From the Explore PA History website on Mira Lloyd Dock, the Mother Of Forestry in Pennsylvania--

Before ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, women could not vote in the state of Pennsylvania. Unable to hold public office, and with limited opportunities in the professions or business, they influenced the political process behind the scenes and in voluntary positions.

In the early 1900s, Mira Lloyd Dock teamed up with Harrisburg businessman and civic reformer marker J. Horace McFarland, and with him led a campaign that mobilized the Harrisburg business community and voters.

By 1915, the Harrisburg plan, which culminated in the construction of a water treatment plan and sewer lines, 900 acres of new city parks, public lakes, athletic fields, playgrounds, and sewage control, had won national attention.

While Dock was working on beautifying Harrisburg, Governor William Stone in 1901 appointed her to the State Forest Reservation Commission, created four years earlier to purchase tens of thousands of acres of former forest that had been clear cut and then abandoned by logging companies.

Working with Chairman Joseph Rothrock [the Father of Pennsylvania Forestry], she became one of the most active members of the commission.

The first woman appointed to a Pennsylvania state government position, Dock spent the next twelve years traveling around the state inspecting lands and recommending their purchase.

In 1903 she began to lecture on botany at the newly opened State Forestry Academy at Mont Alto, a school she had helped found by lobbying for its creation.

She would continue to teach there until 1929, using her own textbook, which described all the trees that grew in the state and where they flourished the best.

After stepping down from the Forest Commission in 1912, Dock was active in a broad range of causes, including the movement, led by McFarland, to preserve Niagara Falls, and the local campaign for women's suffrage.

Dock's final incarceration came in 1918, after her sixtieth birthday. Cantankerous as ever, she used her fame as one of the nation's most celebrated nurses, to speak out for the movement.

Why picket for women's suffrage? "The old stiff minds must give way," she wrote in The Suffragist in 1917. "The old selfish minds must go. Obstructive reactionaries must move on. The young are at the gates!"

Mira Dock's legacy can still be seen in the forests of Pennsylvania and the beautiful Riverfront Park in Harrisburg that now graces the waterfront where she lived most of her life.

Visit the PA Conservation Heritage website to learn more about the people, events and issues that are Pennsylvania’s conservation and environmental heritage.

Click Here to watch a WITF video about Mira Dock on the PA Conservation Heritage website.

Conservation Leadership:

-- Gov. Gifford Pinchot On Leadership: Collaboration And Honesty Are The Foundation Of Effective Leadership In Public Office

-- Ralph W. Abele On Leadership: Do Your Duty And Fear No One!

-- Rachel Carson On Leadership: The Human Race is Challenged More Than Ever Before To Demonstrate Our Mastery, Not Over Nature, But Of Ourselves

-- Gov. Dick Thornburgh On Leadership: People Living In The Chesapeake Bay States Should Not Have To Wait Another 30-Plus Years For Clean Water

-- Gov. Robert P. Casey On Leadership: Our Problems Have Taught Us That We Cannot Continue The Mindless Practices Of The Past

-- Gov. Tom Ridge On Leadership: I Call For Pennsylvania To Be A Showcase Of Well-Reasoned And Inspired Environmental Leadership

-- Op-Ed: New Year's Resolutions For Pennsylvania Legislators - Fair Districts PA, PA League Of Women Voters

-- 233 Stories: These Conservation Leaders Gave Us Cleaner Water, Land & Air In 2020! They Deserve Our Thanks, Our Support!

-- Lebanon Valley College's Commitment To The Environment

[Posted: December 28, 2020]

1/4/2021