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AMERICAN PLANNING
AND CIVIC ANNUAL
1 : : ' AMERICAN* BANNING AND CIVIC ASSOCIATION
* 1 I Officers and, Board of Directors
FBEDEEIC A. DELANO, Washington, D. C., Chairman of the Board
HORACE M. ALBRIGHT, New York City, President
HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM, New York City, First Vice-President
RICHARD LIBBER, Indianapolis, Ind., Second V ice-President
EARLB S. DRAPER, Knoxville, Tenn., Third Vice-President
O. H. P. JOHNSON, Washington, D. C., Treasurer
HARLEAN JAMES, Washington, D. C., Executive Secretary
FLAVEL SHUHTLEFF, New York City, Counsel
MRS. DOHA A. PADGETT, Washington, D. C., Librarian
HARLAND BARTHOLOMEW, St. Louis, Mo. JOHN M. GRIES, Conover, Ohio.
EDWARD M. BASSETT, New York City.
ALFRED BETTMAN, Cincinnati, Ohio.
MRS. EDWARD W. BIDDLE, Philadelphia.
Louis BROWNLOW, Chicago, 111.
HERMON C. BUMPUS, Waban, Mass.
GILMORE D. CLARKE, Pelham, N. Y.
JAT N. DARLING, Des Moines, Iowa.
Mies H. M. DERMITT, Pittsburgh, Pa.
A. P. GIANNINI, San Francisco, Calif.
HENRY V. HUBBARD, Cambridge, Mass.
B. H. KIZER, Spokane, Wash.
JAMES M. LANGLET, Concord, N. H.
J. HORACE MCFARLAND, Harrisburg, Pa.
J. C. NICHOLS, Kansas City, Mo.
MRS. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, Wash-
ington, D. C.
L. DEMING TILTON, Santa Barbara, Calif.
SAMUEL P. WETHERILL, JR., Philadelphia.
NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
STATE PARKS
Board of Directors
RICHARD LIEBEK, Ind., President
WILLIAM A. WELCH, N. Y., Vice-President
W. E. CARSON, Va., Vice-President
O. H. P. JOHNSON, D. C., Treasurer
HARLBAN JAMES, D. C., Executive Secretary
HORACE M. ALBRIGHT, N. Y.
J. L. BABLER, Mo.
HOWARD B. BLOOMER, Mich.
SAM F. BREWSTER, Tenn.
PAUL V. BROWN, Nebr.
DAVID C. CHAPMAN, Tenn.
STANLEY COULTER, Ind.
NEWTON B. DHURY, Calif.
CHARLES N. ELLIOTT, Ga.
JAMES F. EVANS, N. Y.
HERBERT EVIBON, Va.
MRS. HENRY FHANKEL, Iowa
ROBERT KINGERY, 111.
HAROLD W. LATHROP, Minn.
HERBERT MAIER, N. M.
CHARLES G. SAUERS, 111.
JAMES G. SCRUQHAM, Nev.
N. E. SIMONEAUX, La.
ALEXANDER THOMSON, Ohio
H. S. WAGNER, Ohio
TOM WALLACE, Ky.
CONRAD L. WIRTH, D. C.
Kinnerly Peak from Kintla Lake, Glacier National Park
Photograph courtesy Department of the Interior
AMERICAN
PLANNING ANH) CIVIC
1 ANNUAL 11
A RECORD OF RECENT CIVIC ADVANCE AS SHOWN IN THE
PROCEEDINGS OF THE CONFERENCE ON NATIONAL PARKS
HELD AT WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 20-21, 1938; THE
NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON STATE PARKS, HELD AT
NORRIS, TENNESSEE, MAY 11-14, 1938; AND THE NATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON PLANNING, HELD AT MINNEAPOLIS.
MINNESOTA, JUNE 20-22, 1938
EDITED BY
HARLEAN JAMES
AMERICAN PLANNING AND
CIVIC ASSOCIATION
901 UNION TRUST BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D. C.
1938
.-
THE AMERICAN PLANNING AND
CIVIC ANNUAL is sent to all paid
members and subscribers of the American
Planning and Civic Association and of the
National Conference on State Parks, who
may purchase extra copies for $2 each.
The public may purchase past American
Civic Annuals, past American Planning and
Civic Annuals, and the current Annual for
$3 each.
A complete set of the nine volumes may
be purchased for $15.
Copyright 1938
By American Planning and Civic
Association
Reference
jtBount Pleasant &re
J. Horace McFarland Company
Harrisburg, Pa.
975165
28
CONTENTS
NATIONAL PARKS
PAGE
Introduction Horace M. Albright 3
National Parks in National Thrift Arno B. Cammerer 4
The Defenders of the National Parks . . . J. Horace McFarland 7
Conservation vs. Exploitation Frederic A. Delano 9
The Olympic National Park Harold L. Ickes 11
GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM
National Parks and National Forests Different Forms of Land
Use M . L. Wilson 17
Qualifications for National Parks 0. A. Tomlinson 22
A National Park Platform 25
Mrs, Roberta Campbell Lawson, Mrs. William A. Lockwood,
A. D. Taylor, Ovid Butler, Horace M. Albright
FORECASTING THE FUTURE
The Future of National Parks in Region One . . Carl P. Russell 33
The Future of the National Park Service in Region Two
Thomas J. Allen, Jr. 38
A Forecast of the Future of the National Park System in Region
Three Herbert Maier 39
Conservation in Region Four Frank A. Kittredge 45
RECREATIONAL USE OF NATIONAL PARKS
Ideals *.*0." John R. White 49
Present Uses Edmund B. Rogers 54
Park, Parkway and Recreational-Area Study . . . Harry Curtis 57
Relation of Operators to Recreation Don Tresidder 61
WILDERNESS AREAS
Development of National Parks for Conservation Thomas C. Vint 69
Wilderness Aspects of National Parks .... Jesse L. Nusbaum 72
The Primitive Areas in National Forests .... (7. M. Granger 77
Service of State Parks to National Parks .... Richard Lieber 81
Wildlife on the National Forests H. L. Shantz 85
National Parks and Wildlife Joseph S. Dixon 89
A National Park Service Fish Policy David H. Madsen 92
STATE PARKS
The President's Message Richard Lieber 97
Responsibilities of the State Arno B. Cammerer 101
EDUCATION
A Program of Education in Landscape Management Roberts Mann 103
New Attitudes in Conservation Education .... Pearl Chase 111
Taking Conservation into the Schools .... John C. CaldweU 115
STATE PARK PLANNING AND ADMINISTRATION
State Park Architecture Albert H. Good 119
State Park Organizations: The various kinds: Their good and bad
points R. A. Vetter 122
A Park Administrator on State Park Landscape Architecture . . .
D. N. Graves 125
State Park Engineering Charles C. Estes 127
Problems of a State Park Superintendent . . Harold W. Lathrop 130
Elements of a Good State Park Plan S. Herbert Hare 133
What Does the Average Man Expect to Find and Do in a State
Park? . . Paul V. Broum 135
vi CONTENTS
RECREATIONAL PROGRAMS PAGE
Recreational Development in the National Forests C. M. Granger 137
Recreational Development in the National Parks . Carl P. Russett 141
Accomplishments of the Park, Parkway and Recreational-Area
Study Conrad L. Wirth 144
Camping Trends and Public Areas . . . Julian Harris Salomon 146
Value of Water and Shore Line for Recreation . . H. <S. Wagner 151
INTERSTATE RELATIONS
Interstate Agreements and Compacts George W, Olcott 153
Parkways and Freeways Earle S. Draper 156
The Appalachian Trail Paid M. Fink 159
STATE PARK DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOUTH
Alabama Page S. Bunker 163
Georgia Charles N. Elliott 164
Florida H. J. Malsberger 166
Mississippi J. H . Fortenberry 168
Louisiana Nicole Simoneaux 170
Kentucky Bailey P. Wootlon 171
South Carolina R. A. Walker 173
Tennessee R. A. Livingston 175
T. V. A C. A. Towne 177
PLANNING
The Need for Planning B*n H. Kizer 181
Planning a Housing Program 189
Charles B. Bennett, Jacob L. Crane Jr., John Ihlder
The Value of Planning to Public Officials " 195
Neville Miller, George W. Coutts, Clifford W. Ham,
Daniel W. Hoan, Arthur C. Meyers, Edward C. Rutz
Traffic Studies in Relation to City Planning 199
/. S. Shattuck, D. Grant Mickle, Hawley S. Simpson,
Fred C. Taylor
County, Metropolitan, and Regional Planning 211
Earle S. Draper, Roy F. Bessey, Hugh R. Pomeroy, Flavel Shurtleff
Rural and Agricultural Zoning 230
0. B. Jesness, /. M. Albers, Ernest H. Wiecking
Urban Land Policies 241
Harold S. Buttenheim, Philip H. Cornick, S. R. DeBoer
The Administration of a Planning Office 251
Elisabeth M. Herlihy, Gerald S. Gimre, L. Segoe
Trends in Planning Law, Legislation, and Litigation 266
Alfred Bettman, Dwight G. McCarty, Ira S. Robbins
National Planning 281
Frederic A. Delano, Henry Matson Waite, Abel Wolman
State Planning 289
Morton L. Waller stein, Morris B. Lambie, Robert H. Randall
Education for Planning in the United States 291
Carl Feiss, Frederick J. Adams, Donald C. Blaisdell,
Henry V. Hubbard
Migration and Economic Opportunity 307
Carl C. Taylor, Ben H. Kizer, Rupert B. Vance, George F. Yantis
Capital Budgets and Improvement Programs 815
Myron D. Downs, Robert Kingery, Harold M. Lewis,
Harold A. Merrill
Planning Promotes Progress E. D. Rivers 339
NATIONAL PARKS
PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE CONFERENCE ON
NATIONAL PARKS, CALLED BY THE AMERICAN
PLANNING AND CIVIC ASSOCIATION, HELD
IN WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 2O-2I, 1938
NATIONAL PARKS
Introduction
HORACE M. ALBRIGHT, President American Planning and Civic Association
and Past Director, National Park Service
THE first National Park Conference was held in 1911 in Yellowstone
National Park under the leadership of Secretary of the Interior
Walter L. Fisher. Dr. J. Horace McFarland and Howard H. Hays, who
are here today, attended that conference. The 1912 conference was in
Yosemite Valley. Strange to say, that conference was devoted to the ques-
tion of whether or not automobiles should be admitted to national parks
and the outcome was that automobiles were admitted to Yosemite in a
limited way. They tied them to logs with chains so that they would
not run away and frighten the horses. It was at the 1915 conference
in Berkeley, California, that Stephen T. Mather appeared as Assis-
tant to Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane. That was my
first national park conference. The next meeting was in Washing-
ton after the passage of the bill to create the National Park Service.
Dr. McFarland was present representing the American Civic Association
which had been closely identified with the proposal and passage of the
bill. We had our first national park art exhibit over at the National
Museum. Conferences were held subsequently in Denver in 1919, in
Yosemite in 1922, in Yellowstone in 1923, Mesa Verde in 1925 and in
Washington in 1926. The conference went to San Francisco in 1928
and to Yellowstone again in 1929, the year that I became Director.
In 1932 we met in Hot Springs and in 1934 in Washington.
In 1936, at the time of the Superintendents' Conference in Washing-
ton, the American Planning and Civic Association organized, in con-
nection with it, a public conference of interested citizens. This year,
again, we meet at the time of the conference of officials so that we may
profit by the collaboration between the National Park Service and the
Association.
I may say that the American Civic Association is a very old organ-
ization and that in the beginning it sponsored the National Park Service
and through the years has been its strong supporter. It is fitting, there-
fore, that its successor, the American Planning and Civic Association,
should be sponsoring these public conferences on national parks, that the
American people may learn more about their valuable possessions and be
always on the alert to protect their property from selfish commercial
exploitation and to maintain in the national parks those standards of
preservation and human use which were embodied in the Act creating
Yellowstone National Park and later cast into more elaborate form by
Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane.
4 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
National Parks in National Thrift
ARNO B. CAMMERER, Director of the National Park Service
NO NATION can be thrifty unless it conserves its human and
natural resources and uses them wisely. The urge to spend is
opposed to the urge to save. Because of this well-known human trait
we do not usually carry the savings fund and the spending fund in the
same pocket, lest our fingers fail to differentiate between the coins.
Likewise, the demand for immediate, personal gain is usually opposed
to the general public weal and, for that reason, we do not place the
conservation of our resources in the same hands that are engaged in
exploiting them.
The founders of the national park system acted wisely when they
had the first national park set apart. Not set apart to be uselessly
hoarded as a miser hoards his idle gold, but set apart for definite, pre-
scribed uses; to work for the Nation's welfare, just as properly invested
capital works and accrues benefits for the investor.
The founders of the first national park went into considerable detail
to specify clearly the types of use this capital, or natural resource, was
to serve. The act of Congress, setting aside the first national park, the
Yellowstone, stands as a Magna Charta for a new and thrifty form of
land use. The substance of that conservation formula is that the area
is "dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground for
the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and that it should be preserved
in its natural condition.
When we read that Act, we note how carefully the Congress circum-
scribed the capital asset with protective clauses so that the capital
would not be dissipated for local or immediate gains. That capital, in
this case, is the inspirational, or recreational, quality of the area. Every-
one knows that we cannot chisel away from our capital and still expect
the same return in interest. To hold otherwise is to be misled by a
"have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too" philosophy. When the founders wrote
those provisions, they were thinking specifically of such possible abuses
as logging in the national park, the grazing of livestock, hunting and
trapping of wild animals, mining, power and irrigation projects, private
usurpation of scenic areas, and railroads.
Their Magna Charta, however, was not a bill of "don'ts." It was a
positive prescription of appropriate and enduring uses. The park was
to be used and enjoyed by all the people for all time and the only re-
striction was that they should so use it as to leave it unimpaired for the
next generation. They were really asking so little, and the prescription
is so simple, that many people fail to understand it even today and they
refer to it as a 'locking up" of valuable natural resources. Yet, more than
fifteen million people last year visited our national parks and monu-
ments less than one per cent of our total land area.
NATIONAL PARKS 5
Speaking now, for the moment, in terms of dollars and cents, it is
significant that Julius Weinberger in his study of "Economic Aspects
of Recreation," printed recently in the Harvard Business Review, makes
the following statements about recreation and recreational travel:
"Foreign travel expenditures show clearly the combined effects of
dollar devaluation and the depression. While domestic travel expendi-
tures in 1935 had recovered to a total of $2,037,000,000, compared to
$2,175,000,000 in 1929, the foreign account stood at only 48% of the
1929 figures. 'See America First' appears finally to be having its effect."
Mr. Weinberger goes on to say that "the American public in 1935
spent . . . one-third more for recreation . . . than the Federal Gov-
ernment did for recovery and relief, and more than the Federal Treasury
collected from all tax sources. . . . Recreational expenditures exceeded
the value of the products of the entire motor vehicle and rubber tire
industries. Yet 1935 was a comparatively moderate year in terms of
such expenditures, for in 1929 these were 80% higher."
In addition, that study reveals that recreational travel far exceeds
all other recreational expenditures.
While I do not wish to burden you with figures, these statements
are sufficient to indicate that our recreational resources are of such im-
portance as to require prudent husbandry in our national economy.
The husbanding of those resources involves the question as to just what
part the National Park System should be given in that program. As
national parks are the lodestones of travel in this country, their place
in the economic field is an outstanding one. The increasing volume in
motor travel alone adds to the commercial income of each region traversed.
There has been some apprehension in recent years as to what lands
should be included in the National Park System and a great deal of mis-
apprehension concerning the ultimate objectives of those who support
the park movement. I should like to clarify those questions, at least
in so far as it is within my purview to speak. I appreciate, and I am sure
that the members of my organization appreciate, the national value of
good forestry and good agricultural practices and we should like to see
those practices extended and continually improved. We do not consider
that parks are a substitute for either, or that they are a substitute for
parks. We do not wish to substitute parks for lands that are primarily
valuable for grazing, mining, trapping or power and irrigation projects
and we do not wish to see these pursuits conducted in parks. Nor do
we urge park use as the only form of conservation, for there are many.
But, those areas and objects that are primarily valuable for the inspiration
of the Nation should be included in the national park and monument
system. The park type of use was devised to provide for the maximum
use of those resources. No other category of land use can provide that
maximum use. It has a very definite and important place in the thrift
of a nation and no thrifty nation can afford to overlook it. We are
6 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
attempting to appraise and secure for public inspiration and benefit:
All those areas that are nationally of more value for recreation and inspira-
tion than for any other use;
Outstanding stretches of the ocean beaches;
Nationally important prehistoric and historic sites, objects, and buildings;
The finest representative examples of native plant and animal associations;
The most instructive geological phenomena; and
A system of nationally important scenic and historic parkways.
I see no grounds for apprehension about such a program nor can I
understand why certain organizations should oppose it. It does not
duplicate or threaten any other legitimate form of land use and it does
not infringe upon the integrity of any other field of government. I am
inclined to believe that the chief difficulty lies in the failure to realize
that the national park and monument system is not a luxury but is a
legitimate and thrifty investment in natural and human resources and
that we have as yet failed to comprehend the ultimate possibilities of
that type of investment.
I have stated on other occasions that the park concept provides a
new form of land use, humanly satisfying, economically justifiable, and
with far-reaching social implications. Inherent in it is a new recognition
of human values and a more intelligent method of commercial exploi-
tation. As such, it is a progressive step in land utilization and must take
its place along with the other great land-use techniques such as forestry,
agriculture, and mining. While it has been given considerable impetus
in this country, it is still in its infancy. When it has been accorded proper
recognition, the National Park System will comprise fewer lands than
those devoted to forestry and agriculture but it will include those areas
and structures which cannot be adequately preserved and properly
used under any other category or land management.
When we speak of use, it does not necessarily mean development.
One of the most important objectives of the park system is the preserva-
tion of large tracts of roadless wilderness, as a character and stamina
building resource for all time.
We are not dealing with a luxury; we are dealing with national thrift.
If we are to be, and remain, a thrifty nation we must classify our lands
and resources according to their greatest possible contribution to human
welfare, which means to classify them according to their best uses. In
such classification, we must provide for the conservation and use of those
resources that are primarily of inspirational character. Some lands are
best suited for agriculture, others for mining, grazing, forestry, wildlife
refuges, and so on. But the nationally important inspirational, or recre-
ational, resources cannot be provided for under any of these; they will
be properly conserved and will render their maximum use only when
given park status.
A thrifty nation will not overlook the conservation of such resources.
NATIONAL PARKS 7
The Defenders of the National Parks
J. HORACE McFARLAND, Past President American Civic Association and Chairman
of National Parks, American Planning and Civic Association, Harrisburg, Pa.
OUR national park relationship began when the American Civic
Association was organized in 1904 in Saint Louis. We then dis-
covered that there was not one whole desk in Washington given over to
the affairs of the national parks, nor the whole time of any one man.
That may seem curious to you, but, as a matter of fact, there was then
no Federal park bureau. The administration of the existing national parks
created by Congress was scattered among several Departments.
We tried to secure legislation in successive Congresses and sometimes
we managed to have a bill passed by one House or the other, but never
by both, until Secretary Lane came into office with the Wilson adminis-
tration. We presented our case to him. His response was instant. He
said, "Mr. McFarland, if what you say is true, the conditions are about
the same in the National Parks as they would be with the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad if it operated its trains between Baltimore and
Washington without a train dispatcher."
Secretary Lane moved rapidly and effectively. The result was the
Act of Congress of August 25, 1916, which established the present
National Park Service. Mr. Lane brought Mr. Mather into the park
work. Mr. Mather was the kind of man who, when we wanted a national
park established, went down into his own pocket to provide the financial
deficiencies. He could enthuse people. He was a man of force and fine
spirit. He brought Mr. Albright in, and if I mistake not, Mr. Cammerer.
He organized the National Park Service. He did it with the sympathetic
assistance and backing of Mr. Lane. That was the beginning of the
organized National Park Service. Now what a contrast!
The people of the country have discovered what these parks are.
They have discovered places and facilities that are not available any-
where else on earth. If you had heard, as I have heard, these notable
papers, not written by cranks like myself, but by the men on the firing
line who are and were giving their fine service today and yesterday, you
would realize that the national parks are not only sold to the people of
the United States who visit them but that they are sold to these grand
men who have dedicated themselves to administer the parks for your
benefit.
We should not forget that the modern conservation impulse grew out
of the White House Conservation Conference of Governors which was
called by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. At that conference
there were gathered forty-one Governors, the President's Cabinet, some
of the members of the Supreme Court and several hundred legislators.
It was a very notable and distinguished audience that met in the East
Room of the White House. The President opened the Conference with
8 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
an inspiring address which left every one of the Governors ready to
follow him. I believe that great conference was the beginning of the
salvation of America.
For we were destroying America just as fast as shovel and pick and
saw could do it. We were doing it with self-complacence and taking
pride in it. That conference brought to our knowledge that we could
not have our cake and eat it and that if we wanted any scenery fit to
look at we would have to do something about it.
Out of the work of the last thirty years we must realize that we have
a national park system which is the result of devoted interest on the
part of those who believe in national parks. But devoted service did
not end with the creation of the parks. They needed defending after
they were created. The national parks have not had an easy time of it.
