Skip to main content

Vanishing Forest

March 2023
1min read

Sir: Having received a ballot for the American Heritage Society Awards to preservation projects, we wish to commend your organization on the remarkable foresight and concern shown for our vanishing environment and historical heritage.

We certainly hope that the leadership shown by publications such as yours in providing not only space but also money for citizen groups struggling to reverse the current destructive trends will generate a real awakening in this country.

The Thorn Creek Preservation Association is a group involved in an attempt to preserve the last sizable undeveloped forest in a three-hundred-square-mile area south of Chicago in eastern Will County, Illinois. It is directly in the path of urban growth, and part is included in the plans of a new community. A new university is to be built adjacent to the site, Chicago’s third airport can possibly go near here, and an east-west freeway is proposed to run through the forest.

There is a change in the climate of public opinion on environmental problems, due in a large measure to the responsible leadership of the news media. If the elected officials can only catch up to the public demand, perhaps there will be some hope for projects such as ours. …

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "June 1970"

Authored by: Charlton Ogburn, Jr.

Had it been specifically designed for the purpose, says the author, the motorcar could not be doing a better job of destroying our cities and countryside

Authored by: Elizabeth N. Layne

Notes on the continuing battle

Authored by: David R. Phillips

Henry Adams and John LaFarge in the South Seas

Authored by: Robert P. Weeks

On a green island in the cold waters of Lake Michigan, James Jesse Strang became the crowned, polygamous ruler of a Mormon “empire”

Authored by: The Editors

— George Eastman did

Authored by: Richard Hanser

A few notes for Mr. Bartlett

Authored by: Mark Halliday

In which John Jones, né Paul, invades both England and Scotland, despoils a countess, and defeats a British sloop—all in less than forty-eight hours

Authored by: Alvin M. Josephy Jr.

The shore line of Pyramid Lake, one of the West's great natural wonders, is steadily receding, robbed of the water it needs by a Bureau of Reclamation irrigation project.

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.