“Gifford Pinchot is the man to whom the nation owes most of what has been accomplished as regards the preservation of the natural resources of our country…I believe it is but just to say that among the many, many public officials who under my administration rendered literally invaluable service to the people of the United States, he, on the whole, stood first.” President Theodore Roosevelt
“Gifford Pinchot and the Old Timers Volume II” includes ten new narratives from the Old Timers Collection in the Gifford Pinchot Collection at the Library of Congress. In Volume II, we hear from Gifford Pinchot’s “first” professionally-trained forest rangers and allied professionals who describe the birthing of the nation’s first environmental agency, the US Forest Service, and the training of individuals with a virtuous vision of public service. The narratives contain tales of extreme hardship, on-the-ground problem solving, interactions with cattlemen, miners, and loggers as well as first-hand descriptions of challenges in which the Forest Ranger turned confrontation into cooperation, gratitude, and respect. The lives of the “first foresters” were not easy but a life of service to the American public and the natural world was the best life one could imagine. Each was grateful for the opportunity to find meaning in a time of struggle.
Bibi Gaston is a Landscape Architect. She has provided landscape architecture, site planning, and design services for public and private clients throughout the United States since 1986.
- The United States Department of Transportation Honor Award for the Restoration of the Historic Columbia River Highway
- Semi Finalist in the New York Times Millennium Time Capsule Competition with The Cooper Union School for the Advancement of the Arts and the Sciences
- Award for Historic Restoration of the Lost Lake Campground by Landscape Architecture Magazine
- Design Team Member, The Oregon Garden, a 300 acre botanical garden funded by the Oregon Association of Nurserymen in Silverton, Oregon.
Bibi Gaston’s first book, “The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries and Her Granddaughter’s Search for Home” was published by William Morrow / Harper Collins in hardback in 2008 and by Harper Perennial in a paperback edition in 2009.
She has written two subsequent books, “Gifford Pinchot and the Old Timers Volume I and II” focused on the lives of 223 men and women whose lives as early environmental professionals are recorded in the “Old Timers Collection” at the Library of Congress’s Gifford Pinchot Collection.
Bibi has been invited to speak at the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, the Mark Twain Library, Grand Canyon National Park, historical societies, museums, nature centers, librairies, garden societies and conservation organizations, book stores, and at Forest Service Supervisors and Regional offices across the United States. Please contact her for availability.
Bibi Gaston has provided landscape architecture, site planning and design services for public and private clients throughout the United States since 1986.