One of the jobs which our Association carried for years was that of
guardian of national parks when they were under attack through bills
introduced into Congress to appropriate the lands and waters dedicated
to the people for the selfish uses of would-be exploiters. Yellowstone Lake
has always been a target. We have saved Yellowstone Lake many times
and it seems now that we shall have an opportunity to save it again from
current predators. Through our literature, through our personal appear-
ances before Congressional committees, through private interviews with
administrative officials and members of Congress we have fought the
good fight over and over again. In all these years we have lost only two
great battles one was to save the Yosemite from Hetch Hetchy reser-
voir and the other was to save Rocky Mountain National Park from a
tunnel underneath it and power structures along its most beautiful
approach.
After all these years of close collaboration, I want to say that I am
proud of the men and women who compose the National Park Service.
They live their work and are devoted to it. The Service has an able
Director and I am glad to bear testimony to the fact that if there ever
was a solid and firm friend of the national parks it is the present Secre-
tary of the Interior. At a dinner given in his honor soon after he took
office he gave an unforgetable pledge of service to the parks and we
knew then that we had a friend.
I believe that the national parks are a great factor in patriotism.
The man or woman who visits the national parks and who sees how
they have been kept inviolate is a better citizen. That is why I have
no fear about what is to happen in America. That kind of people cannot
"go" Bolshevist. That kind of people cannot be turned over to an
authoritarian or totalitarian or any other "arian" kind of government.
We people have learned to enjoy our national parks. The money we
spend on them is a trifle compared with the good we gain from them.
We have a grand and glorious heritage in the national parks, which we
may enjoy but which we must not destroy.
NATIONAL PARKS
Conservation vs. Exploitation
FREDERIC A. DELANO, Chairman of the Board of Directors, American Planning and
Civic Association, and Vice Chairman, National Resources Committee
ONE of the great dramatists of the world, a man who lived nearly
three hundred years ago, was accused of plagiarism, and instead
of denying his self -impeachment, he said, "Why, yes. Whenever I get
an idea I use it." Now there is nothing new about plagiarism. Shake-
speare has been accused of plagiarism. There are some people living who
believe that another man wrote his stuff. I think it quite likely that
Shakespeare got some ideas from Francis Bacon, but he put them into
better form than Francis Bacon. Proof of this is that Shakespeare lives
and Francis Bacon is dead. I do not need to apologize, therefore, for
plagiarizing the speeches and writings of my many associates in the
national park work.
This is not the first of the meetings on national parks that I have
attended. They seem to me just as good as ever. I do not get stale on
them. They make me want to pay a tribute to the men in the Govern-
ment service. You know a railroad is a very common carrier and I have
been a common carrier for a good many years. Now in the Government
service I find men in the heads of bureaus and junior officers in the
bureaus that so far excel the type of men that I used to find in corporate
management that I want to pay a tribute to them. I hear lots of men
abusing bureaucracy, but if bureaucracy means, as I think it means,
devoted, unselfish service, I am for it.
David Cushman Coyle, who is one of my friends here, whom I dis-
covered in this maelstrom in Washington about five years ago, was an
engineer who used to design the steel frames of buildings that architects
drew pictures of. You never saw his name on the Empire State Building
or any other big building in New York; you saw the architect's name.
But if David Cushman Coyle or some other engineer had not drawn the
designs for the steel frame, that building would not stand. So I have a
great respect for him. When I first knew David Cushman Coyle it was
when our economic troubles were at their height. I saw a little booklet
that he had written and I was so impressed with the wisdom of that
book that I, to use a vulgar expression, "contacted" him. I said, "I
wish some time when you are in Washington you could come and see
me." Since then he has written a number of small books on various
economic subjects. I have read them all. One of them that I read was
on a very dry subject, but every three pages he said, "This is a big coun-
try." Well, that did not faze me much the first time. I knew it was a
big country. But three or four pages on I read it again. And so on right
until the end. It began to sink into my cerebellum that that was a
rather wise statement to make. The great trouble with us is that we
constantly forget that this is a big country and that we have a great
10 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
many big problems. That is one of somebody else's ideas that I picked
up, and I pass it along to you.
I once heard a definition of a good citizen. It is a citizen who knows
something about everything and everything about something. Now I
cannot claim to know everything about something I wish I did but
I do get a lot of enjoyment in knowing something about everything. I
do it by listening to other people's wisdom. Therefore, I commend these
meetings which you have had. During the last two days we have been
devoting our attention to conservation. I agree with the previous
speaker that it is very easy to say conversation. Just the transposition
of two letters makes a lot of difference. We have been talking about
conservation and we have all learned a good deal about it, but it was
not all conversation, it was really good stuff. I differentiate between
those two words. Conversation means quantity production. Conserva-
tion means quality production.
I want to call your attention to some of the important facts about
conservation. The natural resources of our country include many things.
Beauty is an important feature of our conservation. Another is the
recreation of our people by giving the opportunity to enjoy the wonderful
adventure of outdoor life. And there is something that one of the experts
pointed out that I never thought of before: Recreation is the benefit
you get from doing something that comes after you have done that thing.
It is something which explains the after-effects of what you enjoy.
I think that the real feature of conservation, the most important
and fundamental to us, is that it is the one thing that stands between
us and exploitation.
In closing, I am going to cite two cases of that, and you can think of
many others that are equally serious. There are two States that I have
in mind in our country and I will not mention their names the com-
parison is sometimes odious but here is the situation. One of them is a
State with immense natural resources of the type people talk about
iron ore, coal, and many other similar resources. There is another State
that was settled by the same type of people about the same time that
had none of those resources, perhaps building stone or something like
that but nothing else. When I look at those two States I find that the
State that had all those mineral resources has today many exhausted
mines. Many pecks of slate have been taken out of the coal mines, oil
wells exhausted. Many fortunes have been made but the people who
have the fortunes do not live there. They live somewhere else. Now in
the other State that I speak of, there were forests and grass lands when
our forefathers came to this country. They had very few natural resources
in the way we think of them, but today that State has just as much as it
had in the beginning. It is not a waste land at all. It is a happy home-
land for many people.
NATIONAL PARKS 11
The Olympic National Park
HONORABLE HAROLD L. ICKES, Secretary of the Interior
EDITOR'S NOTE. As an important pronouncement on national-park policy and an
authoritative indication of future plans for the Olympic National Park, created by Act
of Congress, approved June 29, 1938, we are glad to present here the address delivered
by Secretary Ickes at the Seattle dinner of the Northwest Conservation League on
August 26, 1938.
IT IS a pleasant privilege to speak tonight before this gathering of
men and women who have met to honor Representative Monrad C.
Wallgren, sponsor, in the national House of Representatives, of the bill
which created the Olympic National Park. . . .
I bring to you this evening a congratulatory greeting from President
Roosevelt, and, in doing so, I wish to testify anew to his personal interest
and activity which helped to bring this new park into being. Beset as
the President was in the closing days of Congress by grave problems of
statesmanship, he found time to help outline the final form of the
Olympic park bill, and to see to it that the measure was not lost in the
stampede toward adjournment.
I can say without the slightest hesitation that the Olympic National
Park, when rounded out by proclamation under the power given to the
President to add additional territory, will take its place with the greatest
parks in our national system. It will be a worthy rival of your famous
Mt. Rainier National Park. It will be inferior to none, and at the same
time it will be different from all others.
A region of tumbled mountains, of far-spreading glaciers, of trees of
unimaginable size the wet forest tropics of North America lies here
on the Olympic peninsula, near the great city of Seattle, without ac-
claim, without recognition, almost unknown. Bring it into the National
Park System, place the signet of government recognition upon it, and
it will speedily spring forward to its rightful place. Visitors will come to
it from all over the world.
In view of this it is timely to reflect that fame has its drawbacks as
well as its compensations. A national park, praised by everybody,
thronged to by the great traveling public, needs the same protection
from its too enthusiastic admirers that a man needs when fame descends
upon him. Society offers little, if any, protection to the man seeking to
escape from those who adulate today only to forget tomorrow. It is
simpler and easier to protect a national park, provided the right kind
of a start is made. In the case of a wilderness area like the Olympic
National Park, the solution can be stated in four words. Keep it a
wilderness.
When a national park is established, the insistent demand is to build
roads everywhere, to build broad easy trails, to build air fields, to make
it possible for everybody to go everywhere loithout effort.
These last two words are what cause the trouble. It is characteristic
12 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
of the American people that they want everything to be attainable
without effort. Too many of us want a predigested breakfast food for
our stomachs and a previewed national park for our eyes. Nine people
out of ten, visiting our national parks, stay within half a mile of the
motor roads and the hotels. Some of these people appreciate and love
the parks, but are physically handicapped. For these we should show
the greatest possible consideration. Others feel that they are roughing
it if they twist their necks in a sightseeing bus, or expose their adenoids
to the crisp air while gazing through field glasses at some distant scene.
And these are the vast majority. Only a few days ago I was told of a
man and his wife who stopped at a park entrance, bought a sticker
which they placed on their windshield and then proceeded happily
and triumphantly on their way. They had "seen" another national
park. . . .
I am in favor of opening a liberal and representative section of every
national park to those who, because of physical limitations, are confined
to motor roads. I am even willing to make this same concession to those ^
who cling to motor roads as a matter of choice. But let us preserve a still ^
larger representative area in its primitive condition, for all time, by
excluding roads. Limit the roads. Make the trails safe but not too easy,
and you will preserve the beauty of the parks for untold generations.
Yield to the thoughtless demand for easy travel, and in tune the few
wilderness areas that are left to us will be nothing but the back yards
of filling stations.
This is a fitting occasion to speak of the general policies of our Govern-
ment in expanding and administering its national park system.
There have been two stages in the creation of national parks. During
the first stage, national parks were established on lands already owned
by the Government on which there were striking natural phenomena
mountains, glaciers, waterfalls, lakes, geysers, hot springs, etc. Such
lands were created into national parks without much opposition, pro-
vided the lands had no commercial value. The boundary lines were drawn
so as to exclude all commercial timber, all mineral deposits, all lands ..*
suitable for grazing. . . .
In this second stage of creating a national park system, we have
come to realize that even though a land area may have commercial
value, it may have an even greater value for national park purposes.
We have discovered that, in special instances, the commercial value of
a given area may be enhanced by staying the woodman's ax. There are
instances where the preserving of a notable forest, especially if the
forest is only one feature of an outstanding scenic region, not only
enhances the commercial value of the region but makes this value a
continuing one.
An example of this is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in
the southern Appalachians, where, through the cordial and close co-
MAIN NATIONAL PARKS
13
operation of the States of North Carolina and Tennessee and the Govern-
ment of the United States, the greatest of our eastern national parks
has been set up. This park was created to preserve for all time the last
of the virgin hardwood forests of the East. Here forests, of great com-
mercial value, were acquired by the States of North Carolina and
Tennessee and presented as a gift to the Nation. The United States
Government has also made a considerable investment in this park, as
have two or three interested citizens, notably John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was opposed by local
lumber interests, but was overwhelmingly supported by the people who
saw the virgin forests of the East disappearing before the saw and ax.
Today this park has the favor of practically all of those who at first
opposed its creation.
That is the universal history of national parks. Those who fight them
become their ardent supporters and defenders after they are created.
This new Olympic National Park in the State of Washington has the
^ characteristics of both of the two general types of national parks. It has
X the mountains and glaciers of the first type, and it has commercially
;0 valuable forests which place it in the second type. Because of its valuable
J^ forests, this park was established over the vigorous opposition of the
lumber interests, which would have been quite willing to see a small
park restricted to the treeless snowfields of the high mountains.
As I have traveled, mile after mile, around the Olympic peninsula,
and seen mile after mile of gigantic stumps, the blackened logs of slash
firings, and the scattered dead shags that tower skywards, gaunt specters
ort of once noble trees, I have marveled that any man or woman in the
Os State of Washington could oppose the proposal of Congress to place in
trust for all the people for all time this outstanding area as a national
park, thus preserving a fragment of this wonderful primeval forest from
otherwise certain destruction. Yet opposition was natural.
Wherever a commercial interest conflicts, or even merely seems to
l^-j conflict, with a non-commercial public purpose, you will find men fight-
^ ing for commercialization regardless of every other consideration.
Throughout the United States, the record of private timber exploitation
has been one of ruthless destruction, not by bad citizens, but by men
caught in a system they could not control; by men so engrossed in the
struggle for survival and supremacy that they have not stopped to count
the cost of wasting a national heritage.
^ All thoughtful men recognize that, when natural resources are
fT) wasted, there must be a reordering of economic life or disaster will
ensue. In fact, many sections of our land have not escaped disaster
more or less complete. An almost demoniac onslaught upon our forests,
beginning at the Atlantic seaboard and spreading over westward until
this greatest stand of all along the Pacific Coast has been reached, has
been followed by destructive forest fires, the inevitable result of which
14 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
has been to burn out the soil while consuming the trees, to dry the
source streams of our rivers and to make uninhabitable for our wildlife
a once teeming land. Following the woodman with his indiscriminate
ax, his trail lighted by raging forest fires, there came in then- turn de-
structive floods that have cost in the aggregate thousands of human
lives, as well as an incalculable property loss; water erosion of rich and
irreplaceable top soil and its sinister twin, wind erosion. . . .
By the cutting of the trees a forest was lost; by the cutting of a forest
a land was lost all for the lack of foresight and self-restraint on the
part of our rugged individualists; all for a failure on the part of our
Government to insist upon sound conservation policies before conserva-
tion assumed the characteristics of a rummage sale.
The prevention of further demolition of our timber resources, with
its resulting disorganization of our economic and social life, depends
upon the new system of forest management which was forced upon the
Federal Government some years ago. This government undertaking is
in charge of the Department of Agriculture and with it I am in hearty
accord. National park policies touch this question of forest management
at various points, but chiefly in this particular. It is the function of the
national parks to preserve specimens of the primeval forest, so that
coming generations may see portions of this land as it was when the
Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, when Daniel Boone pushed west-
ward across the Appalachians, and when Lewis and Clark made their
way through the towering conifers of the Pacific Coast.
We have created national parks, or added to them, to protect the
giant sequoias and the sugar pines of California, and the hardwoods of
the East. Now, in the State of Washington, we are protecting a fragment
of the Pacific Coast rain forest with its magnificent Douglas fir, Sitka
spruce, western hemlock, and giant cedar.
On the Olympic peninsula cedar trees are standing that are forty-five
feet in circumference, trees from which Indian women stripped inner
bark for clothing a hundred years before Columbus discovered America.
In this new park there will be Douglas fir forty feet in circumference and
a thousand years old.
The reservation of this area is not exclusive of or inconsistent with
the right of the lumber industry to a proper and legitimate exploitation
of the lumber resources of this area. The manufacture of lumber is neces-
sary to our prosperity and well being as a nation. There is room on this
peninsula for forests for both the people and the sawmill. Assuming
that the self-interest of the lumbermen is an intelligent one, we have a
right to look forward to a willingness on their part to cooperate with the
Government to the end that this wonderful section of our country may
be put to the wisest and best use for all concerned.
Under any system of timber exploitation, whether that of profligate
destruction by unregulated private operation or that of the sustained
NATIONAL PARKS 15
yield method of scientific forestry, all of these great trees were doomed
before the establishment of this national park. It is the function of the
national park to save a part of the primeval forest for us and our children
and our children's children that we may gaze upon it in awe, and wonder
at the majesty of Nature's handiwork.
One would think that it might be taken for granted that every
Government agency having to do with the conservation of our natural
resources, particularly as it relates to our forests, would gladly cooperate
in any effort to preserve sections of our primeval forests for future
generations. It is not to be denied that this can be done only through
the setting up of national monuments and national parks. And yet, as
you in the State of Washington know, this outstanding Olympic Na-
tional Park was opposed ... by local men in the Government service
whose lives are supposed to be dedicated to the principle of the highest
possible use of our forests. . . .
Nor has the National Park Service been immune to overt attack and
sinister propaganda from similar groups when other outstanding areas
little, if any, inferior to that, the acquisition of which we are here tonight
to celebrate, have been proposed for national park purposes. The De-
partment of the Interior for years has gladly cooperated with the Forest
Service. Without demur we have handed over millions of acres of the
public domain desired by that Service. Only in rare instances, and then
for insignificant tracts as to size when compared with the forest lands as
a whole, have we, on behalf of the public, asked for the rededication of
a negligible number of outstanding areas for creation into national parks.
Both services are arms of the Federal Government that, in theory at
least, are devoted to the same ideals respecting our natural resources.
The commercialism or selfishness that stands against such an under-
taking by the people, through their government, is doomed to defeat.
It met defeat in the Congress of the United States when this Olympic
National Park was established, and the President was given power to
determine its final boundaries. This commercialism and selfishness met
a greater defeat, however, in the State of Washington itself, where a
public opinion that would not be denied rose up behind Congressman
Wallgren and your Representatives in both branches of Congress who
favored this enterprise, and demanded the creation of a real park. I
want to say that the fine thing about Congressman Wallgren's attitude
is that he stood for this park before, not after, public sentiment rallied
to it so overwhelmingly. Congressman Wallgren was statesman enough
to look ahead and courageous enough to lead when leadership was
needed. Fortunately there were here in the State of Washington, as is
videnced by this fine occasion, forward-looking and enterprising citizens
who wanted to be led and whom it was an inspiration to lead.
The greatest function of national parks is to preserve what civiliza-
tion, lacking them, would destroy. The increasing destructiveness of
16 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
civilization must be counter-balanced by a steady growth in our Na-
tional Park System. A part of this function of conservation through the
park system, and this is increasingly important, is the preservation of
wildlife. As most people know, hunting is forbidden in all National
parks. Fishing is permitted and encouraged.
There are many sound reasons for the policy of our Government in
closing all national park lands to hunting. First, the forces of civilized
society are set so heavily against the survival of the larger mammals
that they can be preserved only in large sanctuaries. For these the
large national parks are ideal. In the second place, living wild animals
form one of the chief attractions of our national parks. People from all
over the United States go to Yellowstone to see bears and bison, as they
will come to the Olympic National Park to see the Roosevelt elk. Wild
animals and good fishing are powerful magnets to draw the public. In
the third place, hunting in national parks would be dangerous to all park
visitors. Yet even the hunter benefits from this policy of wildlife pro-
tection, for when a national park is maintained as a wildlife sanctuary,
surplus game spreads into nearby regions, thus providing a constant
supply for the sportsman. For the sound reasons enumerated, national
parks are permanently closed to hunting.
Fishing is in a different category. Fishing brings enjoyment to
millions, endangers nobody with stray bullets, and can be maintained
indefinitely. The United States Government encourages fishing in the
national parks. Whenever a State passes a law ceding complete jurisdic-
tion over park lands to the United States, so that fishing licenses are
not required, the Federal Government stands ready to assume the full
cost of keeping the lakes and streams of such parks stocked with fish.
One of the effects of this policy, of course, is to make the parks far more
attractive to visitors from outside the State. This is one of the legitimate
commercial advantages which a State may derive from the national
park system. . . .
Let me point out that there is a broad community of interests between
a national park and the region surrounding it. When as many as 600,000
people visit one national park in a year, how much money do you suppose
they leave in the surrounding country? And this money spent by tourists
is a steady source of income. It may even be an increasing source of
income.
In the case of the Olympic National Park, practically the entire
financial return will be to those who live in the surrounding communities.
Since this is to be a wilderness park, the Department of the Interior
will neither build nor approve the building of hotels on public lands.
It is our intention to build overnight trail shelters for hikers and
horseback parties, but those who want all the comforts of home, includ-
ing facilities for reading while taking a bath, will have to look for them
in the communities that encircle this park, at the base of the mountains.
GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM
National Parks and National Forests-
Different Forms of Land Use
HONORABLE M. L. WILSON, Under Secretary of Agriculture
THE term "land use" and the set of ideas which it connotes are largely
the creation of the land economists and the planners. These ideas
grow out of the assumption that land is not a single economic entity
but that there are many kinds of land and many different ways in which
the earth's surface may be used.
Society is trying to establish the proper relationship between human
resources and human needs and the natural resources in the land. Both
the social and natural sciences have developed sufficiently to provide a
solid basis for conscious direction in land-use planning. Theoretically,
such planning presupposes a sort of two-column inventory, with land
in one column described as to character, class, grade, and possible uses,
and people in the other column with their several biological, economic
and cultural needs. Now the planners and the technical experts move
these two columns back and forth like a slide rule in order to get the
highest standard of living for the people from the best use of the land.
This is a new procedure. It was not in the pattern of ideas that
characterized pioneer America. It is one of the factors in a transition
to a new pattern of ideas. In a democracy the procedure will go as fast
as education produces attitudes of mind on the part of the public which
will sanction the programs of action which grow out of land-use planning.
This mode of thinking gives one kind of systematic approach, in a way a
functional approach, to a lot of current problems.
Now I have some definite ideas about land use in relation to the
national parks and the national forests. Before I tell you what these
ideas are, I want to tell you where I got them.
Man is always perplexed as to where his ideas come from. Do they
come from the intellect or do they come from experience? On this mat-
ter my ideas come from the intellect with a small "i" and from experience
with a capital "E."
