Popularizing Pennsylvania: Henry W. Shoemaker and the Progressive Uses of Folklore and History

In many ways, Henry W. Shoemaker (1880-1958) embodies the spirit of the Progressive movement in America. A prominent reformist newspaper publisher in Pennsylvania, he used his wealth and position inherited from industrialism to promote the preservation of America's wilderness and native cultures. He fell in with such national leaders as Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, who hoped to rekindle a rugged American nationalism. He became America's first State Folklorist and a pioneer of national conservation. Shoemaker's consuming passion was for preserving the cultural and natural heritage of his home state. He authored hundreds of pamphlets and books on Pennsylvania's nature, history, and folklore. Today his memory lives on in the legends he helped promote, such as that of the Indian princess "Nita-nee, " for whom Central Pennsylvania's Nittany Mountain is supposedly named, and his instrumental role in creating Pennsylvania's noted system of parks and forests and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. For this book, the first full-length biography of Shoemaker, Simon Bronner has located never-before-available private papers and interviewed many people who knew Shoemaker. Included are rare photographs and a sampler of Shoemaker stories. Bronner shows that Shoemaker deserves attention in any assessment of public history, conservation history, and Progressive Era politics.