At the dawn of the 20th century, Harrisburg was a city much in need of improvement. Sewage littered the unpaved streets and drained into the Susquehanna, which was also the source of the city’s unfiltered drinking water. Paxton Creek, which ran along Cameron, was a dumping ground for all types of personal and industrial waste. As a result, disease prior to 1900 was prevalent and at times, endemic.
Something needed to be done, and J. Horace McFarland was uniquely qualified to do it.
McFarland moved his family to Harrisburg and began a printing company and later, a plant nursery. The younger McFarland learned much from his father and, at age 19, became owner of the printing company, which he renamed Mount Pleasant Press.
Under McFarland’s leadership, Mount Pleasant Press was a leading seed catalog and horticultural publishing company, printing magazines such as “American Gardening” and the “Encyclopedia of American Horticulture.”
In 1901, he joined forces with like-minded civic activist and Harrisburg resident Mira Lloyd Dock. Together, they helped lead the local City Beautiful movement, garnering the support of local businessmen to fund and carry out a series of projects that provided parks and open spaces, established a city-wide sewage system and cleaned up the waterfront, among many other improvements aimed at urban beautification and public health and safety.
In 1904, McFarland was appointed head of American Civic Association, a position he held for the next 20 years. In this role, McFarland took his ideas of civic beauty to a national stage, supporting not only urban parks and planning, but also the conservation of millions of acres of federal land.
McFarland, with other notable figures such as Federick Law Olmsted and John Muir, was an avid supporter of the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916. He also supported the defense of Niagara Falls against development by power companies, joined John Muir in trying to defend Yosemite Park from the Hetch Hetchy Dam project and was an opponent of development in Yellowstone National Park. McFarland served on the Pennsylvania State Art Commission for many years, as well as the National Municipal League and the National Park Trust Board, to which he was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935.
J. Horace McFarland passed away on Oct. 2, 1948, at his Breeze Hill mansion in Harrisburg’s Bellevue Park, a planned community that he helped create. As a publisher and advocate for city beautification, urban planning, the conservation movement, the National Park Service and aesthetic preservation of the natural environment, McFarland still ranks as one of Harrisburg’s most remarkable citizens.