This is the situation. For twenty-five years my home was so located
that the sun rose and set in a national forest. The water which I drank
and which I used in my household came from a national forest. The water
which irrigated my lawn and garden came from a watershed in a national
forest. The rough lumber used in the building of my house and garage
came from the same forest; so did the cord wood for my fireplace. A
part of the meat that I ate came from grass of the same forest. No
small part of my psychic satisfaction came from Middle Creek, Cotton-
wood Creek, and Sourdough, from Mount Blackmore, Hyalite, Ross's
Peak and Bridger range.
17
18 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
But this is not all of my experience. It is approximately 60 miles
from my front door to the northwest corner of Yellowstone National
Park. I shall never forget my first trip to Yellowstone. It seems like
a long time ago but certain impressions are as distinct now as though the
trip had been made yesterday. I recall the Wiley Way the Stage
Coach, and the fat women who worried about the bear or feared that
the team would run away. Mammoth Hot Springs were up to expecta-
tions, the "Sputterer" sputtered at Norris Basin, the pools were beauti-
ful, and Old Faithful proved faithful. My first view of the canyon was
from Artists' Point. There are no words to describe the deep psychological
"something" that stirred the bottom of my soul. Only a very, very few
times in my life have I experienced that "something" which I had when
I first saw Yellowstone Canyon. I think I "got" religion then and there.
But I'll tell you more about that later.
Once the park management did something that made me terribly
sore. Early in 1915 it was announced that when the park opened on
June 15 automobiles, provided they had good brakes, would be admitted
and that the horse stages would be replaced by automobile stages. My
town participated in this "march of progress" by sending Bud Story,
and Chester Davis, then editor of the weekly newspaper, now a member
of the Federal Reserve Board, to demonstrate that the entire round
trip from Mammoth back to Mammoth could be made in one day.
Theirs was the first automobile to scale Mt. Washburn. When I read
about it in the Courier I was not elated by the account of this trip. I
was depressed. While in this state of mind I met Frank Slaughter on the
street. For 20 years Frank had been cook and general all-round man
for Howard Eaton and the Wiley Way. Now he was the town marshall.
Said Frank: "The Park has gone to Hell! This idea of rushing people
through in autos! No one can see the park in less than eight days. The
autos will scare all the animals back to the brush, including the bear,
and they will never come back. Just think of the accidents they will
have! And anyway, we want to keep Yellowstone Park wild, just as it
was in nature. The first think you know these autos will bring in so
many people that you can't see anything."
I felt just like Frank Slaughter.
But about that time or a little later the Park had a Superintendent
who did such a wonderful job of shifting from the old Park to the new
Park that I soon got over my soreness. That Superintendent was
Horace Albright.
I doubt if you would believe me if I were to give you my guess as
to the number of times my family and I have visited Yellowstone. I
checked over the other day and found that I have been in 17 National
Parks. So you see these definite ideas of mine grow out of experience
with a capital "E."
Now that I have told you where my ideas come from, what are the
NATIONAL PARKS 19
ideas? First of all, at least once in his life every normal person in the
United States should commune with nature in one of nature's great cathe-
drals. Thereafter he should repeat the visit as often as possible. He should
have the opportunity to "get" religion as I have. When you divide one
hundred thirty million people by the number of really grand parks,
you get a problem that the planners will have to solve. The areas in these
parks are dedicated to one and to only one use recreation in the sense
of being re-created, to culture, and to, well, I call it religious expression
of nature. Economic considerations are wholly incidental.
I do not think that the principal function of the national parks is
recreation in the usual sense. To me recreation means easing up, getting
filled up with mountain and forest air, having a good time. But when
I see Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, Yosemite and Mesa
Verde, I do not exactly have a good time. I have a great psychological
experience.
I think Stephen Mather, first Director of the Park Service, had this
in mind when he said: "The National Park System is made up of areas
of incomparable scenic grandeur. . . . Each area selected must repre-
sent the highest example of its particular type. . . . Areas whose
principal qualification is adaptability for recreational use are not, of
course, of National Park caliber. Proposed parks are measured by the
standards set by the major National Parks of the system. Therefore,
the requirements are exacting. As long as these standards shall prevail,
there is no danger of too many national parks being established, or of
the excellence of the present system being lowered."
Everyone should have such experiences, and, in addition, should
have as much relaxation as pocketbooks and time permit. I believe
that as cathedrals of nature the great parks are going to be taxed to
their capacity and that the function of providing places in which
people can play, that is, outdoor recreation, must be considered as one
of the multiple uses of the forests.
This principle of multiple use is basic in our philosophy of national
forest administration. It seeks to harmonize the practical needs of people
with the ideally best use of land. Thus, an important part of the lumber
industry of the West is dependent on national forest lands for at least a
part of its source of raw materials. On the 133 million acres of range
land within the forest boundaries, twenty-six thousand operators graze
12 million head of animals. This includes 12 per cent of all the cattle and
23 per cent of all the sheep in the country. If this livestock were to be
cut off from national forests, the whole economic life of the West would
collapse. Protection of the headwaters of navigable streams is another
phase of the multiple use principle. It was the original reason for
establishing the forests and as the years have passed has assumed
greater and greater importance. And the agricultural life of the West,
too, is intimately related to national forests. Many of the most pro-
20 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
ductive farm lands depend for their water, which alone makes them
usable, on reservoirs located within forests. In this part of the country
the income of an increasing number of farmers is being supplemented
by wages received for work done in the forests and from the small wood-
working plants which use timber from the forests.
But the use of these vitally important resources does not preclude
recreation as an important use. Last year a couple of million people
camped, picnicked, and visited on the San Bernardino National Forest.
This was in spite of the fact that reservoirs on this forest have for many
years supplied vital water needs for Southern California farms; in spite
of the fact that more than 1700 head of livestock graze on this forest;
and in spite of the fact that several mines have been developed here.
Moreover, the Forest Service has set aside many natural areas which
are closed to all forms of resource harvesting. In these primitive areas
the enjoyment of the primeval is a basic consideration governing their
administration. To me this seems compatible with the multiple use
principle.
Referring again to the metaphor of the slide rule, with land resources
on one side and the human needs for recreation and culture and for the
basic necessities which certain kinds of land can supply on the other,
I have already said that when I compute the future value of x for the
great cathedrals of nature I get an estimate way beyond the capacity
of the parks. When I seek the value of x for the kind of recreation that
the National Forests can supply as one of their multiple uses I get a
future value which will require continued development of these resources
in the forests. The parks and the forests are not competitive. Each form
of land use, the special use and the multiple use, supplements and com-
plements the other.
Now, let me return to the side of human needs. I said the natural
resources should be used for recreation that people may have a good time,
but that in addition they should be used to create. To create what? In
answer I shall state two propositions that I hold of great import.
First. Science and man have not as yet come to terms in contemporary
civilization. Science keeps crowding in upon us, shattering our old
ideas, upsetting our traditions, increasing our doubts and making us
wonder if there is unity and value in the world about us. Science has
three sides. There is the practical side, its application to man's needs
through technology and applied science. There is the side of curiosity,
exploring the unknown. Then there is its philosophical, spiritual, or, if
you please, its religious side. If we are to live in an age of science we
do not have a choice from among these three sides. Since that is deter-
mined we have the task of producing a philosophy of life which is
adjusted to nature as revealed in science and of making this philosophy
support a religious attitude which gives dignity to nature and hope to
mankind.
NATIONAL PARKS 21
Second. I think 98 per cent of humanity must get most of this
philosophy and religion through the scientific interpretation of nature
and through contact with some of the striking beauty and wonder spots
in nature. In an address, "Science and Human Values" Dr. John C.
Merriam, President of the Carnegie Institution, said:
Science does not presume to interpret personal devotions or the belief in
any philosophy or religion. It does say that each of us lives in a universe that
is marked by unity and continuity, in space, time and apparently also in mean-
ing. What the scientist finds contributes to understanding the world of things
and people. It may change our point of view in many ways, even giving us more
faith in the order of the world in which we live, or perhaps more hope for the
future of humanity, or more charity for a suffering next-door neighbor.
As I see the situation, the science, philosophy, art and religion of the future
should be built in such a manner that each may contribute its part to a structure
that will give a safer and more pleasant abode than any that man has thus far
designed.
One of the greatest advances of all times was that expressed ages ago in the
view that there is in the universe one power in many forms, or in terms of religion
one God instead of many warring deities. It may be in order for mankind to
make this discovery anew or from time to time, when unity in views of the world
and in belief seem threatened by erection of too many temples to deities of
varying and perhaps inconsistent missions, in a world that so far as nature is
concerned has operated as one system since times began.
In large measure my hope for the future is based upon our taking
seriously what Dr. Merriam has said. It is a cooperative task. The
science teachers in the public schools are doing a far better job teaching
science than was done a decade or so ago. The Science News Service is
gradually feeding to the press the story of science. The radio is doing
something in a very small and feeble way. These will help but, after all,
people have to get this philosophy and religious attitude out of the book
of nature itself. I congratulate the Park Service for what it has done to
help people in reading the book of nature. Even so it has a long way to
go. The Forest Service has not really started yet. I think it should
start and I hope it will find ways to push this program.
Most people are not well enough versed in science to read the book
of Nature to enjoy Nature through understanding without a teacher.
Ways must be found to have teachers at hand everywhere. Techniques
must be found to tell the geological story and the biological story wher-
ever there is an interesting page in the book.
There should be something, let us call them "nature observation
stations," all through the forest recreation areas. I have in mind a kind
of permanent exhibit, dignified, simple and clear, and harmonizing with
the landscape. These should tell the nature story, should point out and
explain the geological phenomena, the plant society, etc.
But I would go beyond the parks and forests. Why should not
Congress give Dr. Mendenhall the funds with which to lay out a great
national system of geological education on all the U. S. numbered high-
22 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
ways? Dr. Mendenhall is the son of a West Virginia farmer. He knows
how to talk geology to us farmers. Have him call in the state and Federal
scientific agencies to help in these "roadside science observation posts."
Let the Forest Service tell about the trees here and there and the Bio-
logical Survey about the wildlife that is and was, and the anthropologists
about the Indian cultures that are and were. This philosophy and re-
ligion of science and nature is so important that it should be built into
our national pattern of ideas as fast as possible.
This is one form of land use. In developing it let the Park Service
lead the way. And let the Forest Service add it as another of the many
uses in its basic principle. If advanced in this way both parks and forests
will return to the Nation significant contributions out of all proportion
to the money involved. And the people of the land will gain a new and
satisfying understanding of the world in which they live.
Qualifications for National Parks
O. A. TOMLINSON, Superintendent, Mount Rainier National Park,
Longmire, Washington
THE National Park Service administers a variety of land areas, all
of which, regardless of then* type, size, or location, are fundamentally
similar in three ways :
(1) Their features and the public benefits derived therefrom are of national
significance.
(2) They are administered with the preservation of their intrinsic values
uppermost in mind.
(3) Their development is governed by public interest in the features included,
but in a manner that leaves such features unimpaired for future use.
The principles of national park administrative policy are clearly
different from those practices of administration which may apply to
other types of Federal lands that are maintained for commercial utiliza-
tion of their varied resources. These clearly defined principles serve as
a guide in the future selection of areas which may be added to the
national park system.
At the present time, the National Park Service administers nine
types of land areas, aggregating a total of 26,697^ square miles. The
national parks, of which we now have 26, and the national monuments,
numbering 74, are the two principal units in this system. However,
there are 42 other areas such as national historical parks, national mili-
tary parks, national battlefield sites, national cemeteries, national
capital parks, and miscellaneous national memorials which, though re-
classification may be required in some instances, are, on the whole,
logical components of the national park system as measured by the
principles of administrative practices mentioned.
NATIONAL PARKS 23
These areas are, broadly speaking, basically recreational, but in these
instances one must not confuse the "playground concept" of recreation
with the more permanent and fundamental benefits that may be derived
from their educational and inspirational values. These are the features
which the National Park Service seeks to develop and foster. The rec-
reational objective is the dominant one, although purely recreational
elements are inseparable and cannot be overlooked.
Each of the present areas now included in the system is unique or
distinct in some particular way. Each offers a particular segment of an
interesting story relative to the geology, biology, archeology, or history
of our nation which, when complete, will present coherent, dramatic,
understandable stories of the great truths of natural science or of the
progress of civilization in our country in their entirety. As the various
areas in the national park system are today, there are many "blanks"
in these geological, biological, archeological or historical narratives.
Many vital chapters of the completed and coherent sequences which are
desired, are still missing from the national park system. Fortunately, a
great number of these missing units are exemplified by the features of
land areas which exist in our country, and after several years of careful
investigation, the National Park Service has tentatively selected the
most representative which it is hoped will be included in the national
park system of the future. It follows a broad, well-rounded interpreta-
tive system of nationally significant areas by which such highly instruc-
tive and inspirational things as the story of the earth, the materials of
which it is composed, the forces which shape its surface, the forms of
life which formerly inhabited it, the inter-relationship and inter-depen-
dence of all things in nature may be told. Such a system should be one
of the most far-reaching and inspirational educational forces which the
nation may possess.
In passing, it must be stated that the dramatic characters of mag-
nificent scenery are not in themselves the primary attributes which are
being sought. The magnificence of the Grand Canyon, the grandeur of a
great glacial system and mountain, such as exists at Mount Rainier Na-
tional Park, a spectacular remnant of an ancient civilization as contained
in Mesa Verde National Park, the immensity of the giant sequoias, to
mention a few outstanding examples, are but parts of a complete story.
To be such, they may be very vital parts, but they are not complete in
themselves. These need to be supplemented by other areas, which
though not as dramatic, convey a necessary part of the completed
message.
In the Pacific Northwest the geologic and biologic concepts of a
coherent system of national parks and related areas require the inclu-
sion of the proposed Mount Olympus National Park and the Cascade
Crest region. The former includes the present Mount Olympus National
Monument and when enlarged will embrace not only a vital unit in the
24 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
geological story, such as the significance of the sedimentary rocks, earth
sculpture and glacier areas, but also vital units in the biological story in
the preservation of considerable areas of typical northwest rain forests,
including the famed Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlock, Western Red
Cedar, and Douglas Fir, which attain perfection in this region. In the
latter case, concerned with the Cascade Crest area, we have glacier-clad
volcanic cones of Mount Baker, Glacier Peak, Mount Adams, Mount St.
Helens, Mount Hood, and others, which, as links in a volcanic chain which
surrounds the Pacific Ocean, supplement the vital story of volcanism in
the Northwest. Here too we have vital parts of our story of glacier
erosion, for in the Pacific Northwest exist the greatest areas of glacier
ice in the United States, exclusive of Alaska, together with some of the
significant features typical of erosion by glaciers.
Certain swamp areas in the south are significant biological units in
the proposed system harboring, as the areas do, specific plant and animal
life peculiar to that environment. Likewise, extensive ocean beaches are
significant in the biological and geological concept, such as the Cape
Hatteras area and certain significant locations along the Pacific Coast.
Representative areas in the great plains region are of vital ecological
significance, and were forcefully brought to the fore in recent years
through publicity of the "dust bowl" problems.
These and many other units having singular important national sig-
nificance from an educational and inspirational angle should be included.
The question naturally arises that such a program of acquisition may
result in cheapening the national parks, and while we should not relax
our vigilance in preserving national park standards, this program, if
based upon a fundamental educational concept, need offer little if any
possibility of such a danger. In fact, a coherence of the completed plan
will raise rather than lower the high standards x>f the national parks
and result in a broader and more significant social and economic benefit
to our people.
In establishing the older scenic parks, it was hardly possible to
anticipate the changes that a few decades have brought in the mobility
of the people or with what ease and in what numbers they were to come
to their national parks. It was hardly possible to estimate the influence
that a fully developed civilization was to have upon the wildlife and
the natural conditions. Insufficient attention was given to boundaries,
due largely to the fact that in most instances the territory outside the
parks was almost exactly the same as was within. As a consequence there
has developed need for many changes in the sizes and shapes in a number
of the older parks. Our aim is to secure the best use of the lands con-
sidering the nation as a whole and looking to the future as best we may.
NATIONAL PARKS 25
A National Park Platform
MRS. ROBERTA CAMPBELL LAWSON, President, General Federation
of Women's Clubs
THE General Federation of Women's Clubs has long supported a pro-
gressive program in its Conservation Division which would impress
upon its members the dependence of our country upon its natural re-
sources a program that would safeguard and still encourage the intel-
ligent use of our natural resources with the least waste and abuse, and
by so doing assure us a prosperous, economically safe Nation.
We have appreciated the fact that the United States Government
has established and maintained for over forty years a system of national
parks with high scenic values, possessing as qualifications extraordinary
individuality and outstanding natural features examples of the virgin
soil and vegetation in this country as our forefathers found it.
We also appreciate that these areas in their conservation and scenic
standards have furnished enjoyment, educational advantages and in-
spiration to the Nation as a whole.
The General Federation of Women's Clubs has for the past twenty-
five years staunchly upheld the fine standards set by the National Park
System and has assisted during that period in defending these estab-
lished standards from attacks which have sought to look for local gain
and to lower national park values.
Our program opposes commercialism which would lower these high
standards, and supports that which would further the educational and
inspirational mission of the system in order that national park integrity
may be maintained and its ideals preserved for all time.
MRS. WILLIAM A. LOCKWOOD, Chairman, National Parks Committee,
Garden Club of America, New York City
WE ARE idealists, but we rather pride ourselves upon having
common sense. We would like to be called common-sense idealists.
We wish our parks to benefit "all the people," but we set no time
limit which would include only this generation. We wish the parks for
"all the people for all time."
We look forward to the day when the fifteen million and more visitors
will not want to dash through the parks at sixty miles an hour or care
principally for the tag which means they have "done" the park but that
they would have a keen appreciation of what the parks have to offer.
It is in order to preserve the parks for such a time that we are idealists.
Many may wonder why The Garden Club of America, an organiza-
tion of amateur gardeners, celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday this
year, is so deeply interested in our national parks.
One of its objects is the preservation of native plants and birds.
This had led to a conservation department which has been active since
the beginning.
26 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
In the early days of the organization the suggestion was made that
the preservation of the Redwoods of California be one of our objectives.
At the annual meeting of the Club in Seattle in 1930 it was decided to
raise funds to purchase and present a grove to the State of California
for preservation in its primitive state for the use and enjoyment of
future generations. Eighty-five thousand dollars was subscribed.
Seventy-five thousand dollars was added by the State and 2,500 acres
were purchased in the Bull Creek area. Later 600 acres were added.
The question then arose as to the method which would preserve the
natural beauty and yet make the area available to the public.
Immediately The Garden Club of America became national park
administration conscious.
The larger part of our tract lay across the Eel River. This was a raging
torrent during the rainy season. A bridge was necessary. Funds were
contributed for a permanent structure. A plan of a steel bridge was sub-
mitted which would be of sufficient height to escape floods.
It was suddenly realized that such a bridge would be entirely at
variance with the object of keeping the grove primitive and would be
decidedly out of keeping with the surroundings. Therefore this plan was
discarded. A simple suspension foot-bridge, which is removed during
high water, was substituted, and a row boat used for transportation
during the rainy season. A roadway was planned which would bring
visitors not caring to use the bridge by motor to the back of the grove
where trails would lead through the forest and to a natural amphitheatre.
Here the dedication exercises were held. These trails preserve the ground-
cover and by keeping motors at a distance insure silence, so necessary
to the full enjoyment of such areas.
Our problems made our members mindful of the complications in-
volved in park administration and also made us the more determined
to use our influence to set aside more and more of our superlative areas
for preservation from thoughtless commercialism which would use up in
one generation that which should be a heritage of future ages. We may
not reproduce what we now have; once lost, such conditions which it
has taken centuries to evolve are lost forever. Both science and future
generations would be the losers.
We know the high standards set by those who fought for and dedi-
cated our parks and appreciate what the National Park Service has
done and is doing to maintain these standards.
We also know of the great pressure of commercial interests to make
use of areas so set aside. We realize the need of funds to maintain the
parks. However, we do not feel sufficiently informed, and hesitate to
recommend a program, but because of our great interest and deep con-
cern for the future of our parks we make the f ollowing suggestions :
1. That our great primeval parks be segregated; that regulations be
made for their protection suitable to their particular needs; that other
NATIONAL PARKS 27
parks and monuments, historical and otherwise, be governed by regula-
tions suitable to their needs.
We do not believe the same regulations should apply to each type of
park, nor that the same training is required for the policy making or
administration of such divergent needs.
We ask that those in whose care our primeval parks are entrusted
have not only botanical and other scientific knowledge but also have a
keen appreciation of the importance of wilderness in its primeval state
as a study ground for the story of the cycles of fauna and flora as well
as for the inspirational beauty therein contained.
2. We have so recently been called upon to subdue the wild that
many have become unmindful of the value of our great primeval terri-
tory, and we urge that this importance be brought to our people through
those who make and administer our laws. "Land Use" may have value
in other ways than producing lumber, irrigation or water power.
3. As a general rule we are opposed to high-speed roads piercing the
hearts of areas set aside for preservation. We urge that roads of access
be placed in the less dramatic areas and that trails lead the visitors to
the great scenic spots. The noise and excitement of motors is not con-
ducive to contemplation.
4. We urge more nature study in our schools in order that our children
may learn to understand, and therefore to appreciate, the wonders and
delights to be found in our parks. Destruction comes from ignorance.
This is exemplified by an incident which happened a few years ago when
I was at Magdalena Bay in Spitzbergen with a large group of visitors.
