Description
Book SynopsisThe Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (DEWA) is among the busiest National Park Service (NPS) units with millions of annual visitors. In this book, David Fazzino uses oral history and archival work to consider the ramifications of government land takings, done half a century ago to uproot families and communities across 70,000 acres in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Fazzino situates these land takings in historical context to explain the ways places have been taken, both physically and ideologically, in the name of progress, development, wilderness, and recreation. The author contrasts legal valuations, measured along utilitarian and material lines, with lived valuations which account for place as experiential, intimate, personal, and relational. Fazzino also considers the ruins of what was and the remains of past lives in the valley to suggest inclusive possibilities of future management regimes in DEWA and federal public lands more broadly.
Trade Review“Almost anyone who lives in the New Jersey/Pennsylvania area has some experience with the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, but there are very few, unless they experienced it, who know its tumultuous history. David Fazzino does an excellent job of conveying all of the important parts of the story—from precolonial history to historic home ownership—as well as legal explanations of the government's power for legislative taking and the true beauty that abounds the area today. This book would be an excellent educational read for legal or environmental scholars, but also should be available to anyone who avails themselves of recreational opportunities at the Delaware Water Gap.”
Rachel S. Marlowe, J. D.
-- Rachel S. Marlowe, J. D.
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Property and Place in the United States: Seeing the Delaware Water Gap
Chapter 2: American Conservation and Preservation and the Tocks Island Dam
Chapter 3: Initial Inhabitants and Takings
Chapter 4: Settler Development in the Upper Minisink
Chapter 5: More Takings
Chapter 6: The Park and Surrounding Communities Today
