| In the early twentieth century, the United States Bureau of Reclamation proposed a series of dams along the Colorado River to help control the violent and destructive fluctuations of the river that ran through six western states. The sites of two of the dams, Echo Park and Split Mountain, were located inside Dinosaur National Monument (a little known and rarely visited area straddling the border between Utah and Colorado). Conservation organizations across the United States joined together to fight the Echo Park and Split Mountain project. One coalition, the Council of Conservationists, consisted of nine groups including the Sierra Club, the American Planning and Civic Association, and the Wilderness Society. These nine groups used their official publications to reach out to their members, rallying them to act in defense of Dinosaur National Monument and the National Park System as a whole. This dissertation analyzes the nine publications from 1950 to 1956--the years of the most heated debate--for a better understanding of the strategies and themes used in this, the first successful campaign of the modern conservation movement. |
