Take the Video Tour of the TPL Collection
Video: Meet Will Rogers, TPL President
Video: Jay Dean, VP, on Purchasing to Support TPL

The Art of Discovery beautifully documents the natural world as its explorers and painters found it. We have selected some iconic examples to highlight and support the work of The Trust for Public Land – to literally illustrate the places we love and TPL conserves.

From the vast scale of a map to the intimate scale of a bird or flower, we hope these images will bring a beautiful sense of place to your home – and a reminder of all we have to enjoy and conserve.

The 1846 New Map of Texas, Oregon and California was the primary American trail map at mid-19th century. Today it is a time traveler's guide to places TPL conserves. Trace Lewis & Clark’s route north of The Great Salt Lake where TPL is creating the 100-mile Bonneville Shoreline Trail. Go west to the Columbia River Gorge where Redouté’s Tiger Lily thrives in 16,000 acres conserved by TPL.

Follow the Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada to then unexplored Yosemite Valley of the Merced River; “Rio de los Merced” is the marker. Look west past present-day Mariposa where TPL conserved 2,900 acres. Bring home the conservationist's iconic landscape: Bierstadt’s 1870 masterpiece, Domes of Yosemite.

Finally, look to the southeast: in 1846, Audubon’s Ivory-billed Woodpecker populated Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. Its last confirmed sighting was in 1944 in Louisiana’s Singer Tract, where TPL recently conserved 2,900 acres and now plants more than
two million trees to restore the Ivory-billed’s natural habitat.

The Trust for Public Land is a national nonprofit land conservation organization that conserves land for people to enjoy as parks, gardens, and natural areas, ensuring livable communities for generations to come. Founded in San Francisco in 1972, TPL has created, protected, or restored in the Bay Area more than 27,000 acres – 27 times the area of Golden Gate Park, a brand new park when Currier & Ives depicted it in the 1878 City of San Francisco.

See more historic maps and views of places TPL conserves.