This podcast is sponsored by L.L. Bean, who makes it easy and fun to simply step outside.

That might be breaking a speed record in a rugged built-for-fun Sonic Snow tube, walking an extra block in a warm weather resistant down jacket, or just taking a breath on your doorstep before cozying up in a quilted sweatshirt.

For however you experience the outdoors, shop clothing and gear at

L.L Bean.com. Be an outsider. On a picturesque estate in a historic woodstock Vermont, carriage roads cross-cut the property through fields flanked by stands of trees, providing scenic views of the estate, the adjacent farm, and the surrounding area.

Historic buildings lie scattered across the estate, the mansion, the carriage barn, the

wood barn, the horse shed. This idyllic setting filled with old hardwood

trees, open pastures, stone walls, and covered bridges is the Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historical Park.

I'm J. Jefferson and this is the America's National Parks Podcast.

The Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historical Park is not singularly focused on preserving the historic estate or even the glaciers and ice sheets that produced the geological features of the region.

It's about preservation in the broadest sense of the word.

Conservation as preservation.

The three men for whom the park is named George Perkins Marsh Frederick Billings and Lawrence Rockefeller were pioneers of environmental conservation each in his own time

each lived on this estate, each contributed to a focused effort

to increase awareness of environmental factors and impacts to preserve the vast American

natural resources.

The primary purpose of the park is to interpret the history and evolution of conservation stewardship in America,

centered around these three giants in the field.

The concept of conservation goes back a long time, farther than most of us would instinctively

consider.

It seems like such a modern concern in this day and age of reduce reuse

recycle of climate change of deforestation of industrialism. But this is a

misconception. In the early 1800s, the United States Navy established forest reserves

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