We landed by means of an improvised landing, as few ships went there,
in order to view the glacier more closely. There were no trails. The
crowd scattered helter-skelter over the area so as to reach the edge of
the ice. Perhaps I was a little more garden-minded than glacier-minded.
My eyes dropped to the ground-cover.
Immediately I began to put into my pockets a variety of tiny bloom-
ing plants. When I returned to the ship I put them in little dishes to
watch their growth. It took eleven plants to fill a soup dish. Having a
magnifying glass and a botany with me, I began to study those little
plants. Soon many of the passengers were tremendously interested,
though they had never seen any plants at the glacier's edge. It was
simply a matter of not being trained to see. We should like to have a
larger number of nature teachers and more nature camps where teachers
and field naturalists may be taught so that they may in turn teach and
inspire the young. This The Garden Club of America is attempting to
do but it may in no way cover the need.
5. We further suggest that the National Park Service be so increased
and rewarded financially that both men and women may find it worth
while to seek a career in this Service, a civil service, always non-political.
6. We would stress the re-creational or inspirational value of our
28 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
primeval parks rather than the recreational or playground meaning of
the word, which signifies amusement other than that proffered by the
parks themselves.
We believe that golf courses, movies not educational, dancing,
and the like should be confined to concessions on the outskirts of the
great parks, thus leaving the superlative areas free from distraction in
order that nature may silently speak for itself.
We are an organization of some seven thousand women, scattered
over the entire United States. We have no ax to grind. Many of us will
never see our wonderful parks, but we offer our aid to those with similar
beliefs and purposes.
A. D. TAYLOR, President, American Society of Landscape Architects, Cleveland, Ohio
ENDSCAPE architecture is one of the major groups keenly inter-
ested in the preservation and proper development of national parks.
A platform is a policy. Our policy is an established and a definite
one. This policy is a declaration of principles in which the American
Society of Landscape Architects, speaking through me, officially ex-
presses its belief.
The American Society of Landscape Architects believes that addi-
tional land for national parks should be acquired until the available
superlative scenery of national park quality is under the control of the
National Park Service.
This Society also believes that there should be rectification of boun-
daries and adjustment of areas between the jurisdiction of the National
Park Service and other Governmental agencies, in order that the type
of administration of the land concerned, may be most appropriate to
its best public use.
We suggest that a National Committee be appointed by the Presi-
dent, empowered to make a comprehensive study of all the national
park and national forest areas, and as a result of such study to recom-
mend upon those areas of superlative scenery of national park calibre
which should be in national parks, and upon those areas now within the
national park boundaries which may be appropriate to some other use
for the best interest of the public.
We further believe that national park areas should be limited to
lands of extraordinary significance, with qualities of superlative scenery,
the preservation of which should be a matter of national concern.
In accordance with a comprehensive design for the development and
preservation of national parks, works of construction should be limited
only to those that are necessary to make the parks useful and accessible
without serious damage to their scenic character.
The forms of recreation permitted and the works of construction
undertaken, should be such as are not inconsistent to the extent practical
NATIONAL PARKS 29
with the preservation of natural beauty, and with those recreational
purposes incidental to the enjoyment of that beauty for which the
national parks were created.
Since the most unusual and beautiful natural scenery will attract
visitors from all parts of the country, as well as from foreign lands, the
responsibility for preserving outstanding examples of such scenery
should rest with the Federal authorities, acting through the National
Park Service. Conversely, the preservation of lands by the Federal
Government as a national park can generally be justified only when their
significance is nation-wide. Every proposal for the addition of another
national park should be scrutinized lest it lead to the admission of an
area of little national importance and form a precedent for the future
admission of parks of inferior and inappropriate quality.
The National Park Service and its supporters are frequently com-
pelled to resist attempts to promote within the national parks unneces-
sary works of construction or of destruction, such as roads, buildings
and the clearing of forests. It should be remembered that the justifying
purpose of a national park is to protect, preserve and make permanently
available for observation, enjoyment and study by the people of this
and future generations, supreme examples of certain natural conditions,
examples so rare, so precious, each in its own way for the inspirational
quality of its scenery and otherwise, as to make it a matter of truly
national concern thus to protect them.
Attempts are being made from time to time to obtain lands or privi-
leges in the national parks by power, irrigation or other interests, which
are not merely in themselves detrimental to the parks, but which form
dangerous precedents for other encroachments.
Introduction of incongruous recreational functions, and with them,
a class of visitors lacking sympathy with the primary purpose of the
national parks would greatly diminish the enjoyment of the parks, and
increase the difficulties of management without compensating advantage.
There was a time prior to the depression when the American public
had a full understanding of the activities of the National Park Service
and the ideals for which these activities stood.
During the emergency period it was necessary for the National Park
Service, as a Federal agency, to step into the breach and to take over
many administrative responsibilities, some of which seem quite foreign
to national park ideals as theretofore construed by the public. There
was no other Government agency qualified to meet these emergency
requirements. It is hoped that the National Park Service will prepare a
policy to be made available to the public setting forth the range of the
activities to be included in its program and again to restate in what-
ever modified form is necessary the ideals and objectives of the Na-
tional Park Service.
SO AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
OVID BUTLER, Executive Secretary of The American Forestry Association
THE American Forestry Association in 1930 endorsed in principle the
statement of National Park Standards promulgated by the Camp
Fire Club of America. That was and still is a good statement. We have
never withdrawn our endorsement of it.
The American Forestry Association, moreover, does have a national
park concept a concept that visions and holds in focus quite clearly,
I think, what national parks are and what they should continue to be.
That ideal or concept is our keel of guidance. It is written in various
resolutions, statements and actions of our Board, the latest of which
was an uncompromising stand, so we are charged, in defense of Rocky
Mountain National Park.
In a deeper and more human way, our concept is unwritten in the
minds of men who through the years have served the Association as
Directors and with whom I have had the honor and privilege to be
associated. My task, therefore, is to interpret that concept to you as
best I can in a few paragraphs.
We conceive the national parks in the spirit of their birth a spirit
that has carried down to us from a mountain meadow in Yellowstone
where Langford, Judge Hedges and his party camped the night of
September 19, 1870. Those men, it should be remembered, were living
their lives in a great, sparsely settled country. The common run of soil,
mountains and trees as God had made them were nothing new to them.
But when after days of hardships and dangers in a country that was all
wilderness they came upon boiling springs, spouting geysers, giant falls
and canyons, they knew without anyone telling them that they had
come into the presence of something profoundly different, for within
their hairy chests and tired bodies they felt a strange uplift.
The things of wonder that lay before them were theirs for the pre-
empting but no, they sensed they were dealing with something priceless
a masterpiece of creation that ought to be preserved for all time for
all people. Fair to conscience and fair to country, they forthwith re-
nounced thought of personal gain and around the camp-fire that last
night resolved to do that very thing.
Then and there was born an idea which Congress a few years later
gave the name National Park and made it the symbol and instrument
for eternal preservation of those rare examples of unmodified nature
within our country that transcend mere scenery and reveal to mankind
new horizons of creation.
Call it old-fashioned, if you will outmoded by these changing times
that nevertheless is the national park concept as I have come to know
and feel it which the Association holds today. Our principles include:
(1) Keep national parks always a system of natural masterpieces.
Therein lies their national distinction, their national worth and their
national reason for being. And therein lies their best hope of preservation.
NATIONAL PARKS 31
(2) Admit to the system no new park or addition that will cheapen
or depreciate its meaning and its inherent worth. Diversion from this
policy is diversion from purpose and exposure of all national parks to
easier invasion by commercial and local interests.
(3) With uncompromising fidelity to their purpose and their meaning,
protect all national parks against all forms of use, economic or otherwise,
that will tend to modify and destroy the things they are dedicated to
protect and to preserve. It is more important to America that a national
park, rightly conceived and maintained, endure a century even though
sparsely visited than that it be spoiled by roads and crowds in a decade
of confused living.
(4) In the use of the parks preserve as unmodified and unharmed as
humanly possible the craftsmanship of the Creator and its environment
of wilderness, birds and animals. To this end place emphasis on organ-
ized knowledge of the meaning of the things in the parks rather than on
organized crowds and organized amusements.
(5) In respect to commercial or economic invasion of national parks
adhere to a non-compromising position. This position, however, can be
held only as long as national parks stand for those things that in the
conscience of the people are priceless to the nation as a whole.
HORACE M. ALBRIGHT, President American Planning and Civic Association
THE American Planning and Civic Association for more than thirty
years has cherished high standards for National Parks. Sixteen
years ago, its predecessor, the American Civic Association, issued a
PARK PRIMER in which this definition was given :
A National Park is an area, usually of some magnitude, distinguished by
scenic, scientific, historic, or archeological attractions and natural wonders and
beauties which are distinctly national in importance and interest, selected as
eminent examples of scenic, scientific, or historic America, and preserved with
characteristic natural scenery, wildlife and historic or archeological heritage, in
an unimpaired state, as a part of a National Park System for the use and enjoy-
ment of this and future generations.
The Association has adhered to that definition as a gauge to measure
new areas proposed for National Parks. You will note that no mention
is made of primeval areas. The Association recognized that there were
few, if any, primeval areas left in the United States. When I hear friends
of the National Parks adding to this definition and to the one which
was published by the Camp Fire Club somewhat later a conception
which is so rigid that it would disqualify all of the remaining superlative
scenery in the United States, I cannot help feeling that a mythical
Utopia is being set up that can never be realized. In practice the strict
application of the primeval requirement would mean that the very finest
scenic areas in the country could not become National Parks but must
be administered, if at all, for some other purpose. Of course most of
32 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
these areas not already in the National Park System lie in the National
Forests which were established for quite other purposes and which are
not administered primarily to preserve natural conditions.
As a matter of fact, the recognized National Parks, which are held
as measures of what new national parks should be, were not secured while
still in their primeval state. Even in Yellowstone, Jim Bridger killed
mink, marten and beaver together with other fur-bearing animals and
so did other trappers of the Hudson Bay and American Fur Co. The
original animal conditions in Yellowstone were already modified before
the area became a park. Yosemite was grazed by sheep for years prior
to its reservation as a national park. John Muir himself herded sheep
in the Tuolomne Meadows and timber was cut in the valley. Cattle
grazed on the lower levels in the park until the last six or seven years,
when fences have been put up and some of the private holdings along
the government lines extinguished. Yosemite was certainly modified to a
decided extent before it was made a National Park.
In Glacier National Park there was an irrigation project and there
were farms, most of which still exist. In Mount Rainier there were
mining claims. We have attempted to have them cancelled but they
are still held valid. Grand Canyon was mined and grazed for years.
There is no unmodified territory. There never has been any un-
modified territory since the white man began to fight the Indian. And
in the Sierra and Sequoia country there long existed the practice of
burning over the land. If the idea of requiring unmodified territory as
a requisite for new National Parks is applied rigidly, there will be no
more National Parks. In any case, in order to create a new National
Park, we must overcome the objections to the inclusion of forest areas,
grazing areas, mining claims, hunting territory and other commercial
and popular uses. It is a very simple matter to round up petitions of
sheepmen, cattlemen, lumbermen, power men, hunters and others who
want to use the territory which may be proposed for the National Park
System. So the net result of applying the unmodified-territory theory
is that those who advocate it are in fact aligning themselves with the
other national-park objectors to prevent any more areas from being
incorporated into the system.
I hope that some day the United States Forest Service, with its
friends such as the American Forestry Association, and the National
Park Service and its friends, such as the American Planning and Civic
Association, will sit down together and see if some agreement cannot be
reached on the areas which rightfully belong in the National Park System.
But I beg of you, do not adopt obstruction policies and do not define
National Parks to the point where there never can be any new parks or
additions to existing parks. Once the System is completed, we must
see that the non-conforming uses are abated and we must foster the
reversion to a natural state of injured areas in the parks.
FORECASTING THE FUTURE
The Future of National Parks in Region One
CARL P. RUSSELL, Director, Region I, National Park Service, Richmond, Va.
TO UNDERTAKE the "forecasting of the National Park System
future" lays one open to all of the dangers which Dr. J. Horace
McFarland, last year, so effectively observed, beset the prognosticates
But to get an estimate of what actually lies before us is to use our in-
telligence. In quite the same manner that the National Park Service
bases its annual improvement work in existing parks on master plans,
so, I think, all of us who are concerned with the ultimate development
of the National Park System may well concentrate on the projection
of a "master plan" for a national system of reservations in which the
defined objectives of the National Park Service may find expression.
I do not mean that this broader master plan should be made up of
portfolios of drawings on which details of proposed physical develop-
ments are prescribed. I have in mind a survey of the possibilities of
adding new areas to the existing park system in such manner as to
enable the Service to present the well-rounded story of America. Based
on this survey a program of land acquisition should be planned; acquisi-
tion which will actually enable us to portray, by striking examples, the
story of earth forces and the progress of civilization in this country.
Director Cammerer in his addresses has several times said: "The
master plan (for existing parks) when properly handled, is the best
single picture of ultimate objectives yet devised in simple form to serve
as a constant guide for all concerned." I believe that a master plan for
the Service as a whole will likewise become a practical guide which all
of us and our successors can use to advantage. The Park, Parkway and
Recreational-Area Study so successfully pursued by the Service offers
evidence of the practical results obtainable in long-range planning; it is
actually a means of securing a perpetual inventory of recreational pos-
sibilities in the Nation. The Historic and Archeological Site Survey is
another example of what is being done in the general field of national
park planning.
In connection with the last named survey, the Branch of Historic
Sites and Buildings and the Secretary's Advisory Board have had some
600 sites under consideration, two-thirds of them being in Region One.
Forty-nine of these have been acquired by the Service, 114 have been
studied and classified as desirable additions to the parks system and the
remaining 450 have yet to be studied.
I think I am correct in stating that the present "catch" of proposed
historic sites results from a rather general casting of nets and a wholesale
hauling in without much regard for interrelationships. A recently pro-
jected plan for the survey of historic sites will change the catch-as-catch-
can procedure to a more orderly system of selecting historic areas for
33
34 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
inclusion in the national park system. Our historians have shaped a
rather full chronological outline of United States history. With that
outline as a basis, the running account of history is organized into
chapters. The events that find places in a chapter can, of course, be
focused upon certain localities. By taking these localities into consider-
ation along with the study of the significance of the events, it becomes
possible to arrive at conclusions regarding the relative importance of
sites involved. The acquisition of historical sites thus becomes selective
rather than collective.
A good demonstration of the effectiveness of this process of selection
was given a few days ago when Dr. Ronalds, of the Branch of Historic
Sites and Buildings, presented to the Secretary's Advisory Board an
account of that "chapter" of our history which we call the French and
Indian War. In his portrayal of the story, Dr. Ronalds focused attention
upon the significant sites. Three of these sites, the most important of
the ten, were not to be found in the miscellaneous collection of 600 or
more sites previously proposed.
Other outstanding chapters in American history which find repre-
sentation in Region One, and which are susceptible to the same search-
ing analysis which was given the French and Indian War, follow:
Exploration and Colonial Settlement, 1565-1763
Southern Plantation System and Culture, 1607-1776
Preliminaries of the Revolution, 1763-1776
The War for American Independence
The War of 1812 (so-called Second War for American Independence)
The organization, settlement, and growth of the Old Northwest, 1787-1860
The settlement and culture of the Old Southwest, 1789-1860
American Political and Economic Thought, 1782-1860
Domestic Affairs from 1789-1830
Domestic Affairs, 1830-1860
The War between the States
Rise of American Science and Industry, 1789-1938, or
The Economic Evolution, 1789-1938.
In shaping a program of historical site acquisition, we keep in mind
the fact that warfare has been but one phase of our history. Domestic
and industrial aspects of American culture, archeological and ethno-
logical evidences of our predecessors on this continent, and our friendly
relationships with adjacent neighbors and other countries constitute
phases of our developing characteristics which are quite as important
from a National Park Service standpoint as are spectacular military or
naval affairs.
To attain the ends desired it will, of course, be necessary to make
investigators available for the studies. But the expenditure of funds
for this purpose now will mean orderly progress and should effect notable
saving in the long run. Whether the studies be made on a regional basis
or from a central office is immaterial. However, should the Regional
NATIONAL PARKS 35
Offices assume responsibility for the work, additional staff members
must be employed. The present regional staff of historians is not adequate
to meet current demands of its services. In Region One we have 63
Federal areas, only 5 of which are not primarily historical in values.
The present staff of three regional historians finds it difficult to give full
review of existing work programs and maintain satisfactory coordination
of current field activities. Here, where historical values are paramount
and proposals to add new areas are so predominantly problems of the
historian, one man, either from the Branch in Washington or from the
regional staff, should be available to devote his undivided attention to
the appraisal of proposed new areas.
OPPORTUNITIES TO ILLUSTRATE GEOLOGICAL STORIES
If our ultimate park system is to be the integrated series of units
that we visualize, it must contain certain areas in which the geological
chapters find representation. Here again, if we are to make the best
approach to our problem, consideration must be given first to the story
of natural phenomena. If a geologist is commissioned to prepare a
museum exhibit that will interpret the geological story of Grand Canyon,
for example, he does not first of all prepare some illustrations and then
weave a story around these pictures. His first step is to delineate the
story and then make pictures that will illustrate exactly what should
be portrayed. In the same way the National Park Service should pro-
ceed to define the story of earth forces in the United States and then
select land areas which will illustrate the significant chapters. By such
procedure will we acquire a coherent system of national parks and
monuments that will exemplify the major themes of American geology.
THE WILDLIFE FEATURES OF PRIMITIVE AMERICA AS
REPRESENTED IN REGION ONE
The great wilderness areas of the United States quite rightly are
considered to exist in the West, yet, recently, Region One of the National
Park Service has made its contribution to the conservation of wildlife.
As studies of park needs progress it becomes more evident that even the
eastern section of the country contains important wildlife areas areas
the significance of which is not duplicated in the existing western parks
and monuments. The authorized Cape Hatteras National Seashore, for
example, was first justified on its historical and recreational values.
Now we realize that it has a wildlife value that equals or excels the first
recognized values. It is the wintering ground for countless thousands
of water fowl and its inclusion in the national park system will provide
the Service with a most logical site for a national center for the study
of bird migration. From the standpoint of spectacular wildlife features
I am of the opinion that Hatteras will rank with the best of our wildlife
36 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
areas, and any of you here who have witnessed 10,000 Snow Geese arise
in a body from their resting place on the Currituck dunes will agree
with me, I believe.
In the future Everglades National Park we have a distinct fauna and
flora, the preservation of which is quite as important as is the saving of
the Yellowstone wilderness. In the proposed Santa Rosa Island National
Monument, we find opportunity to feature a museum of the rich tropical
marine life of the Gulf of Mexico. Some southern swamp with its cypress
habitat should be preserved.
Acadia, Great Smoky, Kings Mountain, Fort Jefferson, Fort Pulaski's
environs, the Orton Plantation and the hammock jungles bordering
East Florida beaches each has a flora and fauna representative of
characteristic portions of our country each makes contribution to our
attempt to preserve samples of the primitive American scene. Just as
sound conclusions can be drawn as to the relative values of historical
sites after a comprehensive survey has been made, so should a broad
review of the general ecology of Region One precede the selection of
biological areas to be added to the present parks system.
I think I have made one point clear that we must organize our
efforts if we are to make sound, construct've growth that will stand under
the current criticism of the so-called "purists" and likewise meet the
test of trial through the coming years. To organize for such studies as
should be made costs money, yet the immediate cost will be trivial as
compared with the future drain that will be levied upon the Service if
we are inefficient at this tune. Probably a score or more of new areas
should be added to the present system of parks and monuments in
Region One during the next few years. I say "should be added" mean-
ing, of course, that the proposed growth is desirable if the Service is to
meet satisfactorily its obligations in preserving and presenting "by
striking examples the story of earth forces and the progress of civiliza-
tion in this country."
Costs of developing and maintaining the new areas for public use
introduce a problem that may require study by another group of special-
ists. I like the Director's view of this matter as he expressed it last
year, "A combination of appropriations and fees appears to be the most
satisfactory means of financing recreational areas. It is the financial
basis upon which the National Park System is being built and is, in
fact, an essential element of the park form of land use. The core of the
park idea is that the area shall be largely self -supporting but not at the
expense of any feature in it."
I have said nothing about future cooperation of Region One with
state parks because that phase of our program was not provided for by
those who planned this particular discussion. Likewise administrative
problems as they bear upon the relationships of the regional staff to
park superintendents and coordinating superintendents find no place
NATIONAL PARKS 37
here. It is too early perhaps to anticipate the details of future inter-
relationships of these units within the regional set-up, but by next year
I hope discussions of these matters may be provided for in special
sessions of the Superintendents' Conference.
CONCLUSION
Please permit me to summarize by repeating those points that I wish
to emphasize :
1. A broad survey of American historical, archeological, geological and
biological features should precede any program of land acquisition for the
National Park Service.
2. In Region One historical areas predominate. Of 63 existing parks and
monuments, 58 are primarily historical in values.
3. 332 new historical areas have been proposed for addition to Region One.
Thorough analysis of the history of the Region will increase this number.
4. Cultural aspects of the American story should receive proper recognition
in the future system of parks and monuments.
5. Geological surveys will reveal gaps in the present system of national
park areas.
6. A broad review of the general ecology of Region One should precede
proposals to add biological areas to the existing system.
