CHAPTER IX
LANDSCAPE PROJECTS EAST AND WEST

In the summer of 1865 Olmsted began to wind up his affairs with the Mariposa Company. On July 31 he undertook to clarify his legal relationship with the trustees by reviewing for the New York lawyer Howard Potter the steps by which he had managed to avoid a sheriffs sale of the Estate.

During this time, Olmsted finished two of his landscape projects in California and initiated a final one. His letters to Edward C. Miller and to Samuel H. Willey tell of his work on the campus of the College of California at Berkeley. Letters to his father describe his trip to the Yosemite Valley with the party of House Speaker Schuyler Colfax and the adoption of his report by the Yosemite commissioners at a meeting there. In “The Project of a Great Park for San Francisco” he explains to the people of that city (citing the success of Central Park) why they should begin without delay to create a public recreation ground.

Two letters concern Olmsted’s health and its influence on his career. On September 7 Olmsted declines to serve as director of the American Freedmen’s Aid Union on the grounds of health. Later that month, he warns Samuel Bowles about the harmful effects of the compulsive work habits they share.

From New York, Vaux notifies Olmsted that his negotiations with both the Prospect and the Central Park commissioners have borne fruit: the commissioners in Brooklyn have hired him to design Prospect Park, and the Central Park commissioners have reinstated him and Olmsted as landscape architects. Vaux’s letters show his growing impatience with Olmsted’s initial reluctance to accept his place in the profession [398]of landscape architecture. However, in the last letter of the volume Olmsted asks Vaux to help him find a house and horse in preparation for their work together on the New Yark parks.