Celebrations Today – September 30

Holidays and observances

Agricultural Reform (Nationalization) Day (São Tomé and Príncipe)
Birth of Morelos (Mexico)
Blasphemy Day (United States, Canada, other countries)
Boy’s Day (Poland)
Christian feast day:
Independence Day (Botswana) or Botswana Day, celebrates the independence of Botswana from United Kingdom in 1966.
International Translation Day (International Federation of Translators)
Recovery Day (Canada)

Celebrations Today – USA: September 30

National Ghost Hunting Day – Last Saturday in September
National Chewing Gum Day
National Mud Pack Day
National Hot Mulled Cider Day
National Public Lands Day – Usually Last Saturday in September
Save Your Photos Day
October National Days
International Translation Day
National Mulled Cider Day
National The Time for Yoga

Today in US History: September 30

George Perkins Marsh

But though man cannot at his pleasure command the rain and the sunshine, the wind and frost and snow, yet it is certain that climate itself has in many instances been gradually changed and ameliorated or deteriorated by human action.George Perkins Marsh,
“Address Delivered Before the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Sept. 30, 1847,””
page 11.
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920

George Perkins Marsh,
Mathew Brady’s Studio,
circa 1850.
America’s First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864

On September 30, 1847, Congressman George Perkins Marsh delivered a speech on agricultural conditions in New England to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont. This powerful address gave voice to ideas that would become a catalytic force in the movement to conserve America’s natural resources. Marsh recognized the human capacity for destruction of the environment and advocated better management of resources and active efforts toward restoration of the land–innovative ideas for the period.

Born in Woodstock, Vermont, Marsh was a lifelong spokesman for the preservation and care of natural resources. A successful lawyer deeply learned in several fields (he read some twenty languages fluently and became an acclaimed philologist), he also studied silviculture (the development and care of forests) and soil conservation. In 1842, he was elected to Congress, where he served four terms. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Marsh to serve as the U.S. minister to Italy, a post he happily occupied for the rest of his life. While in Italy, in 1864, he published his pioneering book Man and Nature: or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, analyzing the destructive impact of human activity on the natural world and arguing for the necessity of mitigating it. “[M]an is everywhere a disturbing agent,” Marsh wrote:

Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations which insured the stability of existing arrangements are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new and reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal life.

Marsh’s book prophetically established some of the major themes of environmental thought into the twenty-first century, and added to the momentum that the conservation movement was gaining in the United States. The writings of American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau promoted the idea that contact with nature, especially in its wildest state, was beneficial to the human spirit. Naturalist John Muir settled in California, and began speaking out for the protection of wild lands, especially the Yosemite Valley. In 1872, Congress declared the Yellowstone region of Wyoming the world’s first national park.

Read more about George Perkins Marsh and his role in the conservation movement. See the Chronology of Selected Events in the Development of the American Conservation Movement, ca. 1850-1920, a special presentation of The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920.
Search the Today in History Archive on conservation to find more features on milestones in the history of conservation in America. Topics include the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the 1908 Governors’ Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources, the creation of national parks in Washington and Maine and Arizona, and the first celebration of Earth Day, as well as pages on conservationist Carl Schurz and naturalist John Burroughs.
Browse Browse the American Memory/University of Chicago collection American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936 for historical photographs of the natural world in a range of environments such as forests or deserts; or explore the materials in the extended essay on “Ecology and the American Environment.”
Explore the history of Florida’s Everglades, a unique natural environment, and the efforts to conserve and restore them in the American Memory collaborative collection Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida’s Natural History, 1884-1934.
Search on national park in the following photographic collections for more photographs of America’s natural treasures:
The Mapping the National Parks collection documents the history, cultural aspects, and geological formations of areas that eventually became national parks. The collection consists of approximately 200 maps dating from the seventeenth century to the present, reflecting early mapping of the areas that would become four national parks, as well as the parks themselves. Explore Yellowstone, Acadia, the Grand Canyon, or the Great Smoky Mountains.
Visit our nation’s national parks online via the National Park Service.
For access to texts of current environmental protection bills under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, go to THOMAS: Legislative Information and browse major legislation classified by topics such as environmental protection or public lands.

Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone,
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 1908.
Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991

The Appleton Edison Light Company

Dam Across River,
Appleton, Wisconsin,
[between 1880 and 1899].
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920

On September 30, 1882, the first centrally located electric lighting system using the Edison system in the West and the first hydroelectric central station in the world began operation on the Fox River in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Vulcan Street plant (the Appleton Gas Light Co.), later named the Appleton Edison Light Company, powered the two paper mills of H. J. Rogers’ Appleton Paper and Pulp Co. and his residence, Hearthstone. Rogers, also president of the Appleton Gas Light Co. had been inspired by Thomas Edison’s plans for a steam-based power station in New York. With financial backing from three Appleton men, one a personal friend of Edison’s, Rogers began building this new venture during the summer of 1882, harvesting the power of the Fox River with a water wheel. [new paragraph]The water wheel, generators, and copper wiring took only a few months to install and test. Initial testing of the plant on September 27 was unsuccessful but the Edison “K” type generator powered up successfully on September 30.

Early Stages of Construction at the TVA’s Douglas Dam, Tennessee,
Alfred T. Palmer,
photographer,
June 1942.
America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photos from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1939-1945

By the early twentieth century, hydroelectric power plants were producing a significant portion of the country’s electric energy. The inexpensive electricity provided by the plants spurred industrial growth in many regions of the country.

In 1933, the U.S. government established the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which introduced hydroelectric power plants to the Tennessee River Valley. The TVA’s power plants, built in conjunction with a number of dams, were just one component of the agency’s comprehensive plan to promote the economic development of the Tennessee River Valley. The TVA administered programs for flood control and soil conservation, malaria prevention, and reforestation (erosion control), as well as systems to improve navigation along the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Like other New Deal programs initiated by Franklin Roosevelt, the TVA hired hundreds of displaced Depression-era workers to build and operate its facilities, providing an additional boost to the region’s economy.

Leisure With Electricity
Advertisement, Electric Institute of Washington,
Theodor Horydczak, photographer,
August 8, 1946.
Washington as It Was: Photographs by Theodor Horydczak, 1923-1959