7. Acquisition of any or all new sites should be selective rather than collective.
8. Undue worry on the part of those who fear the possible inclusion of sub-
standard areas in the National Park System should be quieted. I cannot do
better in concluding than to quote this meaningful paragraph from George
Wright's "Philosophy of Standards for National Parks," 1936:
"I no longer worry as I used to for fear the National Park System will be
loaded with inferior areas. Once this was a real concern. Now we have a system
of national parks and monuments which in their aggregate set the standard. We
have a National Park Service now, and park bills must run a formidable gauntlet
of committees. These bills are referred to the Secretary of the Interior, who
refers them to the National Park Service. It is next to impossible today to
establish a park over unfavorable report of the Department. What if a sub-
standard area should slip in? This would not be calamitous. The failure to save
Mount Olympus' forests, the Kings River Canyon, the Okefenokee Swamp, and
a host of others just as valuable would be the real calamity. Let the friends of
our national parks leave it to the National Park Service to safeguard itself
against intrusion of trash areas and devote their energies instead to completing
the parks system while there is still time to do it. The inclusion of Platt is not
a burden upon our consciences; the failure to save one good example of our
prairie grassland should be a very real cause for mental anguish.
"The sound and the fury rage around such academic questions as to whether
this mountain or that is the best of its kind, drowning out the echoes of the
axes that eat their way into the hearts of four-hundred-year-old monarch trees
on their slopes. When the argument is ended, neither mountain will be fit for
national park status."
38 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
The Future of the National Park Service in
Region Two
THOS. J. ALLEN, JR., Director, Region II, National Park Service, Omaha, Nebr.
IN REGION II we have new areas being studied and considered. If
you will look back into the history of the national parks and the
National Park Service, you will find it was within the boundaries of
what is now Region II that the national park idea started. Some of
my old friends in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and Superintendent Libbey of
Hot Springs National Park probably claim Hot Springs National Park
as being the first national reservation, and that is true, but of course we
all admit that Yellowstone in reality was the first national park.
When we talk of growth and speak of new areas, Region II must be
considered as the starting point. Studies are now being made and re-
ports being prepared on the possibility of including the areas of Wind
River Mountains in Wyoming, of the Flathead country in Montana,
within the National Park System. The State of Wyoming is cooperating
with the Park Service toward the preservation of Old Fort Laramie and
the historical aspects of the Old Oregon Trail where it crosses the region.
There is the hope of rounding out the boundaries of Rocky Mountain
National Park, and of Grand Teton, and perfecting Yellowstone limits
to a perfect natural limitation. There is already being started the pur-
chase and development of the Homestead National Monument with all
the associations that are tied into the first tract of land granted as a
homestead claim by the United States Government. In addition, there
is a movement toward setting aside an area of plains land which, if
accomplished, would create a Grasslands National Monument, depicting
the great buffalo range as found by the early pioneers.
You have therefore, in summary, an idea of what might happen in
Region II, which extends from the Rocky Mountain States of Colorado,
Wyoming, and Montana, east to include Illinois, and which goes north
from the Missouri-Kansas southern line to the Canadian boundary.
Geologic, historic, biologic, and recreational extensions are in view
as a part of the entire program looking toward the completion of the
National Park System throughout the whole United States. I dislike,
however, to think of the future of the National Park Service in the area
for which I am responsible, as being confined merely to enlargements
and additions. There is a great deal that can be done toward the im-
provement of our existing areas, toward the better management of them,
and toward making them of even greater service to the American public.
Since the days when Yellowstone was first set aside as a national
park, our history has been one of growing popularity and of increasing
attendance. There seems to be no end to this popularity, and no end to
the increase which we will have in visitors. There is, however, a limit to
any park's capacity, be it large or small. Already there are signs that in
NATIONAL PARKS 39
some of our parks we are approaching that limit under our present
methods of operation. No one desires to limit the use of the parks to
an arbitrary number of individuals. It therefore means that facing the
National Park Service is the problem of devising ways and means for
handling our increasing population and still protecting our charges. It
can be done and it will be done. The doing of it is one thing which I see
in the future of the National Park Service.
Ahead of us also is the perfection of our parks and the continuation
of them as the only areas in the United States which present a complete
biotic picture. Like the park visitors, our wild animal friends are crowd-
ing us and are affecting not only our own areas but the surrounding lands
outside of the parks. No problem in conservation is more interesting
than this one. It will tax the best minds in the National Park Service
and will call for assistance from leaders in wildlife management else-
where, but its solution is part of our future. The housing of our park
visitors at popular rates, the perfection of our ranger forces, the develop-
ment of new means of eliminating forest fire danger from our forest, and
the solution of the insect and tree disease worries, are all waiting for us.
On the outside are commercial interests desiring to take advantage
of water-power possibilities within the park and monument areas, and
to put to other local uses the natural features which the parks are in-
tended and created to preserve. All of these things put together indicate
a decidedly busy future for the National Park System and the National
Park Service, not only in Region II, but in all regions.
All in all, it seems to me that we have stretching ahead of us the
biggest job of conservation that ever faced any organization, and with
no let-up, because national park work is never finished. Changing con-
ditions make new problems and new solutions continuous.
A Forecast of the Future of the National Park
System in Region Three
HERBERT MAIER, Acting Director, Region III, National Park Service,
Santa Fe, N. M.
THE truth of the old saying that no one can forecast the future with-
out knowing what has gone before finds no more honest application
than it does among those who defend the national park system and
constantly attempt to presuppose its future.
Today every member of the National Park Service who would con-
tribute materially to the system must, most certainly, have full knowl-
edge of, and respect for, its past but not live in it. Fortunately, how-
ever, one of the outstanding characteristics among national park system
proponents which has impressed me throughout some 25 years' asso-
ciation with the national park idea, is the inspired zeal with which they
40 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
have been reaching out into the future to turn into accomplishments
their hopes for the system.
One recent accomplishment that emerges as a product of this fore-
sight, is the regionalization of the Service in order to strengthen the
administrative methods by which existing units of the system are de-
fended, and the future of the system as a whole is currently given the
constantly increasing attention required.
When considering the future of the national park system as repre-
sented in Region III that is, the States of Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma,
New Mexico, Arizona, and the southern parts of Colorado and Utah
one finds a field of possibilities that past foresight has not circumscribed
but that present vision is beginning to comprise. What are these
possibilities ?
In setting about to crystallize the planned future of the national park
system in Region III, we first go to Nature because Nature provides
the initial facts with which we work. And in so doing, it will be appre-
ciated that in so far as ecological conditions are concerned, these States
quite run the gamut of flora and fauna habitats. A total of twelve such
distinct habitat types exist in this region, from that in Arkansas common
to the Ozarks and from the Loblolly country of the Texas-Louisiana
boundary westward to the Plains-Grassland habitat type that extends
into the Dust Bowl of Western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle and
New Mexico; and from the Desert Shrub habitat type in the south-
western part of the region to the Pinion-Juniper and Yellow Pine-
Douglas Fir habitats of northern Arizona and New Mexico, southern
Utah and southern Colorado. And it is significant from a conservation
standpoint, that ten of these twelve ecological habitats are, fortunately,
already represented in the five national parks of the region since, while
various other agencies are working for the conservation of game animals,
the National Park Service is practically the only agency in the region
that is trying to conserve entire wildlife communities, that is, all native
species of both plants and animals.
The problems of extensions to old existing areas is indicative of how
the Service has progressed from arbitrary boundaries to boundaries
based on extremely careful planning. Remember, Yellowstone was
originally just laid out as a square around the lake, and the Service is
perhaps not yet through trying to adjust the boundaries to biological
and other necessary considerations. In Region III, consideration is now
being given by the Service to extension problems in connection with all
five of the national parks in the region.
In Grand Canyon National Park there is foreseen the need to include
150 square miles of the former Grand Canyon National Monument,
adjacent thereto. The need here for including the additional area is based
primarily on the scenic qualifications. The Inner Gorge at the Monu-
ment is extremely narrow, on the sheer walls of which at one point is
NATIONAL PARKS 41
displayed what is said to be the finest example of volcanism on the
North American continent. In addition to this, the extension will add to
the park an excellent range for antelope in Toroweap Valley.
A block of about 24 square miles comprising what should have been
the southeast corner of Mesa Verde National Park, has never been in-
cluded in the park. The land is in the Indian Service and that Service
has admitted that the land is of little value to the Utes. The extension
would serve to round out Mesa Verde's scenic unity by taking in more
of the mesa proper and it would extend that part of the park to its
natural boundary which is the Mancos River, and which would simplify
administration and protection. Mesa Verde has the worst fire threat
in the region.
Platt National Park in Oklahoma, although only 848 acres in extent,
reached a remarkable peak load of 284,000 visitors during the past year.
A study of its problems was undertaken by a Washington office repre-
sentative last summer and it is expected that the findings will shortly
be forthcoming.
Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, as most of you know, has a
native land problem. In 1832, Congress set aside the land surrounding
the hot springs as a National Reservation, stipulating that this land
was not to be used for any other purpose. In 1874, however, by Federal
survey, the townsite was plotted and 1551 acres including the valleys
and the best of the land was given to what is today the business section
of the city. The problem now is largely to obtain additional land on the
surrounding mountains so as to give visitors greater recreational oppor-
tunity to get up out of the city which surrounds the Springs.
Considerable discussion has, from time to time, been evidenced in
connection with a proposed major extension to Carlsbad National Park,
but sufficient investigation has not yet been carried out to definitely
determine its advisability. The new land would extend south up into
the Guadalupe Range and apparently include additional large caverns
that surveys may prove of sufficient value to warrant park protection.
Furthermore, Carlsbad Caverns is located at the very edge of a wonder-
ful game country. The valleys and canyons of this region tap the great
faunal reservoir which spreads away to the south and down into Mexico.
As for proposed new national parks in Region III, two or three areas
that have been investigated during the past year are now receiving major
consideration from a standpoint of proper land use and as to whether
they can be best conserved by the National Park Service.
At present there are no national parks or monuments in Texas the
largest State in the Union. The Big Bend area in southwestern Texas,
however, was in 1935 authorized by Congress for national park status.
Funds are now being raised for the purchase of 788,000 acres of land,
by private subscriptions, to be later supplemented by a state appropria-
tion. This fund-raising campaign was given an added impetus recently
42 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
when it was discovered that during Centennial year, the income to the
State from tourist travel was greater than from its two other principal
sources of income cotton and oil. The international aspects of this
project are intriguing. The Mexican government has agreed to set aside
450,000 acres on its side of the Rio Grande in the Del Carmen Moun-
tains, in order to create an International Park in which the peoples of
the two nations may mingle without annoying international restrictions.
Director Cammerer has worked vigorously with the Mexican govern-
ment in connection with this international project, and by invitation has
advised on their national park system which includes approximately as
many acres as our own. It would by no means be a difficult task later to
construct a highway south from the Mexican area to join the present
Mexico City highway at Monterey. Who knows but that this Inter-
national Park may in time become the principal tourist gateway between
the two countries?
Padre Island, immediately adjacent to the Texas Gulf Coast, is the
only area in the region being considered as a possible national seashore
park. This island, which is only a mile wide, has a perfect beach 120
miles long.
Thus far I have been leading up to the thought generally accepted
that, regardless of what other considerations may be present in the
future of the National Park System, a greater knowledge of the country
as a whole and what each part of it is most useful for, will be the basic
factors in our studies.
Of the 32 national monuments in Region III, 26 comprise the South-
western Monument System under Superintendent Pinkley, offering a
variety of prehistoric and natural phenomena nation-wide in appeal.
The Southwestern Monument System is deserving of very serious
thought and long-range planning since many of its units could easily be
spoiled if made too accessible, or on the other hand, if left without
adequate facilities. And this situation with the tremendous increase in
travel in the southwest, is a real threat. Almost 300,000 persons visited
the Southwestern Monuments during the year just passed. Certain of
the monuments having a particular type of interest and most accessible
to the public, lend themselves to immediate development. On the other
hand, there is a group of four or five that Superintendent Pinkley feels
should forever be held in their strictly primitive state. Then there is the
group of three or four Reserve Monuments, as Superintendent Pinkley
calls them, to be withheld from public access until all scientific study
and excavation can be undertaken and completed.
While erosion and livestock contribute to the process of ruin disin-
tegration, the greater damage is done by man. Looting of prehistoric
remains has been a major outdoor sport in the Southwest that has been
heartbreakingly extensive. Scientific publications of thirty or forty
years ago deplore this evil. The Federal Antiquities Act of 1906 has
NATIONAL PARKS 43
never really been enforced and cannot be to any great extent under
present conditions. The National Park Service is the only agency whose
job it is to protect these invaluable records of the past, but it has no
jurisdiction over Federal land other than its own. Some few sites are
protected to an extent by States and institutions, but these cannot
carry on stabilization activities or provide adequate facilities for the
visiting public. That the National Park Service should not go in and
actually do major research excavation in the Southwest is a policy that
has been generally recognized, and while the digging and the research
may be the field of institutions, the preservation work is the duty of the
National Park Service. Generally speaking, in order wholly to conserve
a strictly primitive area, you could simply leave it alone. But a crumbling
ruin needs sympathetic and highly technical attention.
There is now a CCC mobile unit of 25 Indian enrollees attached to
the Southwestern Monuments under the immediate direction of an
engineer and an archeologist. At least five such units could be profitably
employed in the monuments and national parks in the region.
The question arises frequently in the lay mind as to whether the
Service is trying to preserve too many archeological sites in the South-
west, and if duplication is common. No one has ever suggested that all
of the Southwestern archeological sites be preserved that would be an
utter impossibility, even if it were desirable. Considering the distinct
cultures and different peoples, there is no duplication.
I trust I will not be misunderstood when I say that the question has
been raised as to whether the Service has realized the full responsibility
and magnitude of the task involved. Most certainly the Service would
do many things if it had the wherewithal. It is estimated that $100,000
per annum over a considerable period could be legitimately spent on
preservation work in Region III.
Just how many and which monument areas should the Service ac-
quire in Region III in order permanently to conserve the most worth-
while, will, as far as archeology is concerned, be answered by the Arche-
ological Sites Survey, already projected for the Service. In the mean-
time, however, there are ten or more possible monument areas offering a
variety of outstanding features that have been investigated and probably
should be acquired at an early date in order to afford immediate pro-
tection.
In addition to these, extensions to nine existing monuments are of
immediate concern. The principal ones are: Arches in Southern Utah;
El Morro in New Mexico, and Rainbow Bridge, Chiricahua and Navajo
in Arizona. Navajo, as an example, one of the most dramatic and
isolated, is now in three widely separated blocks, each block of only
about 40 acres. It is proposed, through special arrangement with the
Indian Service, to unify the three blocks for necessary control of public
access. El Morro, as another example, is a striking mesa point, on the
44 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
cliffs of which are inscribed the signatures of the Spanish conquistadores
and of our own frontiersmen, but with a boundary only 200 feet removed
from these inscriptions.
In Region III the report of the Historic Sites Survey now under way
will give much consideration to possible national historical parks of
which there are, as yet, very few in the region and which contrast with
archeological sites. Some of the historic sites in Region III relate to
the early conquistadores. Others are ecclesiastical, such as the three
mission systems. A third group tells the story of the military posts that
pushed ever westward and permitted the settler to take footholds.
Where historical areas are purely local in appeal, they should be
developed and maintained by the States. But where there occurred a
highlight or turning point in the Nation's history and the preservation
and interpretation of the site will always have nation-wide appeal, they
should receive Federal status. The Federal Government in its adminis-
tration of such areas is in a better position to give a true perspective and
sense of values than can the States. A few years ago, I was advised that
the battlefield of San Jacinto in Texas was the only historical area in
that State which the National Park Service at that time might be inter-
ested in acquiring, since this battle, which has been aptly described as
the sixteenth decisive battle of the world, resulted later in our acquiring
what is now Texas, the major part of New Mexico, southern Colorado
and western Oklahoma. The State of Texas is now undertaking, at a
cost of a million and a quarter dollars, to erect there a monumental shaft
higher than the Washington Monument. But if you were to go to San
Jacinto Battlefield today, you would find it difficult, if not impossible,
to learn the story of what really happened there.
Other themes for possible historical development in the region include
the "ghost towns" such as Tombstone, Arizona, and the old Trails. The
famous Santa Fe Trail offers an interesting opportunity for preservation
at one of the points where the deep wagon ruts are still clearly visible
for miles across the plains, and within walking distance of the main
highway. The landmarks, still standing, of the Chisholm Trail along
which for 30 years the cowboys, over periods of weeks at a time, had to
drive their tremendous herds of cattle all the way from south Texas and
way points to the end of the railroad in Kansas, offers another possibility.
It is perfectly understandable that historic sites in the east have
received fuller recognition than have those in the west. The west is closer
to the day of the frontier than is the east and the frontier is never vitally
concerned with the past it has no past. It has only a future on which
it concentrates its entire energy.
There are 110 historic sites in the region which we have been called
upon for investigation and report. We need have no fear, however, that
this will result in the Service being called upon to attempt acquisition
of a flock of sites of intermediate importance. The Historic Sites Survey
NATIONAL PARKS 45
offers a coherent, planned procedure for determining which sites are
the most suitable.
I trust, then, that I have presented the case for Region III from a
standpoint of proper land use. Future purposes of the National Park
System must depend in no small measure upon a more universal knowl-
edge of the country itself, and for what each part of it is most useful.
Land-use planning is today affecting every field agency of the govern-
ment. Planning throws the light on past mistakes and long range needs.
The late Senator Morrow once said, "We hear a great deal about the cost
of planning. Somebody should write a book on the cost of not planning."
According to the National Resources Committee, over 50 per cent of
highway travel today is tourist travel, and certainly this significant
statement should result in some deep thought on the part of recreation-
ists and planners.
Conservation in Region Four
FRANK A. KITTREDGE, Director, Region IV, San Francisco, Calif.
IN REGION IV are found national park areas of many types highest
mountains, deepest valleys, grand specimens of erosion, exhibitions
of sedimentation, glaciers, deserts, wildlife preserves, primeval areas,
historical monuments.
Types having intrinsic value, such as these, are eminently suitable for
inclusion in the National Park System and require suitable conservation.
As stated by Secretary Ickes "Conservation" is "prudent use."
What is the wise use of the national park areas? What is the forecast of
the National Park System in Region IV? Who can say?
However, I feel deeply on the matter of conservation of both natural
resources and park ideals and am happy to present this forecast as my
personal idea touching, of course, only generally and along only a
few lines.
Wise use of our western national parks was defined by Secretary Lane
in his Magna Charta of 1918:
First, that the national parks must be maintained in absolutely un-
impaired form for the use of future generations as well as those of our
own time;
Second, that they are set apart for the use, observation, health and
pleasure of the people;
Third, that the national interest must dictate all decisions affecting
public or private enterprise in the parks.
What was good in 1918 is none too good for the future National Park
System. The future will continue to reaffirm the Magna Charta of 1918,
will strengthen, revitalize and enforce the rights and commands for con-
servation and use.
46 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Our problems have multiplied since 1918 but our fundamental need
for conservation has not lessened, indeed it has been greatly increased.
There perhaps never was an occasion since Theodore Roosevelt and
Stephen T. Mather when there was greater need for the establishment
of conservation policies and ideals than now.
The Park Service came into being 20-odd years ago because the
conservationists of the country were aroused and demanded a different
kind of conservation for our best and most wonderful areas, a conserva-
tion which would enjoy and inspire but not destroy.
The system of the future will carry on these principles of conservation,
else the reason for the very existence of the Park Service will be gone.
Just what the national park area of the future will comprise is de-
pendent upon several features just what may be considered the finest,
not the one finest, of its kind (there are lots of them), the number
of striking examples of areas telling the story of earth forces, of life, and
of the progress of civilization. It will depend upon how faithfully future
organizations care for and use these areas of intrinsic value, including
primeval areas, entrusted to their care.
It will depend upon the dominance of the one idea perpetual con-
servation for educational and inspirational use (human welfare) and a
willingness to fight continuously for their protection.
The future status of the Park System depends on whether the future
conservationists will discern the fundamental values in the parks;
whether they will preserve our primeval areas ; whether they will make
them usable for educational and inspirational purposes by the youths
and the adults of the country; whether they will not permit the most
precious spots to be opened by roads and developed by villages.
The existing bits of primeval country remaining are the last of our
heritage of the country as our forefathers found it. Region IV, in the
very nature of things, has a large number of these remaining areas.
The Park System of the future will conserve and use wisely its primeval
areas, else a new generation of conservationists will rise up in their
wrath and put them in hands which will conserve them.
The Park System will, through continued study and search, establish
values of areas and objects, will define the natural features for which
each park and each unit, large or small, is most valuable and shall
establish means of preserving it for that use. It will be preserved for its
fundamental use against whatever attacks by cushion tourist, irriga-
tionists, power, builders of fine structures, propagandists.
Park values will be crystallized into policies and procedure for us
in character building.
Park conservationists of the future are going to view park values
whether in or out of primeval areas, whether historic or scenic, with such
a jealous eye and will safeguard with such an iron hand that the gener-
ations to come will be using our same heritage undiminished.
NATIONAL PARKS 47
The National Park System of the future will continue to carry on the
injunction that these areas are set aside for the use, observation, health
and pleasure of the people.
