On April 20, 1995, distressed Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt chose the Homestead to deliver an Earth Day address that warned of a rising anti-environmental fervor in Congress, and the effort by Congress to roll back many of the vital environmental laws passed in the last 30 years. Babbitt urged Americans to defend the environmental legislation spawned by Silent Spring. This visit was the first stop on a series of natural heritage tours that carried this message to citizens across the country.
During an address several days later at the University of Delaware, Secretary Babbitt reflected on why he chose to spend Earth Day at the Homestead:
"...I was up in western Pennsylvania for Earth Day. I deliberately left Washington, and I went to a small town in Pennsylvania called Springdale, a small rural town. I went there because it is the birthplace of Rachel Carson. Rachel Carson was an employee of the Department of the Interior, and I thought I want to go and just stand on that homestead and see if I can understand how it was that one person, not a politician, not originally very focused on public policy, how one person who grew up in a rural town could change the course of American history with one book that galvanized the outpouring of creativity that I talked to you about back in the days of the first Earth Day -- what was it? How did that happen? And what I discovered, talking with people who knew her and with people in the Fish and Wildlife Service who had worked with her during her career, was something basic, simple, and I think uniquely and eternally American -- she stirred a revolution because of her passion for nature, because of the intensity of her relationship with the landscape in western Pennsylvania and the way that it fired her to see the landscape, to see these relationships.
She obviously had a God-given gift of prose. But she didn't have a platform; she wasn't the Secretary of the Interior; she wasn't an elected official; nobody in the Interior Department, at the beginning, even knew who she was. What that says to me is that if we're going to reverse this tide that is now sweeping across Capitol Hill, we've all got to make that kind of personal commitment. It's a commitment that has to be grounded in fact and in passion and in understanding and in science and in emotion and in poetry, and then translated into personal statements in our circle of friends, in our university, in our circle of life.
I'm as certain as can be that if we can rekindle those embers and stir the American people to see what's happening, and by our personal witness get this process moving, we can stop it before it runs over us. We will. And we can emerge from it with an enhanced commitment to the environment and the American landscape."
By December of 1995, Secretary Babbitt was able to make these remarks at the National Press Club:
"On Earth Day, 1995, I set out on a journey, a series of eleven Natural Heritage Tours all across the country. I come here today to report what I learned about the commitment of Americans to their surrounding landscape, and the importance of our laws which heal and protect it...
The Natural Heritage Tours brought me through 67 cities, over some 100 days, talking one-on-one with literally hundreds of Americans, some of whom have gathered with me here today...
In my travels I have learned a good many things. I have heard the message people are sending to Congress: Our framework of environmental laws is working and is making our country greater and more beautiful for us and for our children in the next century...
I discovered the stirring of a third generation of environmental activism, not political activism directed at Washington, but hands-on work directed at their own communities, an activism focused at reclaiming their known heritage, their local landscapes, their sense of place which reminds them where they are and, therefore, who they are."