Hiram Martin Chittenden : His Public Career

Annotation The life of Hiram Martin Chittenden illustrates the work of one of the most influential federal agencies that has shaped the American West -- the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As a member of the Corps Chittenden was assigned to Yellowstone Park, where he completed the plan for tourist roads. His work there convinced powerful congressmen to increase greatly the appropriations for the park. In this well-researched biography, Mr. Dodds shows that Chittenden was, in addition to his Corps duties, one of the first advocates of multiple-purpose resource use, a champion of scientific accuracy in forming conservation policies, the first president of the Seattle Port Commission, and the author of several books, including his monumental History of the American Fur Trade and a guidebook to Yellowstone Park that is still in print

The life of Hiram Martin Chittenden illustrates the work of one of the most influential federal agencies that has shaped the American West—the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As a member of the Corps Chittenden was assigned to Yellowstone Park, where he completed the plan for tourist roads. His work there convinced powerful congressmen to increase greatly the appropriations for the park.
In this well-researched biography, Mr. Dodds shows that Chittenden was, in addition to his Corps duties, one of the first advocates of multiple-purpose resource use, a champion of scientific accuracy in forming conservation policies, the first president of the Seattle Port Commission, and the author of several books, including his monumental History of the American Fur Trade and a guidebook to Yellowstone Park that is still in print.

Hiram Martin Chittenden was an influential figure in several regions of the American West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although little is known about his private life, his public career is well documented, for as a memeber of the Corps of Engineers of the United States Army, his life was devoted largely to public service. In this well-researched biography, Mr. Dodds shows that Chittenden was not only an innovative and indefatigable worker but also a realist who could cope with the mass of correspondence and reports and the pressures of politics attached to a federal agency working to reshape the face of America