Nature Next Door: Cities and Trees in the American Northeast by Ellen Stroud (review)

As environmental history matures as discipline, more narrowly focused case studies are adding depth and complexity to the assumptions of the first generation of scholars. This short but powerful text by Stroud is a case in point. Stroud explores reforestation efforts in four states— Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine—concluding that urban and rural areas, often depicted as separate entities inherently antagonistic in environmental terms, have been more interdependent and less contrary than usually understood. Focusing primarily on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Stroud argues that reforestation was more than simply the economic decline of New England agriculture or the top-down control of Progressive-era government conservation. It was, rather, a combination of cultural, economic, political, and environmental factors unique to each state. Given that urbanites consciously reacted to this amalgam of motivations, the success of each state's reforestation efforts varied. Specific individuals guided the process more than did a national zeitgeist. In the end, Stroud argues, cities and forests grew together, not apart, forging a common landscape. Stroud's recounting of the success of reforestation efforts through this synergy sounds an optimistic note, increasingly rare in environmental literature.

The unique nature of each state's story is evident in Stroud's organization. With a brief introduction and equally short conclusion as bookends, Stroud devotes one chapter each to the four states. In Pennsylvania, urban demands for clean watersheds proved critical. In New Hampshire, urbanites sought to protect vacation properties as such industries as logging, textiles, and railroads developed. In Vermont, the promise of pastoral retreat for tourists, among other factors, proved influential. Such forward-looking leaders as Joseph Rothrock and Mira Lloyd Dock in Pennsylvania and Bertha and Nathan Oppenheim in Vermont—among a group of Stroud's protagonists not always appreciated by previous environmental historians—encouraged coordination and action. Only in Maine, where competition ruled as much as coordination and where policies failed to recognize cities and forests as related, did the lack of a comprehensive agenda leave the future in doubt.

Stroud's story has global implications far beyond the Northeast. Stroud might have amplified the fact that more forestation does not necessarily mean a better environment, or a cleaner environment, but, to her credit, she acknowledges this point in her introduction. She supports her work with solid primary research in the records of the Forest History Society in Durham, North Carolina, and the various state archives, among other collections, and appears well-versed in the relevant secondary literature. Her writing is fluid, avoiding the air of a burdensome academic tome bogged down in administrative or policy trivia. Appealing to a scholarly as well as a general audience, Stroud's work is a welcome addition to the literature.