In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • IntroductionIt’s Still about History

This Cultural Landscape Special Issue of Landscape Journal consistently emphasizes the design, planning, and management of the past as found in current places across the globe. In other words, this issue makes it clear that preservation practice is but one of many approaches used to analyze and intervene in the cultural landscape. Because cultural landscape practitioners see past and present changes as “the living past,” the outgoing editors of Landscape Journal have selected history as their final topical essay.

To clarify our own understanding of the use of history, we offer two short anecdotes. Years ago, when Dan was assigned to teach the “History of Landscape Architecture” to a large class of students at the University of Minnesota, he was confused by a particular attitude expressed by many of his students. Claiming disinterest in the worn ideas of others, their goal was to “make their own history.” This perspective is a deeply entrenched point of view developed in a nation of doers and innovators. Perhaps Henry Ford, the person who put America on wheels, best articulated the progressive vantage: “History is more or less bunk. It is tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” (Chicago Tribune interview with Henry Ford, 25 May 1916)

There are other more intellectual views that see history as sets of pervasive ideas over time. William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead, it isn’t even past” (Faulkner 2011, 73). Histories that shape current actions based on shared narratives can never be as insignificant as Ford would have us believe. The Faulkner view of history aligns with numerous ideas discussed by the cultural landscape experts authoring the content of this issue. Collectively, their articles provide a shared understanding of a living past, present, and future continuum. An active history can openly compare interpretations with the ardent hope of resolving conflicts.

In his exploration of the effects of land-use change on habitat, water quality, and scenic values in the Lower St. Croix River National Scenic Riverway, Dave examined several historical narratives associated with contested values in the river valley landscape. In the modern era, contested occupation and use of the St. Croix Valley by Native Americans began in the 17th century with the migration of the Ojibwe people into the western Lake Superior basin. As the Ojibwe migrated south into traditional hunting grounds in the St. Croix Valley associated with the Eastern Dakota people, armed conflict between the two nations arose. Settled officially by the Dakota-Ojibwe Boundary Treaty of 1825, skirmishes continued into the middle 19th century (Dunn 1997). The river also served as a conduit for fur traders heading north and west in search of pelts as well as logs heading south from the coniferous forests of northern Minnesota. The latter narrative of the St. Croix River and logging significantly impacted settlement creation and abandonment, providing driving forces for the creation of the valley’s contemporary cultural landscape. The narrative also entwined the river in a larger geospatial context with the growth of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Chicago, as early development of all three centers made extensive use of timber floated down the river and milled along its shore.

Early exploration of the valley by people of European origin began in the 17th century, and by the mid-nineteenth century the river became a venue for exploration of the American Picturesque. Traveling through the region in 1832, explorer Richard School-craft likened the picturesque qualities of the valley with those of Loch Katrina and other European riparian settings (Schoolcraft 1834; Mason, ed. 1993). An 1878 railroad advertisement described a journey in the valley as “the artist’s trip par excellence of America!” Conflict arises between those seeking to use these values as a basis for attracting additional development [End Page iv] to the valley landscape and those seeking its protection. Two significant shoreline development proposals in the 1960s brought this dilemma to a head. Public debate about these issues instigated, in part, the federal designation of the Lower St. Croix National Scenic Riverway in...

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