Forest History with Jennifer Ott

About this episode

The episode explores the history of forests through the lens of environmental history and public narratives.

What happens when we trace the history of our forests? Not just through trees, but through people, policy, and place? In this episode, I talk with Jennifer Ott, Executive Director of HistoryLink.org , Washington's free online encyclopedia of history. Jennifer is an environmental historian, author of Olmsted in Seattle: Creating a Park System for a Modern City, and co-author of Waterway: The Story of Seattle's Locks and Ship Canal. She brings a deep knowledge of Seattle's reshaped landscapes; it's filled tidelands, leveled hills, and rechanneled rivers, and a lifelong commitment to accessible public history. We dig into HistoryLink's new Forest History Project, a wide-ranging effort to tell the story of Washington's forests through essays, oral histories, and educational curricula. Funded by the Washington Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, the project includes over a dozen new feature essays - from Indigenous land stewardship to timber company towns, the Douglas fir to the Northwest Forest Plan - as well as 15 interviews with key figures from forestry, conservation, and tribal leadership. We talk about the relationship between ecological change and historical…

People in this episode

Host: Michael T Yadrick

Guest: Jennifer Ott

Topics covered

• forest history
• environmental history
• climate adaptation
• land stewardship
• public history

Keywords

• forests
• environmental history
• climate adaptation
• land stewardship
• oral histories

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: HistoryLink.org, Washington Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation

Books & works: Olmsted in Seattle: Creating a Park System for a Modern City, Waterway: The Story of Seattle's Locks and Ship Canal

Places: Washington

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