Author, John McPhee, Continues to Be a Pinelands Advocate
We are deeply honored to share that John is donating all current and future royalties from all versions and editions of his book, The Pine Barrens, to the Pinelands Preservation Alliance. We are amazed by his generosity and appreciate John’s care for this very special place.
“I was in the pines because I found it hard to believe that so much wilderness could still exist so near the big Eastern cities,” McPhee writes in his book, The Pine Barrens.
The Pine Barrens, published in 1968, explores the people, culture, history and ecology of the Pines during a time when there was a proposal to build a city and a supersonic airport in the heart of this vast forested land. At the end of his book McPhee concludes that the Pine Barrens are likely headed for extinction given the amount of cooperation it would take to protect them.
By the time Brendan Byrne became Governor of New Jersey in 1974, his friendship with John McPhee was well established. The Governor had read John’s seminal work, The Pine Barrens, and vowed to prove his friend wrong. In the end, Governor Byrne and many activists, scientists, citizens and policy makers were able to pass the Pinelands Protection Act in 1979 protecting much of the Pinelands from intensive development.
We are deeply honored to share that John is donating all current and future royalties from all versions and editions of The Pine Barrens to the Pinelands Preservation Alliance. We are amazed by his generosity and appreciate John’s care for this very special place.
John’s popular book is available in our gift shop or find the book anywhere books are sold! Know that your purchase helps to support our work!
John said, “I was born in New Jersey, grew up in New Jersey, was educated in three public schools and a university in New Jersey, and had never heard of the Pine Barrens before 1966, when I first went down there at the age of thirty-five to see what they were. They were a state treasure. They were vast, vulnerable, and a cache of lore and legend, not to mention sui generis characters. That scene has been preserved by state and federal legislation and by the ongoing effort of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance. Months ago, when I was ninety-two, I thought the least I should do was turn over to the Alliance all current and future royalties from the book I published in 1968.”
John McPhee is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for Annals of the Former World. He grew up in New Jersey. Read more about him here.
As of March 2025, John McPhee is nominated for the New Jersey Hall of Fame under the Arts and Letters class. You can learn more about the NJ Hall of Fame here. As the website says, “Everyone needs a hero, and the accomplishments of Garden State citizens span the pages of nearly every volume of American history”. John McPhee is a true hero for the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve and is very deserving of this nomination! The public is invited to vote on the nominations until April 15th. You can vote for John and others here.
I’m 1980 I almost turned down a job in NJ because everything I knew about NJ I had learned from Johnny Carson, so I thought it was a place I wouldn’t want to live.
Then a friend gave me a copy of The Pine Barrens.
For the next 20 years my son I I lived very happily in South Jersey, and the trails and rivers, history and culture of the Pine Barrens enriched us immensely. I never regretted that move.