Natural / Environmental Change
Modern U.S. History Period

Rachel Carson

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Rachel Carson was a leading environmentalist and supported the protection of nature in the 1950s and 1960s. She wrote a famous book entitled Silent Spring that warned about the danger of using pesticides, chemicals sprayed on plants to protect them from disease.

Here Carson holds a copy of /Silent Spring./

Here Carson holds a copy of Silent Spring.

Rachel Carson, head-and-shoulders portrait, speaking before Senate Government Operations subcommittee studying pesticide spraying
Carson focused her efforts on DDT, a pesticide that she believed hurt the local ecosystem and caused cancer in humans. Although she did not live to see it happen, the United States officially banned DDT in the 1970s. The success of her book helped make the protection of the environment a national issue. She is seen here testifying before the U.S. Senate.
View of Harrisburg, Penn. Drawn on stone from nature & the daguerreotype by J. T. Williams. Lith. & printed in colors by E. Sachse & Co.

Rachel Carson was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . The state environmental protection building in Pennsylvania’s capital city of Harrisburg is named after her.

Falling an old-growth redwood, 1985

These loggers are sitting next to an old-growth Redwood in California. Thanks to the efforts of Rachel Carson in the 1950s and 1960s, environmental protection issues, like banning the use of harmful pesticides and preserving forests like those seen here, have become issues of national importance.

The national atlas of the United States of America. [Arch C. Gerlach, editor]. - Air Pollution

Carson promoted a more deliberate approach to environmental issues by raising awareness. Maps such as these, identifying air pollution throughout the United States, are important tools for tracking the impact humans have on their surrounding environments.