Typical portions of the primeval areas of the future must be made
accessible on foot to the boys and girls, to the men and the women, who
shall safeguard these great primeval areas in the next decades.
The finest possible expenditure both in conservation of our youth
and in conservation of our natural resources will be obtained when the
Federal Government expends some hundreds of thousands of dollars in
building moderate trails, low-cost shelters, and trailside lodges.
These facilities will permit groups of young folks, under auspices of
organizations such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, and families to
go afoot between shelters, between places where low-cost subsistence
may be had for those who are unable to meet the expense required to
pack in their subsistence and shelter in case of storm. There seems no
reason why a boy's two weeks' hike through the high Sierras or through
Glacier National Park or Mount Olympus could not be made to cost
about as little as he now spends for two weeks in a Y. M. C. A. camp.
So far as the future System is concerned, we may be hearing about
the forgotten boy and the forgotten girl who are going to run the con-
servation activities of the country in the next generation. There is no
better way of conserving natural resources than to spend a little money
in the primeval areas of our country to make them walkable and livable
to our youngsters.
The National Park System of the future will tend to be operated
upon Nature's terms rather than upon the terms of the visitor. People
will come into the national park areas, along routes which will encourage
tuning of their mental attitude with the wilderness atmosphere.
It seems useless and destructive of essential values to build into
virgin territory roads of so high a standard that the atmosphere of the
country for which the visitors come, is lost. A determination of values is
essential before roads are built. If the object is just to get from here to
there, a 45-mile-per-hour road is correct.
If, however, we are traveling through country of national park scenic
value then a road will be built which will blend with the contour of
the country and will involve minimum destruction. Perpetuation of the
local values and the park atmosphere is the essential not the road.
If these values cannot be preserved in the presence of a road then
the road will not be built unless of course it is a road primarily to get
from here to there.
This does not imply criticism of anyone even of myself. It is a
statement of consciousness of park values to be embodied in the building
of park roads of the future.
Simplicity is the keynote of the Park System. Monumental buildings
and structures will not be chosen. Unobtrusive embankments which
48 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
will revegetate, where practicable, will be selected instead of massive or
monumental bridges.
Simple cabins in the woods are conducive to relaxation and the blend-
ing of one's mental attitude with Nature's. On the other hand, a grand
hotel whether in a city or in a national park becomes like a morgue
unless it is filled with excitement, music, amusements.
Simplicity in living surroundings in a park begets restfulness har-
mony with surroundings.
The Magna Charta of 1918 says that the park shall be made accessible
and habitable so that the natural attractions of the park may be enjoyed.
It does not say anything about making the parks accessible so amuse-
ments may be enjoyed in a beautiful setting nor does it say that attrac-
tions shall be provided so the people will come and be kept amused.
Lack of many artificial amusements will in the future tend to elimi-
nate many of our problems along with that type of person who goes to
the national park for the same reasons that he goes to Coney Island.
Curtailment of artificial amusements may tend to solve the congestion
problem which has so harassed certain park areas.
In new developments, the establishment of separated and single units
of limited size which will be complete in themselves with cabins, mess
accommodations, store, camp-fire, ranger service, etc., will tend to avoid
much of the citified appearance and resort atmosphere that might other-
wise develop. Even the citified actions may be tempered of people who
would like to forget the city if camp surroundings were conducive.
Time will be taken by the Service to reflect upon the guiding prin-
ciples of the Park Service, to analyze park values, to establish a goal of
perfection not that we can reach perfection but that its attainment
may always be before us as a guide and ideal.
Many of our institutions have come from Europe at least the trail
has been blazed. The one contribution of its type given to the white
man's world by America is the national park idea the preserving of the
supreme scientific and intrinsic values of the primeval.
It is that one conception and its fulfillment our yardstick if you
please that has won the confidence of conservationists and the love of
the people for the national parks.
There is a grand future in the National Park System in the preserva-
tion of our grandest and most beautiful natural areas ; in the preservation
of the most precious bits of primeval country; in holding and imparting
the atmosphere of primeval wilderness; in the using of these gifts of
nature, generation after generation, in physical, mental and inspirational
upbuilding Conservation and Use without destruction.
RECREATIONAL USE OF NATIONAL PARKS
Ideals
JOHN R. WHITE, Superintendent, Sequoia National Park, Calif.
IT IS an honor to be asked to speak before the American Planning and
Civic Association. It is still more an honor to be asked to speak on
"Ideals in the Recreational Use of the National Parks." But it is a
responsibility, for which I feel inadequate, to define those recreational
Ideals.
The Ideals of the Service as they affect the recreational use of the
national parks and those policies which must enforce Ideals, have, during
my nearly two decades in the Service, been laid down by several Secre-
taries of the United States Department of the Interior. They have in
recent years been strengthened and applied to changing conditions by
Secretary Ickes. During that time, also, Directors Mather, Albright,
and Cammerer have interpreted those Ideals and policies. It is natural
that I am hesitant to speak upon this subject.
There is also another reason for natural hesitation to speak on the
subject of Ideals. It might be inferred that, like all superintendents, I
am an idealist; but it might not be inferred that we are practical idealists.
It is an unfortunate thing that words are often used without clear defini-
tion. There is much misunderstanding of the word "Ideals" and more
perhaps of the word "idealist." In this discussion let us take the word
"Ideals" to mean the perfect picture of the national parks and the reten-
tion of that perfect picture through policies of protection and develop-
ment which will not injure it. Then, let us consider an "idealist" as one
engaged in the preservation of that perfect picture; but also as one who
has a sense of time and proportion, a feeling for men and women, with
some understanding of national history and politics and economics as
they must affect the national parks.
Above all, let us not put the idealists on one side and the realists on
the other side, for a national park man must be a bit of both. But let
him not compromise his ideals too far or he will be false to the men who
have preceded him and to the natural wonders of which he is the im-
mediate guardian.
There is much sneering at Ideals, sneering which may be indirect.
When I hear it I like to remember two sayings by men, very different
men, but both were men who loved the open air and the national parks.
Theodore Roosevelt said: "There is nothing more practical in the long
run than the preservation of beauty." Owen Wister said: "There are
millions of men who eat three square meals a day and are as dead as
doornails."
It would be idle of me to discuss here the broad, general Ideals of the
national parks; or even to mention those Ideals which we have tried to
live up to in Sequoia and Death Valley, unless a little time remains at
49
50 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
the end of this presentation. I feel that I should be concerned with the
relations of Ideals to the practical aspects of a superintendent's work.
Just let it be remembered that we are considering the preservation of
the perfect picture of the national parks, that perfect picture which is
chiefly affected by recreational use; and that use is, of course, inex-
tricably bound up with all other park uses. Then, of course, I speak with
special reference to that nucleus of the National Park System, the great
scenic parks which bind the Nation together in an encircling chain, criss-
crossed with links.
The important thing would seem to be that there is no confusion
about Ideals and about their application through policies to the varying
areas which make up the National Park System. Of next importance
seems to be the interpretation of Ideals through policies which must be
put into effect by the field officers of the Service.
Let us be clear on this : general policies may be written out in Wash-
ington; they may be interpreted and explained at other central adminis-
trative points; they may be spoken on platforms or around tables; or
they may be sent to the remotest habitation over the air and even into
the depths of the forest, the mountains and the deserts; but, finally,
they must be put into effect, into practical effect as they influence men,
places and events, by the men in the field and on the job. The man with
his feet on the soil, rubbing up against his fellow men, meeting the rush
of travel on the holiday, the rush of the river in flood, or the rush of
wild or semi-wild animals at park visitors : that is the man, be he super-
intendent or supervisor or custodian or any other designation, who must
give practical effect to policies. And as policies are rarely written which
can cover every case, the man in the field boots and on the job must do
as good a job of interpretation as he can.
Therefore, it is clear that the application of Ideals in recreation de-
pends on policies which in turn must run through proper channels from
the fountainhead in Washington to the faucets in the field. And all
depends on the men who keep the channels open and the men who turn
on the faucets.
With these preliminaries which have seemed necessary for a definition
of the subject, Ideals in recreation, let us turn to a brief consideration
of the question as it comes before us superintendents or others in the
national parks.
Two years ago, at our last Washington Superintendents' Conference,
there was presented a hastily prepared paper on "Atmosphere in the
National Parks." In the brighter light of two years' thought and con-
versations on the subject, let us consider some of the problems which
have come up in our western parks.
Today winter sports are all the rage. We can see the crest of the wave
which is sweeping over the country. What shall we do with that wave in
the national parks? Shall we ride the crest of the wave like the Hawaiian
NATIONAL PARKS 51
surf -rider; or shall we plunge through the wave and emerge the other
side, as the Hawaiian sometimes does; or shall we stand up against it
and be tumbled over breathless and get our lungs full of water and
perhaps of sand?
Of course the answer is, we must ride the crest, guiding the national
boat along and keeping it as dry as possible.
In Sequoia National Park we have now had over ten years' gradually
increasing winter use of the park for winter sports and we still feel as
we did two years ago when we went on record as follows :
Emphasis should be placed on opportunities for everyone to take part in
free sports rather than on featured performances and competition.
Skating rink, toboggan slide, and ski-runs should be as natural as possible
and with little or no artificial construction. No charge should be made for their
use. No attempt should be made to rival professional winter sports areas.
Winter sports should be incidental to winter use of the park, not entirely dom-
inate it.
Any mechanical aid to winter sports such as a ski-elevator or a toboggan
elevator is out of place. Improvement of facilities should be limited.
In an attempt to excel and to build up operators' winter accommodations,
there is a danger of commercializing winter sports and finally of injuring atmos-
phere and even scenery. If operators make considerable financial investment in
winter sports facilities, equipment, buildings, and so forth, there is danger that
winter sports will dominate the picture, be improperly commercialized, and make
a hurly-burly of the park in winter.
It will undoubtedly be argued as it so often is that the parks
belong to the people; that if they want upskis and sporting toboggan
courses or ski-jumps they have a right to have them in the national
parks as they have elsewhere in the private resorts, the state parks or
the national forests. It would take too much time now to refute that
argument, but I would like to sketch out at least one illustrative ex-
perience, and one deductive argument.
About fifteen years ago the country suddenly bloomed forth with
miniature golf courses. The operator at Giant Forest at that time a fine
fellow and still a good friend of mine insisted in no uncertain terms
that unless he were permitted to put in a miniature golf course he could
not compete with other resorts that were installing them. No other
comment is necessary at this time, fifteen years later, than to quote the
refrain of a song that was popular in my boyhood and is still popular.
Referring to miniature golf courses we can say, "But where is Casey
now?"
And to a perhaps lesser degree the same might be said of real golf
courses, tennis courts, badminton courts and artificial swimming pools.
At different times all have been advocated for Sequoia, but somehow or
other we are getting along without them.
Now for the deductive argument. It seems to us that the national
parks may be little worlds within a world; comparatively small areas
52 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
which may serve as laboratories for experiments in the education of the
public out-of-doors. One experiments in a laboratory but is very careful
not to create an explosion which may wreck the tools. And, carrying the
analogy a little further, perhaps some distance further, there are experi-
ments today throughout the world in new government structures and
new economies. But in democracies certain safeguards exist against too
hasty yielding to what appears to be the popular will. So in the national
parks we must not hastily abandon our recreational ideals. The trees,
the rocks all of that beauty, they have been there a long time. We can
afford to wait a little while before making our decisions.
In summer recreation, as in winter recreation, and in those recre-
ational features which are common to all seasons, and in the installation
of those utilities and adjuncts which have a bearing on recreation, it
seems to us that it is wise to go slowly. Two years ago in that same paper
which was so generously reproduced in part in the 1937 Annual of the
American Planning and Civic Association, we considered the following
matters as they affected the Ideals of recreation in the western national
parks, with special reference to the Sequoia National Park:
Campfire entertainments and educational work
Park entrance hours and quiet camps
Radios and loudspeakers
Dances
Tennis courts and golf courses
Swimming pools
Bands and music
Electric lighting
Motion pictures
The relations of public operators to recreation
CCC camps
It was an incomplete list but fairly comprehensive. Some of the
statements made two years ago need discussion and clearer definition.
It has become more evident to us in Sequoia that while the recreational
Ideals of the National Park System may be broadly defined, yet the
applications of them in the various parks must at times differ because
of local conditions. We feel that discussion here in this conference will
be more helpful than any paper that might be read. But before giving
way to that discussion I would like to touch in a small way on a large
and almost a new recreational problem in the National Park System.
Only within the last few years have we faced the question, the per-
plexing question of Ideals in recreation as they affect the desert. Although
we have long had desert or semi-desert areas among the southwestern
monuments, and particularly in the Petrified Forest National Monu-
ment, it is only four years ago that we acquired the two million acres
of Death Valley; and still more recently that we took over the large
Joshua Tree area.
The desert, it may well be queried, what Ideals of recreation need be
NATIONAL PARKS 53
applied in the desert? Surely those dry, sandy or gravel wastes and
mountains, those painted canyons and glaring cliffs they cannot well
be harmed by any ordinary types of recreation?
I wish that I had twice the length of time afforded me for the whole
subject, just to dwell on the various aspects of recreation in the desert.
But it is only possible here to point out that many new questions arise;
and that one great attraction of the desert, its silence, has been but
little considered. We must give form to new Ideals in recreation for the
so-called desert areas, which are only deserts to the uninitiated. They
are to us who have learned to love them great spaces of distance and
beauty and silence above all, silence where men can think more clearly
than in a noisy world.
In conclusion, I would like to dwell for a moment on the thought
that has become impressed on all of us who serve for a little while the
trees and the desert: that is, that the things of Nature remain and are
the only permanent and enduring things in a world of disordered change;
that the trees and the mountains and the desert have seen many civil-
izations rise to their peaks and crash to their falls; that they were un-
changed except by natural processes until modern man a few moments
ago in geologic time attacked them with his engines; that their beauty
and their silence are more necessary than ever and may be the deciding
factors in the existence of democracy, for man must get away from the
insistences of democracy if he desires to think out clearly the processes
by which democracy may be preserved . . . dwelling on these thoughts
from time to time we can return refreshed and confident to the realities
of life to the roaring tunnels of city streets or the desks piled high
with papers.
These are new days, with a world in one of its century cycles of
change. But the parks are old, and age should balance youth. We like
to think that under the inspiring influences of our parks we may work
out together, all of us, some of the principles and policies that must
obtain outside the parks and throughout the Nation if democracy is to
survive.
And we like also to think that the millions of our fellow citizens who
come for recreation to the national parks and other areas may sense the
Ideals of the parks through a practical contact with the result of them,
and may thus go back refreshed to their working life at home.
And as I quoted from a popular jingle earlier in this paper, permit
me to end with four lines of real poetry which were written seventy years
or so ago about Asia and might well again be applied to the Far Eastern
situation of today in China:
The East bowed low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain.
She let the Legions thunder past
Then plunged in thought again.
54 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
The Legions of the public come into the national parks. The Legions
come and the Legions pass. The Legions of the future may not want
what those of the present want. Our trees and our mountains and our
desert, all that remains of our national beauty, will be there, let us hope,
after we little men have gone. It is a pleasant, if sometimes a perplexing
task, to hold up our Ideals of recreation in the national parks and do our
share to preserve that beauty.
Present Uses
EDMUND B. ROGERS, Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
ARE the national parks dedicated to two diverse concepts of land use?
jflL The establishing acts incorporate almost identical wording.
Each area is "dedicated and set apart as a public park for the benefit
and enjoyment of the people of the United States." The Yellowstone
act reads as a "pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the
people." On the other hand, the acts specifically charge the administra-
tive authority with the duty of providing the proper regulations for the
preservation of the areas "and their retention in their natural condition."
There are some who believe that to fulfill the purpose set forth in
the dedication, the areas should be open to the free, unrestricted use of
the American public. Let man do as his fancy finds. But man is a de-
structive agency. His unrestrained presence is inconsistent with pres-
ervation. What he does not destroy, he modifies. Under such circum-
stances we would thus be faced with two incompatible concepts of land
use, neither of which would have priority over the other. Neither would
have right of way. Neither should step aside for the other. Each would
be present at the sacrifice and toleration of the other.
It was not until after 17 national parks had been established that
there was a restatement of basic national park policy. Yellowstone
National Park had been in existence 44 years. Yosemite had had national
park status 26 years. The Act of August 25, 1916, to establish the Na-
tional Park Service sets forth the "fundamental purpose" of the National
Park Service in these words: "to conserve the scenery and the natural
and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the
enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave
them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." This state-
ment clarifies the picture and places the emphasis on the preservation
aspect. It gives preservation a certain priority over the recreational use
by defining certain limitations on the latter. Under this mandate of
Congress, if we are to fulfill the trust of preservation, some restriction
on the type and extent of the recreational use of the parks must be
imposed.
Thus those who are charged with the administration of the national
NATIONAL PARKS 55
parks find themselves under way on a dangerous rock-bound course.
The channel is narrow, beset with tide rips, cross currents, and un-
charted reefs. It is denned only by forbidden shores, neither of which
can be approached nor lost sight of. There can be no turning back. Reef
the sails if you can, but the current sweeps on.
While we cannot divorce the two concepts, we are concerned at the
moment with only one, which, for lack of a more appropriate term, we
call "the recreational use" of the national parks. Recreation is a strong,
vital word. It is defined by Webster as "Act of recreating; or state of
being recreated; refreshment of the strength and spirits after toil."
You will note that it is not the nature of the act that is recreation; it is
the effect of the act that makes it recreation. Recreation is a by-product
of some activity or state. An activity, physical, mental, or spiritual,
may be recreational. It is not what is done; it is what is assimilated
that makes an act recreation.
Approaching recreation in the broad sense, the field of the national
parks is very limited. The parks cannot and should not attempt to pro-
vide recreational facilities of every type. Any form of recreation that is
inconsistent with preservation is disqualified by law. Thus any forms
which require modification of natural conditions or artificial structures
are eliminated. The recreational activities of the national parks can be
justified only by limiting them to those phases in which the parks are
eminently qualified. This might be defined as those phases in which
the esthetic values of nature contribute an essential or vital part. This
would exclude the development of any facilities for recreation in which
environment is a negligible factor in the enjoyment or benefits derived,
that is, any form that is self-sufficient.
We cannot here go into details. We cannot weigh and classify each
individual form of recreation. Of necessity we must deal in broad groups.
Without question the scope of the national parks' use includes that
group who gain recreation from passive association with nature. Persons
of this group find recreation in the presence of nature without the
necessity of actual contact with it or of physical activity. This group is
characterized by one who says: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
from whence cometh my help." He presents us with no problem* Make
nature accessible to him and we fulfill our trust.
There is a larger group who find recreation in nature, but only
through intimate contact with it. This group includes the hiker, the
horseback rider, the mountain climber, the camper, who must have
some physical activity to gain recreation. He must feel the spray and
hear the thunder of the falls. He must reach the summit of the mountain.
He must seek out and study the individual flower where it grows. He
must feel the crowd of the forest. He must match his strength against
the elements. For him are the trails and the campgrounds. To this group
the national parks are appropriately available for winter sports. Prob-
56 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
ably no other use of the areas is more consistent with preservation than
cross-country skiing or snowshoeing. No dynamite or shovel must pre-
cede to clear the trail. The ground cover is protected from damage with
a blanket of snow. The spring sun obliterates the last evidence. However,
winter sports activities which require extensive artificial structures,
grading, clearings, must be disqualified from the national park field of
recreation.
The uses described are beyond reproach. Under stress and pressure,
less desirable popular forms of recreation have crept into certain parks;
for example, tennis and golf. Both require artificial structures and golf
by its nature requires space which cannot be reconciled with our preser-
vation concept. These are games which involve high concentration. It is
hard to conceive that the presence of the Grand Canyon, El Capitan,
Mount Rainier, or the Yellowstone Falls would contribute anything to
the game itself.
There is one phase of the recreational use of the national parks that
must not be overlooked. The leasing of ground within the national parks
for the purpose of public accommodations is specifically provided for
by law. Certain general limitations have been placed by law around
this authority. But just how much area can be consistently dedicated
to this purpose? Each development involves necessary utilities which
extend ever-growing arms into the wilderness. With the rapid increase
in travel, must accommodations be provided for everyone who elects to
arrive? Must we be expected to make provision for peak loads?
The Organic Act creating the National Park Service says that: "The
service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal
areas ... by such means and measures as conform to the funda-
mental purpose of said parks."
That is an intelligible statement and means nothing more than that
we should provide for the type of use that each area is best suited to
give. Areas that are set apart primarily for their scenic attractions and
outstanding natural wonders must be adequately provided with roads
and accommodations to care for the people who come to see them.
There would be no justifiable reason to construct such roads and ac-
commodations in an area that is set up primarily to preserve its roadless
and primitive character. Yet, both types of areas are now governed
by the general policies of the Organic Act and, in those cases where a
park is sufficiently large, both types of area are found, and each is con-
served to render its particular type of use. Does that mean that all
national parks must have roads and peak-load accommodations? I think
the answer is plainly "no." There is no reason why extensive primitive
areas should not be set apart as parks to be developed and used by trails
only. Under such practices, certain areas, such as the lake region of
northern Minnesota, could be adequately used by merely taking ad-
vantage of the natural waterways already provided, and by the con-
NATIONAL PARKS 57
struction of such trails and rustic shelters as would be necessary for
trail and canoe transportation.
