February’s Pick of the Month: Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement
Susan Rimby’s “Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement”
For her time, Mira Lloyd Dock was an exceptional woman: a university-trained botanist, lecturer, women’s club leader, activist in the City Beautiful movement, and public official – the first woman to be appointed to Pennsylvania’s state government. In her twelve years on the Pennsylvania Forest Commission, she allied with the likes of J. T. Rothrock, Gifford Pinchot, and Dietrich Brandeis to help bring about a new era in American forestry. She was also an integral force in founding and fostering the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy in Mont Alto, which produced generations of Pennsylvania foresters before becoming Penn State Mont Alto campus.
Though much has been written about her male counterparts, Mira Lloyd Dock and the Progressive Era Conservation Movement is the first book dedicated to Mira Lloyd Dock and her work. Shippensburg University’s Professor Susan Rimby weaves these layers of Dock’s story together with the greater historic context of the era to create a vivid and accessible picture of Progressive Era conservation in the eastern United States, and Dock’s important role and legacy in that movement.
A free podcast of Professor Rimby’s keynote talk at the 2012 Harrisburg Book Festival is available online here.
Copies of the book are available at Harrisburg’s Midtown Scholar Bookstore Café and online at MidtownScholar.com.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
