The newly industrialized cities of America were quickly becoming overcrowded and dirty. In the late 19th century many people were fascinated with the idea of mixing with humanity in the big cities after having spent generations in remote rural areas. For more on exciting cities see Coney Island. However the excitement soon wore off with the spread of disease and fire. An advertisement for real estate in 1905 reads, "Get your children into the country. The cities murder children. The hot pavements, the dust, the noise, are fatal in many cases, and harmful always. The history of successful men is nearly always the history of country boys."

Jacob Riis photograph of New York Tenement 1910 from How the Other Half Lives.

Jacob Riis, in his iconoclastic book How the Other Half Lives (1890) describes the lower class city life, "Every member of the family, from the youngest to the oldestm bears a hand, shut in qualmy rooms, where meals are cooked and clothing washed and dried besides, the live-long day. It is not unusual to find a dozen persons - men, women and children - at work in a single small room." Leisure activities included museums, libraries, parks, zoos, baths, organized sports, and theatre and symphony halls. However, the filth and disease of the cities wreaked havoc on all these diversions. Lincoln Steffen's 1904 The Shame of the Cities exposed the government inequalities and inefficiencies. The Enquirer in 1874 depicts an unsightly view of Cinncinnati, "Probably there is no city in America which contains a quarter so hideous as that noisome district of Cinncinnati now cursed with the horror of the most frightful crime ever perpetrated in this country."

H.L. Mencken's scared of bugs.

Almost 50 years later John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer (1922?) describes a city of firebugs, crime, incureable disease, loose women, bootlegging and lurking strangers. The two story tenements were packed closely into the city block. The grid system restricted air flow and caused smoke to become stagnant. The form of the barbell style tenement house itself harbored air and thus served as a petri dish for disease to grow and spread. The want of standard sized roads for the passage of fire trucks meant that most fires were devastating. On Health in Baltimore, H.L. Mencken writes, "When arc-lights began to light the streets, along about 1885, they attracted so many beetles of gigantic size that their glare was actually obscured. These beetles at once acquired the name of electric-light bugs, and it was believed that the arc carbons produced them by a kind of spontaneous generation, and that their bite was as dangerous as that of a tarantula."

An east wing tenement block, New York City.

Frederick Law Olmsted, an urban planner ahead of the times, wrote of the necessity of human interaction with nature: "There is an increasing evidence suggesting that mental health and emotional stability of populations may be profoundly influenced by frustrating aspects of an urban, biologically artificial environment....It seems likely that we are genetically programmed to a natural habitat of clean air and a varied green landscape, like any other mammal...The specific physiological reactions to natyral beauty and diversity, to the shapes and colors of nature, especially to green, to the motions and sounds of other animals, we do not comprehend and are reluctant to include in studies of environmental quality. Yet it is evident that in our daily lives nature must be though of not as a luxury to made available if possible, but as part of our inherent inherent indispensable biological need."

However, the reuniting of man and nature was still a luxury to many people. Access to nature was limited by the length of the rail lines. Frederick Law Olmsted proposed a parkway be built for jovial interaction between city and country. It would be a safety valve in the name of public health. The country could provide the daily laborer with the rejuvination needed to return to work on Monday. It was acceptable to drive off into the wildnerness with nothing but a Pullman porter, however, it was understood that one would return to one's responsibilities.

This attitude of east-west dichotomy helped reiterate the love of the rugged individualist. The Genteel Tradition was pushed out of the way, any looking towards Europe for guidance was rebuked. Tourists wanted to see the American Alps, or the Rockies, the American Mediterranean, California, and the American ruins, the Southwest. The See America First movement began in 1906 also reinforced the Anti-European attitude. The East coast was portrayed as a combination of misanthropy and dyspepsia. Manhattan was suspicious, hostile, abrupt, and rude. The Western way of living embraced open space, simplicity, independence, and a leisurely pace. There was a desire to escape the hubbub of the whirling city.

Henry Ford even gave naturalist John Burroughs a Model T.

The recent battles over the public lands also stirred writings about the inherent goodness of nature. After the Battle of Hetch Hetchy in 1908 America recognized a breed of people, the Natty Bumppos, who loathed the city. Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, John Burroughs, and Frederick Law Olmsted, although strictly defined within their own realm, showed the value of America's nature outside of the city. Moreover, Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature and Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond reemphasized this attitude as well.