Abstract
Hugh Raup's “Sanderson's Farm” essay is remembered for its vivid account of New England land use history, illustrated by the famous Harvard Forest dioramas. But Raup also used that history to argue that natural resource conservation (particularly as attempted at Harvard Forest itself) had proven a failure, because it assumed economic and ecological stability that was naive and untenable. This article reexamines the history of New England farming and forests, and explores ways in which the current understanding of that history and its implications have been used at Harvard Forest to support a renewed call for wide scale land conservation.