On the other hand, parkways and historic sites are developed to meet
the requirements of millions of visitors, and rightly so. Those who would
insist that all park developments must be of one type have failed to
recognize the different kinds of nationally important exhibits that the
National Park System is set up to conserve. The only simple element
in the mandates of the Organic Act is that the developments must be
conducive to the enjoyment of the objects to be preserved, whether
those objects be wilderness, scenery, geological phenomena, historic
sites and buildings, or outstanding biological communities.
These are the different types of recreational developments and you
may call them inspirational or educational, or by any other name, if
you so please that we are now trying to provide. There is no question
that mistakes have been made. Where they have been made, we hope
to correct them. We believe that, in the main, our course is right and
we submit it to you for your consideration and appraisal.
Park, Parkway and Recreational -Area Study
HARRY CURTIS, Regional Supervisor, Recreation Study, Region II,
National Park Service, Omaha, Nebr.
National Park Service is the accredited Federal agency dealing
J. solely in parks and recreation. The Park Service does have a duty
and can fulfill a function by participating with the States in the develop-
ment of a long-range plan, in master planning of individual areas to take
care of established recreational needs, in assisting with the coordination
of the recreational facilities and services provided by different agencies,
public and private, and in keeping such long-range plan and master
plans up to date, current, and alive, and in adding its support to the
execution of the recommendation of these plans. It is believed that this
should be the main and proper function of the National Park Service, in
dealing with the forty-eight States in state recreation. To assure coordi-
nation of its own fine system of parks with those of other agencies, and
most important, disseminating through its contacts throughout the
country the best development in each of the other States, the Park
Service may further the provision of adequate recreational facilities to
meet the needs of the Nation.
With the exception of Iowa's twenty-five-year plan of conservation,
California's Olmsted report and plan, the 1932 recommendations of the
Illinois Board of Park Advisors, the unpublished plans of the Indiana
Conservation Department, the New York State Plans, and perhaps a
very few others in States with which I am not familiar, a broad, general
recreation plan and policy for each of the States was entirely lacking.
58 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
The first state park CCC camps were located on the most outstanding
recreation areas and others following were assigned according to the
best judgment of the state park officials and the National Park Service
state representatives.
It was, of course, impossible to expect the various States to have
worked out in advance sufficient plans to utilize profitably the sudden
and unexpected Federal funds for labor and material made available by
the CCC in 1933 on adequately justified projects.
To many of the States it soon became apparent that in order to util-
ize to the fullest the available CCC labor and material funds, and most
adequately to provide recreation facilities, much factual information
was required on the needs of the people and the relative merits of exist-
ing and proposed areas. The assembling of a broad, general plan of
recreation was soon to become a necessity and its continuation and im-
provements to keep pace with changing times, a continuing requirement.
It became equally apparent that such planning was essential in safe-
guarding Federal funds to insure their use for obtaining the best con-
structive achievements in the most used and usable locations.
In the type of development being undertaken in areas under con-
struction, in the priority of occupying new areas for construction, and
in concurring with the States in recommending acquisition of new areas,
it obviously became necessary to determine the recreational requirements
of the people through a carefully analyzed general recreation plan.
Confronted with the financial responsibility of maintenance of facilities
constructed through the CCC, state officials became increasingly anxious
that such developments be placed where the need was the greatest and
where popular support for their maintenance was at hand.
The aim of any well-conceived recreation plan then should be the
provision of an adequate recreation plant at the least construction cost,
and with the least maintenance requirements.
It was not until June 23, 1936, that the Park, Parkway and Recre-
ation Study Act was approved by the President. This bill stated in
part: "The Secretary of the Interior is authorized and directed to cause
the National Park Service to make a comprehensive study other than
on lands under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture, of the
public park, parkway and recreational area programs of the United States
and of the several states and political subdivisions thereof, and of the
lands throughout the United States which are or may be chiefly valuable
as such areas. The said study shall be such as in the judgment of the
Secretary will provide data helpful in developing a plan for coordinated
and adequate public park, parkway and recreational area facilities for
the people of the United States." The bill states further: "The Secretary
is authorized to aid the several States and political subdivisions thereof,
planning of such areas therein, and in cooperating with one another to
accomplish these ends." The National Park Service is authorized to
NATIONAL PARKS 59
assist the States and their political subdivisions in planning for their
recreational needs, and directed to prepare an integrated national plan
of recreation.
A little more than a year ago the Park Service issued a manual
entitled "Park, Parkway and Recreational Area Study," setting forth
the requirements for developing the national plan. At the same time a
small staff of planners were set up in the Washington Office and in each
of the four regional offices, while state supervisors were appointed to
initiate field work.
It is clearly evident that any adequate national plan must be based
on a series of well-conceived state plans, later to be properly integrated
with each other into a unified national plan. It is true that a state
recreation plan to be of the maximum value to the State in future ac-
quisition, construction, development, maintenance, operation, and
legislation, must be prepared by or have the benefit of the experience
and ideas of the state park authorities and also the state planning
authorities.
The state park agency, the organization to be aided by a state recre-
ation plan, and which will benefit most from the correlation of state
plans into a national picture, has been, in most States, the group most
actively interested and has taken the lead in the state study. Cooperat-
ing with these park authorities are the various state planning boards,
fact-finding agencies, whose information and ideas are indispensable to
a proper study.
For the national recreation plan, the study manual sets out rather
specifically the factual information required and the technique of de-
veloping the report. The requirements of the various state plans, how-
ever, have not been standardized and must vary in their context and
approach to fit the various problems to be met in each case. Each of
the forty-eight States has its own pressing and particular recreation
problems problems whose early solution means much to the recreation
program within the State.
The publishing of such a state report by the park department or the
State Planning Board, concurred in by the National Park Service and
given proper dissemination throughout the States to organizations and
individuals interested and influential in recreation could in most cases
secure sufficient public support to obtain legislative concurrence in the
required developments and plans. Each state park authority has con-
tinually in his mind his own particular problems. Each will be confronted
with the problem of budget approval. Many will seek land acquisition
and development funds. Some will require legislative action; others
wish backing to appoint necessary technical and administrative per-
sonnel qualified to meet the problems confronting the state organization.
To delay for a millenium the perfect plan, would be unpardonable.
As park planners we must guard against being carried away by the
60 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
splendor of a theoretical approach to a mechanically complete plan at
the expense of letting opportunities for immediate improvements fall
by the wayside.
Throughout the country, park authorities and planning boards are
laboring with the cooperation of the National Park Service to complete
and publish state recreation reports analyzing the immediate problems
and working out recommendations for the betterment of the state's
services in the recreation field.
From the Middle West, a state report for Illinois, for example, has
been completed by the Department of Public Works and Buildings with
the cooperation of the State Planning Board, the Chicago Regional
Planning Association and with the full-time consultant service and as-
sistance of a State Supervisor of the National Park Service. This report,
upon concurrence by the National Park Service in its context, will be
returned to Illinois and be published by the State Planning Board and
Department of Public Works and Buildings. Chiefly the Illinois plan
outlines a land acquisition program. A carefully worked out and detailed
policy section recommends planning and development standards for
parks in the Illinois system. A proper classification of present holdings
was considered important and was adopted in the plan. The present
technical organization and maintenance and operation funds seem
adequate. However, the dividing of the State into districts was recom-
mended. The qualifications of custodians and maintenance personnel
were recommended to be raised.
The first published state recreation reports will not cover all of the
points necessary in the preparation of the national plan. They will, how-
ever, have served their purpose in recommending a solution of the most
immediate and pressing problems of the States. Regional studies such
as metropolitan Chicago and its environs may be started from the
original reports. The state and the Park Service field personnel may then
assemble the necessary additional information to prepare the first
national plan.
The various States and the Park Service, in participating in the prepa-
ration of state reports, definitely are furthering the ends of assuring
proper recreational facilities. These agencies, by taking the lead in long-
range planning and in planning the proper solution of the recreation
problem in the States, has begun a task that is more important than any
construction projects which may have been, or may be, undertaken by
the Federal Government in state parks or metropolitan recreational
areas. It is certainly true that such planning will make it easier to
obtain from a legislature, funds for land acquisition, for development,
and for maintenance of these same developments.
The Federal Government has no desire to, and is not taking over,
state recreation but it may be very helpful in assisting the States to
obtain proper maintenance and operation funds and personnel.
NATIONAL PARKS 61
The CCC bill passed by the last Congress extending the services of
the corps for three more years definitely placed the allocation of new
camps on the basis of the State's ability to operate and maintain devel-
oped facilities. Certainly from the standpoint of the government, the
assurance of proper protection and use of facilities built with CCC labor
and material funds, is a reasonable request. It is equally true that as-
surance of proper operation and maintenance is an asset to the state
park organization just as inadequate maintenance and operation would
reflect adversely on the organization.
In summation, then, the Park Service has these two functions within
the States: (1) Participating in long-range planning, in master planning
and in guiding the provision of proper legislation, financing and personnel
for the operation of recreational facilities, and (2) the responsibility of
proper allocation and of expediting the work of CCC camps in accord-
ance with the developed state and national plans where proper adminis-
tration and operation are assured.
Relation of Operators to Recreation
DON TRESIDDER, President, Yosemite Park and Curry Company,
Yosemite National Park, Calif.
WITH the coming of inexpensive cars, higher wages, better roads,
and more leisure, the resultant increase in travel very suddenly
dropped into the lap of the National Park Service the problem of han-
dling traffic that was growing rapidly from year to year. The work of
preparing for the next year's increase absorbed most of the energy and
planning power of the people responsible for handling this great influx
of travel. In recent years, growing apprehension has been felt lest we
lose sight of the fact that these parks were set aside to be preserved in
their original scenic integrity and atmosphere; lest, in the rush of han-
dling people, we forget the primary obligation of the Park Service.
In recent years there has been apprehension, much justified, that
perhaps in some respects the job was not quite what it should be. There
has been criticism, justified for the most part, written and spoken, in-
tended by you and people of your group to aid responsible administrators
in directing their energies along lines that would get the result all of us
agree is the one we should have. No one likes criticism, even if it is
justified, whether it is an agency or a bureau or an individual or a
company. Particularly is criticism resented if it is unjustified. I appear
before you with the idea that along with a lot of justified criticism, there
is also a great deal of careless, poorly considered criticism of what we
are attempting to do. I refer to it not from the point of view of resent-
ment, but with the idea that one of the best defenses for our National
Park System is active, intelligent, well-directed criticism; and to the
62 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
extent that that criticism fails to lay a background of fact, it fails to
produce a good result and turn people's minds from what they are at-
tempting to do properly to meet issues that should not have been
issues.
I speak for a modest business in a park that is commonly felt in some
quarters to be one of the worst examples of overdevelopment and over-
commercialization that we have in the Park System. In talking to you
I am not apologizing for what has happened, nor am I attempting to
divert your attention from what is happening to something else. I am
speaking, I hope, in a presentation of a picture of park operation that
will enable you more accurately to see how the job is being done. I am
speaking as a businessman who is trying to operate a business in a
park, to make a profit and meet the primary responsibility that he ac-
cepted when he took his contract a responsibility which was laid down
originally by Secretary of the Interior Lane, who said that "because
of the nature of national park areas," it followed that the public interest
must at all times dictate the decisions affecting private interests. It has
almost become a matter of social distinction in some places in the
country to say that Yosemite Valley is ruined and that it has been over-
commercialized to the extent that people visiting there cannot get their
measure of enjoyment. Secretary Lane realized that the system of more
or less scattered operations under annual revocable permits would have
to be discontinued in favor of operations that would permit the Govern-
ment to look to one concern and say, "We want these facilities in
these places to render these services, in order that the visiting public
may be properly cared for, and only such facilities be built and placed
on park property as are needed in the interest of adequate service." With
the announcement of the policy, he laid down these considerations which
have guided the development since: First, that the area should be un-
impaired for all time, and he emphasized in every paragraph of his
original declaration and instructions to his officers that that was to be
the measuring stick of what would happen to a park; not recreation,
the second point which was benefit and use of the area, nor the third
point, which was the providing of those facilities for the visiting people
that they reasonably required in their recreation and their sightseeing
and tourist activities in a park. Starting with that, the National Park
Service was built up.
The going of Mr. Mather and Mr. Albright and many of the other
old guards is given by critics as an indication that the new group, coming
from other fields, men who are not so-called "old-line employees" of the
Park Service, have not got the picture, that they are not capable of
absorbing the interest and the policy declaration of the people for whom
they are working. Beyond everything else there is a worry that the
operator may, in his desire to make more money, which is a natural
urge we all recognize, press so hard and become so influential that he
NATIONAL PARKS 63
will warp the judgment of the people responsible for park administra-
tion in ways that, in the end, will be damaging to the parks.
The Yosemite, in a recent article, was described as an area in the
valley that was no longer a wilderness area. That, of course, is true,
because the Yosemite Valley changed its atmosphere when the first
tourist party entered it in 1851. It changed even more when the first
roads were built in 1874. Another big change came in 1907 with the
coming of the railroad, and just in proportion to the degree of reasonable
accessibility, either through ease of traffic or inexpensive travel, so did
it open up the park to an ever-widening group of people. Originally it
required so much time and cost so much money to visit a park that the
park patronage was naturally selective. Only those people with money
and leisure could visit a park; and it followed, too, that these people
had had good educational opportunities generally, and a fine feeling for
the out-of-doors. But overnight, into the Yosemite, five hours from
San Francisco with a million and a half people, eight hours from Los
Angeles with approximately three million people, located in California
which has more year-round roads and more automobiles than any State
in the Union, came millions of people who had never been on a park
expedition before in their lives and who had no conception of what a
park was supposed to be. Right there began the trend that concerns all
of you so deeply, and I may say, concerns us so deeply. Because, instead
of dealing with an essentially educated outdoor group, we were then
dealing with the caprices, the desires, the wishes of a whole gamut of
civilization from the slums up.
I will illustrate. Most of the people who enter the park have
had no previous experience and do not realize that they are part of
several hundred thousand. A few years ago in the Yosemite Valley,
while looking through the window of the Ahwahnee Hotel on to the wild-
flower gardens, we saw, on a crowded holiday in which there happened
to be nearly 27,000 people in that seven-by-one-mile area in two days, a
car containing a man, a wife, and three children calmly drive out onto
the wildflower garden and unpack their tent for camping. The operator
headed for them with wrath in his eye, only seeing that picture as it
looked from the delightfully restrained atmosphere of the Ahwahnee
Hotel. Before he could say what he had in his mind, the woman let the
story out that it was their first car, their first vacation, their first visit
to a park from the Mission Street area of San Francisco. They had
pictured that park as green grass, a lovely river, and plenty of room to
camp. It happened to be the only time they were going to get away that
particular year, being Memorial Day. The man was not one of those
people with two weeks' or five days' vacation, but had just that week-
end holiday. When they arrived at the park they found that 15,000
others already were in the campground where perhaps four or five
thousand should be and they did not find the grass and the lovely river
64 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
they expected; but near the Ahwahnee Hotel, there was the answer to
their idea of what they had planned for and saved for for years. It took
nearly three years to eradicate that little track that they left, multiplied
by 15,000 that holiday, and yet they never meant to do any damage,
but simply to enjoy the park.
Another incident is this. During the last few days someone asked
whether we could remove every bit of artificial amusement and enter-
tainment from the Yosemite in such a manner that only those people
who wanted to get the feeling of the out-of-doors and solitude and camp-
ing would come. Could we not eliminate all those fellows with radios
and all those who come to dance? Sometimes an operator or a Govern-
ment man wonders whether anybody should be in a park or not because
of the ever-increasing problems that arise out of the handling of one
person multiplied by five hundred thousand. Last summer on the
Fourth of July, which happened to be Sunday, three boys who had come
into the Yosemite on motorcycles, first trip, were in one of the wash-
rooms of a popular camp and I overheard this conversation: One of the
men said, "Do they dance in this joint?" and the second chap said,
"Sho dey dances in this joint." He said, "Do they dance every night?"
The second said "Sho dey dance every night." Finally, the fellow said,
"Do they dance on Sunday night?" I said, "No, on Sunday night they
don't dance." He said, "What do they expect us to do in this joint?
Look at the scenery?"
Whether we like it or not, we have to deal with every kind of person,
from these boys up to a person of such discrimination and feeling for
the place that he cannot enjoy it if anybody is with him. There are those
who feel that if one person climbs a mountain and gets there through
his own effort, that is better than ten thousand climbing it by car. We
are not going to discuss that, but as a place is made available by car,
certain problems thereafter have to be dealt with that are not peculiar
to the money-making desires of an operator or to the lack of definition
of policy of the Park Service. They arise out of differences in the people
themselves.
In this same article to which I am alluding there was a statement
about the Tuolumne Meadows, and the fact that a high-speed road was
being put through this place for no reason at all and that the atmosphere
was hopelessly lost. If it ever was desirable to preserve the Tuolumne
Meadows unimpaired and as a wilderness area, then not even a trail
should have gone in there. If a trail already was there, then certainly
no wagon road should have gone in, because, even in my lifetime I can
recall the unforgettable experience of camping in the Tuolumne Meadows
where there was no road. When this new highway was proposed two
years ago, people said, "Well, we have the present road; why have
another?" The new automobiles can climb faster, steeper, better, than
the old automobiles. The old automobile could not go up a grade so
NATIONAL PARKS 65
fast that you did not have time to protect yourself coming down in the
opposite direction. But now, automobiles are running around on a road
that is 9 feet wide and, in several places, so narrow that cars cannot
pass for miles on a 27 per cent grade, and yet all these drivers want to
make the top in high. It became a question, either of closing that road
or building a road on which people could travel in comparative comfort
and safety. There was no excuse for putting a road through that would
be so difficult that people could not travel safely on it.
Better and better roads, even before this new one, brought more
and more campers, and it became apparent that some system must be
installed. It became apparent that campgrounds must have sanitary
facilities. A whole new sewer system at 8,500 feet altitude, right through
the middle of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, was needed. The restriction
of camping to the smallest possible spaces made it possible to preserve
the wider areas. Then came a thousand automobiles, bringing five thou-
sand people, and this summer sixty thousand people. Then what hap-
pened? A gasoline station was needed. It would not be placed off in
the woods. It was needed at the nearest accessible point, or otherwise
a staff would be required to show motorists where to find it. We have no
hope of ever making money from a gasoline station there, but we had
to put one in. We have no hope of ever making money out of roadside
housekeeping camps. We have them. We have no hope of making money
out of grocery stores at these camps, because they cannot open until
the first of July and have to close about the first of September. Two
months! It is hopeless from the start.
So anything we do is in the nature of carrying out a primary respon-
sibility to the Park Service to give such facilities as the public requires.
This summer there were as many as two and three thousand campers
at night in the Tuolumne Meadows, many more than entered the
Yosemite Valley in an entire month in 1915!
Next, the article which I have cited said that people, when they come
to a park, should be allowed to have only simple pleasures, that we
should give them nothing else. I want to point out that the more wide-
spread the patronage is, the more different kinds of people there are, the
more complex becomes the problem of what to offer.
Many years ago, when Superintendent Thomson was still alive, we
decided in Yosemite Valley that we would stop dancing in the upper
Valley, with the idea that all the people in the campgrounds could take
a walk after dinner. We would stop the campfire entertainment with
the thought that we wanted to keep the feeling and spirit of the out-of-
doors sincerely. But we found that that was all right for one group who
knew what to do and enjoyed taking a walk and were not afraid to be
alone ; but we found a great group of people that heretofore had not been
recognized, who actually did not know how to take a walk by themselves
in the evening or sit around their own campfires. Drinking, spooning
66 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
under the trees, wandering out in dark places, gambling, grew up to a
great extent. The Government itself not the operator with his idea of
making money out of everything reversed its decision, with the thought
of giving park patrons a couple of hours of something to do, and also
providing entertainment for a thousand young people working for the
operator from the first of May until well into September. These employ-
ees wanted something to do and so, on the request of the superintendent,
the experiments having been given a good trial, we opened again a
dancing pavilion, not with the thought that this was peculiarly fitted to
be a park activity, but with the realization that in the Yosemite Valley,
with a changing population of 8,000 or 10,000 people at a time, problems
of what they are going to do with their time arise immediately. I em-
phasize it with the thought, not to defend the position, but to get clearly
in your minds that that situation exists and is to be reckoned with in
any plan of park development or control.
One illustration of that: Some years ago members of this very or-
ganization, and some of them my closest personal friends, discussed the
problem with me. They said: "Yosemite Valley is no longer a primitive
area. We have got to turn our attention to real primitive areas in this
park and develop some facilities where people can go who do not want
to be mixed up in these great crowds." We conceived the idea of little
camps ten miles apart on trails, no roads. We were going to serve a meal,
just a "pot-o'-mulligan." We were not even going to give them blankets
or floors in then* tents, nor were we going to give them linen. They were
going to be permitted to take a seven-day walk around the park circuit
on the theory that they could do what then only the rich could by going
out with a pack train which costs fifteen to twenty dollars a day per
person. So the six camps were opened up ten miles apart. No running
water, old earth toilets, and just a tent with a dirt floor, a cot and a
mattress. The hikers were supposed to bring their own towels, linen,
sleeping bag, or whatnot. The thought was that teachers, people of small
means, Boy Scouts, and others would use these camps and they never
would be permitted to be elaborated. But what happened to them?
