late 20th century.

Currently, Dr. Sellars is preparing a companion study to Preserving Nature – a history of evolving policies and practices in the management of historic and archeological sites in the National Park System. Portions of this current study have been published as "Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900," and “A Very Large Array: Early Federal Historic Preservation–The Antiquities Act, Mesa Verde, and the National Park Service Act.”

Sellars began his career with the National Park Service in the mid-1960s as a seasonal naturalist in Grand Teton National Park. In January 1973 he entered on duty as a historian in the Denver Service Center, then in October 1973 accepted a position in the Southwest Regional Office in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has spent the remainder of his Park Service career in Santa Fe, although his research, writing, teaching and other work have, in one way or another, involved virtually the entire National Park System.

From 1979 to 1988, Sellars headed the Southwest Cultural Resources Center in Santa Fe, overseeing programs in history, archeology, and historic architecture for the Southwest Region, as well as Servicewide programs in underwater archeology. Special assignments have included acting superintendencies at national park units, and a liaison consultancy with the Dallas County Historical Foundation on preservation and interpretation of the Texas School Book Depository and Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas. He has visited nearly 370 of the more than 390 units of the National Park System.

Sellars' articles on American history and on cultural and natural resource preservation have appeared in numerous publications, among them The Washington Post, Wilderness, National Parks, Journal of Forestry, and Landscape. He has lectured on preservation philosophy, policy, and practice at many universities and conferences, and for more than a decade conducted two-week courses in historic preservation for managers at the National Park Service’s Stephen T. Mather Training Center, in Harpers Ferry West Virginia. And he has made presentations at a number of special meetings, including the Thomas Moran Symposium at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Abraham Lincoln 197th Birthday Commemoration, Springfield, Illinois; the Greater Yellowstone Coalition Conference, West Yellowstone, Montana; and the Mesa Verde Centennial Archeological Conference (keynote speaker).

In 1999 and 2000, Sellars served as president of The George Wright Society – an organization dedicated to the preservation of natural and cultural parks and preserves. For two years he was a member of the National Park Service's National Wilderness Steering Committee. He also spent two terms on the board of the Forest History Society, and served on the Historic Design Review Board for the City of Santa Fe. In 1972 he received his doctorate in American history and literature from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Sellars resides in Santa Fe and is developing several writing projects focused on the National Park Service.



Richard's Most Recent Articles (view all)

Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part VII

After Vicksburg’s establishment as a military park in 1899, it was not until 1917 that Congress authorized the next Civil War battlefield park at Kennesaw Mountain, northwest of Atlanta, where the Confederates stalled, if only for a while, the Union army’s southward march through Georgia. In the mid-1920s, other famous Civil War battlefields became military parks, including Petersburg and Fredericksburg, in Virginia.

Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part VI

With the exception of Grover Cleveland, every United States president from Ulysses S. Grant through William McKinley was a veteran of the Union army, as were many congressmen. Following reconstruction, the sectional reconciliation paved the way for ex-Confederates and their political spokesmen in Washington to join Northern leaders in supporting battlefield commemoration.

Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part V

In marked contrast to the involvement of Confederate veterans, African American participation in Civil War battlefield commemoration was minimal in virtually all cases. Prior to President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863, some blacks served as soldiers (and sailors) for the North.

Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part IV

Once the national cemeteries were established, they were effectively the only areas of the battlefields in a condition adequate to receive the public in any numbers, and they became the focal points for official ceremonies and other formal acts of remembrance. Most widely observed was Decoration Day, begun at about the end of the war in response to the massive loss of life suffered during the four-year conflict.

Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part III

As with the southern Pennsylvania countryside surrounding the town of Gettysburg, the struggles between the United States and Confederate armies from 1861 to 1865 often brought war to beautiful places, with many battles fought in the pastoral landscapes of eastern, southern, and middle America— in rolling fields and woods, along rivers and streams, among farmsteads, and often in or near villages, towns, or cities.

Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part II

The event in American history prior to the Civil War that had the most potential to inspire the preservation of historic places was the American Revolution. Yet, between the Revolution and the Civil War, historic site preservation in America was limited and sporadic.

Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part I

Today, well over a century after the Civil War ended in 1865, it is difficult to imagine the battlefields of Antietam, Vicksburg, Shiloh, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga had they been neglected, instead of preserved as military parks. As compelling historic landscapes of great natural beauty and public interest, these early military parks have been familiar to generations of Americans.