In a 1904 issue of The Ladies' Home Journal, urban reformer J. Horace McFarland denounced conditions found in many U.S. cities: filthy streets, monotonous highways, polluted waterways—an America that was anything but beautiful. He urged the magazine's readers specifically to cleanup action, declaring “women must start this work if it is to be done.”Footnote ¹ While McFarland was appealing to the nation's “wives, mothers, and daughters,” he also may have had in mind Mira Lloyd Dock, his ally in city improvement work and a determined force in the Progressive Era's conservation movement. In this very readable biography, historian Susan Rimby offers a fascinating look into the life of Dock, a trained botanist, clubwoman, and forestry activist whose imprint is felt today in the natural landscapes she helped shape and save.

That women were integral to success of conservation is well established within the field of environmental history. Men such as Gifford Pinchot, the nation's first chief forester, and President Theodore Roosevelt led the movement to encourage scientific, utilitarian management of the nation's natural resources, many of which were disappearing due to waste and misuse. Many upper- and middle-class women rallied to the cause, using grassroots activism, largely through female-only clubs, to force better practices from industry and government. While Dock was an ardent clubwoman and a leader in the national General Federation of Women's Clubs, her education as a botanist and work as a public lecturer and official allowed her to cross gender boundaries, showing the complexity of both this era and the conservation movement.Footnote ² Rimby weaves the tale of a woman who tended to her family, as expected, while she also successfully mediated “between women amateurs and the professionally trained, scientifically minded men who formulated policies” (3).

Dock was born in 1853 in rural Pennsylvania to nature-loving parents who instilled that appreciation in their six children. After the Civil War, the family moved to nearby Harrisburg, the state capital: a city bustling with railroad lines and manufacturing businesses. After the 1876 death of her mother, Dock cared for her younger siblings, which injured her health and led to a series of rejuvenating trips to the American West. Back home managing the household, Dock, who “often seemed bored and unfulfilled,” helped found a local women's club to study music; it also offered its members “self-improvement and companionship” (20–21). At what was considered to be the rather advanced age of forty-two, she enrolled at the University of Michigan to study botany. Perhaps because of prejudice against women in scientific fields, she returned to Harrisburg in 1896 without a degree but with a new mission: to inform the public about nature topics. “Armed with lantern slides, her new expertise in botany, and her willingness to travel throughout central Pennsylvania, Dock embarked on a career more accepting of females than laboratory science: public lecturer” (25).

With enthusiasm and careful preparation, Dock forged a path into the public realm at a time when many women were expanding their roles into community work, often dubbed “municipal housekeeping.” Her talks ranged from botany to forestry to parks to city improvements. Through her lectures and then in partnership with other Harrisburg residents, she encouraged tree planting, land restoration, and the creation of playgrounds, addressing both social issues and conservation. Dock worked with women's clubs and with men in civic groups, notably the bi-gender Pennsylvania Forestry Association, concerned with the state's dramatic loss of trees to clear-cut logging. A firsthand study of forestry practices in Europe in 1899 convinced Dock that Americans must change their practices—a message she incorporated into her lectures and civic work as well as in a pamphlet that sealed her reputation as a forestry and civic improvement expert.

Through meticulous research of personal papers, archives, and government records, Rimby shows how Dock used this newfound respect to engage with McFarland in the City Beautiful movement and, in 1901, to be appointed to the legislatively created Pennsylvania State Forest Commission, becoming “the first woman in the world to sit on a public forestry commission” (53–54). She helped develop policies, established a forestry school that trained professionals, gained clubwomen's support for conservation initiatives, and supported the preservation of natural lands. Dock's “most ardent admirers said she did more for forests than any woman in America” (3). Pinchot, whom she supported in Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaigns, sang her praises as well.

By focusing on Dock, Rimby enriches the history of the conservation movement in a book that would fit any curriculum dealing with the Progressive Era, women's history, or environmental activism. The book reveals the unexpected impact of a seemingly powerless person: a middle-aged woman who could not vote until 1920. She succeeded without the benefit of a powerful husband or large fortune—advantages that bolstered many other women activists. A comparison of Dock with her contemporary, May Mann Jennings, the “Mother of Florida Forestry,” would have been valuable; Jennings ably used her clubwomen connections and her politically enhanced position as the wife of a former governor to further her forestry and conservation goals.Footnote ³

Despite the difficult gender restrictions of the era, Dock bridged the chasms between men and women, and professional and amateur, to achieve her goals. In the process she helped “redefine the place of women in American society” by her example and in her work supporting both suffrage and more educational opportunities for women (117).

In a beautifully crafted epilogue, Rimby brings Dock's considerable contributions to life by describing a modern visit to the 17,000-acre Pine Grove Furnace State Park. The Pennsylvania State Forest Commission acquired the site in 1913 during Dock's tenure. A century later it provides recreation for humans and habitat for wildlife, a fitting legacy of the life's work of Mira Lloyd Dock.