Windshield Wilderness: Cars, Roads, and Nature in Washington's National Parks

Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books

by David Louter, William Cronon (Foreword)

In his engaging book Windshield Wilderness, David Louter explores the relationship between automobiles and national parks, and how together they have shaped our ideas of wilderness. National parks, he argues, did not develop as places set aside from the modern world, but rather came to be known and appreciated through technological progress in the form of cars and roads, leaving an enduring legacy of knowing nature through machines.

With a lively style and striking illustrations, Louter traces the history of Washington State's national parks -- Mount Rainier, Olympic, and North Cascades -- to illustrate shifting ideas of wilderness as scenic, as roadless, and as ecological reserve. He reminds us that we cannot understand national parks without recognizing that cars have been central to how people experience and interpret their meaning, and especially how they perceive them as wild places.

Windshield Wilderness explores what few histories of national parks address: what it means to view parks from the road and through a windshield. Building upon recent interpretations of wilderness as a cultural construct rather than as a pure state of nature, the story of autos in parks presents the preservation of wilderness as a dynamic and nuanced process.Windshield Wilderness illuminates the difficulty of separating human-modified landscapes from natural ones, encouraging us to recognize our connections with nature in national parks.

Genres: History, Nature, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting concept certainly, with great case study examples. However, I felt this could have been a bit more engaging around discussing park service and forest service politics and personalities. Also, the book needs more maps!

[DW Rowlands · Rating 3 out of 5]

Figuring out what to say about this book was tricky. I bought my copy for an urbanism book club I'm in, but failed to read it when the club did, and only got around to reading it a year or so later. It honestly feels like a weird choice for the club, not being about cities and only indirectly being about transportation. Really, the topic is primarily about the conception and role of "wilderness" in US National Parks, and it certainly made me more aware of the degree to which National Parks in the US didn't start out with anything like a modern idea of protecting ecosystems and such, but rather as a way for Americans to see scenic vistas. Which leads to the awkward and hard-to-resolve issue of "park" implying a place for people (and thus for means for everyday people to get there, and thus cars and lots of traffic) versus an idea of "wilderness" that isn't compatible with large numbers of people and extensive infrastructure...