First, running water. No, the very people who had been in on the con-
ception of these camps, when they got into camp, did not like the idea
of going down to the river to bathe. They wanted floors in the tents.
Then they needed to have linen on the beds. Then the physical exertion
of carrying their blankets or sleeping bags was so great that they asked
why we did not provide bedding. At first, we were offering no butter.
Nothing like that. No fresh eggs. But the children wanted to go.
Parents could not bring their children without milk and butter and eggs
and when that camp got through we were offering just about the same
type of service as you would get in any place in a city, maid service,
running water, flushing toilets. Not amusements, not dances, because
the camps only have a capacity of 50 people. We resisted and resisted.
NATIONAL PARKS 67
This has all been going on for fifteen years. But we wound up with
shower baths and the whole completed story, linen, fresh towels, and all.
I want to tell one more thing about the Yosemite Valley. About two
years ago a writer with the thought of helping the picture, not hurting
it, came into the park to look over the situation. He wrote a series on
national parks for a magazine. He discussed the mistake of the deluxe
hotel in Yosemite. He discussed the fact that a swimming pool should
not be in the Valley. He went on to comment on the dance pavilion and
a number of other things. He stayed in that park about two weeks. He
lived at the Ahwahnee. He had room service most of the mornings.
His family went swimming every day. They all enjoyed the dance at
night. I do not mean that he was not sincere; I merely mean that you
have one attitude toward a park if you only stay overnight, are tired as
you can be and expect to go on some place else next day. But suppose
you are going to stay two weeks. Then you want the amenities. I hardly
ever meet a man who does not want to do something other than walk
along the stream or hunt for solitude or enjoy just the simpler measure
of the mountains if he stays any length of time. And so in this latest
story of the over-commercialization of the Yosemite, it was pointed out
that camping in the upper Valley was a matter of psychology, that
people came to the upper Valley because of the fact that Camp Curry
was there with the dance hall, liquor store, cafeteria and soda fountain.
How absurd! The campgrounds in the lower Valley were there. The
people came to the upper Valley because the highest concentration of
scenic value in the whole Yosemite Valley is there the most charming
river banks, the finest views, the most beautiful ground-cover, the
heaviest pine-needle fall. When Camp Curry was started, we did not
look around and say, "We'll take this particular place" and then by
our means of infiltration and promotion of business draw around us ten
thousand campers. No. The campers looked for the most attractive
area, and said, "Here is the place, the nearest to the trails, the nicest
country," and established their camp.
The thought of discontinuing facilities in the upper Valley was sug-
gested in this article. Parenthetically, I might add that there is no
liquor store. I do not know where that conception came from because
there never has been one and the operator would resign rather than let
beer be sold on the place. The writer of the article wanted to discontinue
those services when the cafeteria is the sole means of serving meals to
those campers who do not want to cook their own meals. There we have
a cafeteria serving 700 dinners in the busiest season and a dining-room
that is serving nearly 1,800 more, not because we want to be as big as
we can, but because that many people want to eat.
What does that lead to? It leads to this, as I see it. The National
Park Service is not wavering and making mistakes due to a lack of
fundamental policies that are all written and announced. It is not
68 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
deliberately putting twice the number of people in an area that can
comfortably live there. It is battling with all its might to do just the
contrary. The Park Service is organized as it never was before to protect
the interests of everybody, to give more intelligent study to every prob-
lem. Then, what is the difficulty? It gets down to the fact, first, that if
we are going to control development in parks and if there are to be any
wilderness areas, the answer is not to begin at the tail and work back-
wards, but to prevent improvements from starting. If you do not
want an area to be developed, do not let it start, even with a trail. The
change in the atmosphere of an area depends on the number of people
going in, and at the present time, if an area is under development, the
yardstick, as I know it, is this: What determines the number of people
that ought to be in a given area under existing policies? First, is the
number of people coming in jeopardizing the scenic integrity? If so,
that is too many people. Secondly, if there are so many different kinds
of things with so many different types of amusements and recreation
that the atmosphere is changed, not the mountains, but the very feeling
of the place, then activities should be limited. The final yardstick can
be called a mandate of pleasure to the extent that the Yosemite Valley
can give man days of satisfaction in this area, or pleasure and enjoyment
in that area, to the extent that those man days add up to more benefit
to the public in true terms of enjoyment than the disadvantages of
having that many people in there, up to the point that those two things
meet. The time comes, as it has, when the man-day enjoyment is drop-
ping and the number of people increasing. That is true in Yosemite.
Something must be done about it. When the point is reached where
the man-day pleasures go down, you do what a business does you turn
around and retrench. We must make a change that will bring fewer people
in there at one time. One way is by developing other areas not now
developed and not intensively scenic areas in the park comparable to,
let us say, a national forest. And there are thousands of such acres in
the park. Not every acre of the 1,194 square miles is an acre of Yosemite-
Valley standard. There are unlimited areas for development outside the
park. The next step is to determine the number of people that can be in
any given place comfortably, as was suggested, and beyond that to
work out a mechanism to see that not more than that number of people
get in. Finally, we can develop certain areas at seasons when the greatest
number of people are not there winter, fall, and spring.
In summing up, I want to emphasize that while we recognize the
problem and try to be patient under real criticism, we hope you will
comprehend the fundamental conception of the difficulties with which
we are confronted and direct your criticism toward constructive moves
that will lead us into ways of solution which will not involve dissolution
of one class for the benefit of another.
WILDERNESS AREAS
Development of National Parks for Conservation
THOMAS C. VINT, Chief of Planning, National Park Service
THE founding of Yellowstone Park in 1872 marked the first tangible
change in our national attitude toward our national land policy
which, since the days of the pilgrim fathers, had been one of conquering
the wilderness. That area was set aside to be preserved for its own value.
Since then the conservation movement has moved along considerably
and accomplished many fine things. Of these the movement to protect
the wilderness solely for its own values, as expressed in the proposals to
set aside wilderness areas, is perhaps the most extreme of the conserva-
tion viewpoints that have developed.
The growth of a protective attitude toward wilderness values in this
country, particularly in the last decade, is an important asset to our
national parks. It gives strong support to a restraining hand in the plan-
ning and authorization of development programs, but in its present
status, it is more or less in the crusade period. Its enthusiasts are carry-
ing the banner to new frontiers. While I agree with the crusade for the
protection of wilderness, I am inclined to feel that in the current enthusi-
asm the expression wilderness area has been subject to much abuse and
there may be some confusion as to what it means.
Webster defines wilderness as "a tract of land, or a region, whether a
forest of a wide barren plain, uncultivated and uninhabited by human
beings; a wild; waste; hence, a pathless waste of any kind."
This definition implies an area of considerable size, permits no culti-
vation, no habitation by human beings. The phrase a "pathless waste"
implies no trails or roads. These terms are rather clear and extreme.
While the wilderness quality can be considered as one of the values of
national park areas, to do no more than to establish them as wilderness
areas does not solve the national park problem.
If we could accept Webster's definition of wilderness without quali-
fication and apply it as a single development policy to our national
parks, our problem would be simple. The development plan could be
limited to the construction of an effective barrier around the boundary.
The administration would not need to go beyond an adequate control
to prevent trespass.
The National Park Service could fulfill its charge, that of protection
and preservation, to the ultimate. However, our national park law in-
cludes the words "for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." These
words mean a direct clash with those of protection and preservation.
It is the finding of the point of compromise between these two that
makes the daily work of the National Park Service. Every move is a
decision between preservation and protection on one hand, and the
70 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
benefit and enjoyment of the people on the other. Benefit and enjoy-
ment are words of wide latitude. The phrase "the people," particularly
in a democracy, has a broad meaning and versatile uses. Once you step
into the realm of employing a tract of land for human use and enjoyment,
you enter the field of landscape architecture.
Let us consider the problem of a plan for a new national park. Let
us take a wilderness area an untouched natural area containing some
superlative natural values and outstanding natural features and
designate it a national park. It contains the ultimate in natural land-
scapes. Man cannot duplicate nor can he build better. In the sense of
landscapes the landscape work is done. No development work is neces-
sary. The landscape architect might agree with the wilderness enthusiast
to build a barrier around the boundary and patrol it to prevent trespass.
But what about "for the benefit and enjoyment of the people"?
The landscape architect, if he is practical, asks two questions: How
many people are you going to admit? What are you going to let them
do? Answer these and he can work out a development plan for the area.
At what point will you trespass on the wilderness or intrude on the
perfect natural landscapes?
Homo Sapiens out of all the animal kingdom is a creature that must
be doing something about his surroundings. He disturbs the natural
more than any other animal to obtain his daily needs. Carry him
through the various stages of civilization and he finds he must set aside
a little patch of the natural and protect it in order to have any at all.
Assume that we will admit only one or two persons and require them
to travel afoot on their own resources. The area is still pathless, but
for how long? In entering the pathless wilderness, a man, by nature,
will blaze or mark his trails. Let him repeat or let another follow and
they will, by nature, follow the blazed trail or even a footprint of the
first man through. Increase the number of visitors and before long there
is an established path. Increase that number again several fold or a
hundredfold and the damage under foot increases and spreads.
At some point it is worthwhile, as a means of preservation of the
terrain, to build a path. When the traffic increases, the path must be
built stronger to resist the pressure. This theme can be developed, in-
troducing the saddle horse and the horse and wagon and finally to where
visitors are admitted by automobile. Likewise, the path for the auto-
mobiles will develop through various stages of improvement.
How many people are you going to admit, and what will you permit
them to do while they are in the area? Let us take stock of our present-
day conditions. As the parks are now administered, there is no restriction
as to their mode of travel. However, there are restrictions as to what
activities may be pursued within the park boundaries. Non-conforming
activities are discouraged. No provision is made for summer homes.
Golf courses and other recreational activities requiring constructed
NATIONAL PARKS 71
facilities are discouraged. The recreational activities are more or less
restricted to the sightseer, motorist, hiker and the rider. Fishing is
encouraged, while hunting is discouraged and prohibited. Camping is
restricted to established centers. We are apparently following the proper
course toward answering the question of what we are going to permit
them to do while they are in the park.
Our opportunity for experiment in the future lies in how we might
answer the question: How many people are you going to admit?
The peak load in the travel season is a most serious question. An
analysis will show that peak loads cover but eight or ten, and possibly
in a few cases, thirty days, out of the entire year. If we build to meet it
or build half way to meet it, we shall have a large volume of developed
facilities lying idle during most of the season. This unnecessary
idleness also affects hotel rates and maintenance costs. Some might
think the peak-load problem applies only to the overnight facilities. It
applies also to the circulation system of roads and trails and parking
areas. Some restriction as to the number of people who may be in a
park at any one time is the most obvious way in which we might influence
the use and development of our national parks. It would offer more
toward the preservation of the natural and wilderness values than any
other move that could be made.
The peak load should be eliminated and development made on a level
slightly above the average conditions throughout the year. Such a move
would eliminate unnecessary development, prevent overcrowding of
facilities, make the stay of a visitor much more pleasant and would in-
convenience the general public but a very small amount. The number
of people affected in the total number of visitors to the park in any one
season would be relatively small. I believe that there is no question but
that some trials in this direction should be attempted.
Several years ago when we first developed the Master Plan, the sub-
ject that received the most attention was that of the wilderness area.
We included a map in the Master Plans of several of the larger parks to
outline which were to be designated as wilderness areas and set aside for
that purpose. Our first difficulty was with the definition of wilderness
areas. We found that some of our authorities would not approve an area
as a wilderness area, because it contained a shelter cabin. We found
practically no areas within national parks that would qualify under the
Webster definition, as most of those proposed had at least one trail. In
the long run, I feel that we shall have to give up the idea, as it was first
proposed, and rather than approach the problem from the angle of set-
ting aside wilderness areas within the national parks, we must approach
it from the other direction that is, we must restrict the limits of de-
veloped areas and apply the protection that would be given to the wilder-
ness area to all of the area within the boundaries of the park that is not
a developed area.
72 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Wilderness Aspects of National Parks
JESSE L. NUSBAUM, Superintendent, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
THE concept and purpose of national parks, from the standpoint of
recreation, was epitomized in the report of the Recreation Commit-
tee to the National Resources Board in the following language :
National parks are areas of primeval nature, of superlative scenic quality,
set aside and conserved unimpaired, for the benefit and enjoyment of the
people. Their development should be conducive to the realization of their
recreational and scientific values, arising out of their natural characteristics,
and should be consistent with these inherent qualities.
Proper use of national parks has always been interpreted to mean
that parks should become reasonably and restrictively accessible that
shelter, food, safety, and sanitary accommodations be available to the
public. Formulated high ideals of the National Park Service, for intelli-
gent, protective preservation and utilization of the generous gifts of
nature embodied in national parks, originally were patterned to the
needs of a very limited and slow-moving traffic, largely horse and foot.
None could conceive of the problems, later to be presented to the
nation, and more significantly to national parks, by the spread, speed,
and volume of automobile traffic. Motoring demands of park visitors,
and benefiting outside agencies, so threatened protective and preserva-
tion ideals of the Service as to promote immediate field studies and
survey of unimpaired wilderness resources, and the establishment of
wilderness areas into which no visiting motorist may proceed with his car.
The natural resources of national parks were studied, inventoried,
and classified by areas in four primary groupings the primitive, the
modified, the developed, and the scientific. The scope of this paper is
restricted primarily to the aspect of wilderness and to the primitive and
scientific classes.
Early Dutch and English immigrants to America commonly referred
to unexplored and unoccupied adjacent terrain, whether woodland or
plain, as "the wilderness" from the Middle English word "wildernesse,"
probably derived in turn from the Anglo-Saxon "wilder" a wild beast
rather than the Dutch "wildernis." "Wilderness" survived historically
as the place-name of the wooded area of northeast Virginia, scene of the
indecisive battles of May 6 and 7, 1864, between the armies of Grant
and Lee.
Progressively, as American colonial frontiers were pushed west from
the Atlantic seaboard, the wilderness comprised the area westward of
the fall-line of the Atlantic Coast, westward of the Alleghanies, of the
Ohio, of the Mississippi, of the Missouri, and of the Rockies with the
final recession to the Pacific accelerated by the discovery of gold in the
Sierra of California.
NATIONAL PARKS 73
Possessed by right of discovery and used by the Indian from the time
of ending of the Recent Ice Age, some hundred or more centuries ago,
this vast, trackless, transcontinental waste of woodland, plain, mountain
and desert terrain, teeming with native wildlife, constituted unknown
wilderness a terra incognita to first white explorers. Fur traders
blazed the way into the Indian domain, and opened the traces to ad-
vancing settlement.
Through more than two and one-half centuries, to the 1870 heyday
of unrestricted free utilization of the public domain and its abundant
resources, the American people diligently and relentlessly engaged in
winning, or shall we say impairing or destroying, a transcontinental
wilderness, and depleting the wildlife, actually terminating certain
species. The natural elements of their surroundings, which seem to have
been accepted at that time without appreciation, now show themselves
possessed of tremendous values, as we strive to perpetuate unimpaired,
the last vestigial islands of true American wilderness, and to solve the
problems left in the wake of wilderness recession.
Reverting again to the dictionary, "wilderness" is defined as the
quality or state of being wild. A "wild" is an uncultivated, uninhabited
tract or region, as a forest or desert, or a trackless waste. In this con-
nection I like to associate the word "wilder," the poetical verb transi-
tive, meaning to lead astray. "Aspect," on the other hand, is the appear-
ance to the eye or mind the look, or view from a position facing,
fronting, or regarding a particular direction.
If these definitions are sound, then the aspect of wilderness may be
restricted to the appearance to the eye or mind, from the viewer's posi-
tion, of trackless wastes of forest, desert, mountain or plain, unmodified
and uninhabited by man. But man is a product of wilderness.
Of all the creatures of Nature, man remains the only member that
had the wits to implement his hand to cope with wilderness conditions.
His progress towards civilization dates from the remote times when
perchance in a moment of extremity, he picked up a stone, stick, or club
to better defend himself, or to gain something beyond the range of his
normal reach. Painfully shaping stone or wood to better fit his hand
and purpose, he invented the basic instruments to dominate and deplete
wilderness conditions of living. From these primitive beginnings and
purposes, by substitution of metals, refinement of design, and applica-
tion of power, we have progressively perfected their damaging character.
Each oncoming generation expands and refines the instruments of
potential wilderness destruction. It, therefore, becomes increasingly
imperative that we aggressively strengthen the safeguards to wilderness
preservation.
From the period of Late Pleistocene time, man has been associated
with American wilderness, as one of the biotic entities which by reason
of increase in number, or rate of movement, and practical domination
74 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
of other factors, now constitutes the greatest threat to wilderness value
impairment. We cannot expel human kind from publicly owned primi-
tive wilderness areas as Adam and Eve were expelled from their Garden
of Eden, but we can prescribe primitive modes of travel and use with
the hope that these hampering inconveniences of wilderness living will
definitely restrict the extent of further impairment.
"Impairment" again is a relative or comparative term. Where in the
Nation may we look today for a wilderness that has not been impaired
by man? The scars of impairment may have been healed and largely
effaced by a provident nature, but natural conditions and balances
were disturbed.
During the past year, a group of competent scientists, engaged in the
study of comparative differences in small faunal types of the north and
of the south rims of Grand Canyon National Park, reached the conclu-
sion that variations could best be explained by investigation of com-
parable types of a detached geologic island, so rugged in character and
difficult of access from remote times, as to insure pure types, unmodified
by mainland types or the influence of man. Shiva Temple was selected
as conforming most exactly to the predetermined specifications. Among
first findings on the Mesa top were the telltale artifacts of our wilderness
predecessor, the prehistoric Amerind.
The aspect of wilderness is always a comparative quality to the in-
dividual which he interprets and evaluates in terms of his experience,
appreciation and response. Some may complacently realize great spirit-
ual stimulation and refreshment from modest, restrictive contacts with
Nature. Others, to achieve like ends, may require extensive and extended
contact with Nature in areas of great size and to be reached and enjoyed
only through the expenditure of great physical effort.
The sense of wilderness may be comparatively realized throughout
the major portion of most national parks by venturing modestly out-
ward by primitive means from access highways and developed areas,
but the sense of its full realization may not be achieved until one has
trekked beyond the sound of the motor horn, the sight of the modifica-
tions of man, and entered into harmonious relation with Nature.
Nowhere else in the United States do so many varied opportunities
for the sheer enjoyment of these unspoiled beauty-spots present them-
selves as in the national parks. Mirror Plateau of Yellowstone, a primi-
tive wilderness of more than 300 square miles, situated north of Yellow-
stone Lake and east of Yellowstone River, is characterized by great
expanses of dense lodgepole pine forest, interspersed with luxuriant
open meadows.
The wilderness charm of this extensive area is enhanced by the herds
of elk and buffalo which thrive naturally and abundantly therein.
Approached but not entered by highways, this primitive area offers
rare opportunities for extended wilderness enjoyment.
NATIONAL PARKS 75
The rim-to-rim trail across the Grand Canyon bisects an amazing
wilderness. Sequent chapters of geologic history are here spectacularly
exposed in colorful land forms by the dual processes of erosion and
uplift. Shifting highlights and shadows progressively accentuate the
color features of the canyon terrain. The terrifying turbulence of the
mighty silt-laden Colorado is relieved by the comparative tranquility of
its quiet stretches. The aspect of bordering canyon walls from the river
level is truly one of isolated wilderness.
Separated, and highly elevated by formidable escarpments from all
surrounding terrain, the great densely forested Mesa Verde tableland
conformed exactly to the wilderness requirements of early agricultural
Indians, who sought the natural protection to homes and fields that
precipitous canyon walls presented to aggressive nomadic enemies.
Known to have been intensively occupied and utilized through a
period of more than six centuries to the beginning of the great 23-year
drought ended in 1299 the forces of nature have restored the vegetative
cover, and largely erased or buried the evidences of past occupation,
save for the remarkable remains of their cliff -dwelling homes.
Since road development has been restricted to a single entrance high-
way traversing the North Rim, and to Chapin Mesa, one of the many
tongue-like secondary mesas formed by the paralleling system of second-
ary canyons, Mesa Verde remains largely a wilderness of precipitous
canyons and intervening mesa lands, enhanced by revealed and undis-
closed human history.
The greatest wilderness area in the United States without roads for
motorized traffic, facilities for public accommodations, or terrain suitable
for airplane landing is the primary Colorado River Basin in south-
eastern Utah and its contributary drainage system, including the Green
River from above Labyrinth Canyon and the San Juan from below
Mexican Hat, to their confluence with the Colorado. This practically
unknown area, approachable only to bordering rims by one road on the
east, one on the north, and one on the west comprises an area of upwards
of 7,000,000 acres of spectacularly eroded and brilliantly colorful mesa,
cliff and canyon terrain, which because of the rugged character and
inaccessibility, can best be viewed by airplane.
Some will say that entering, bisecting or looping a national park
with a primary access highway and establishing public accommodation
alongside constitute wanton destruction of wilderness values and justi-
fiably so if road development is excessive or unnecessarily scarring and
the structures of man are not harmonized with the character of the
terrain or obtrude obnoxiously or inescapably in the foreground of
Nature's magnificent exhibits.
That mistakes have been made in the past is frankly acknowledged.
That they may be made in the future under duress of public pressures
is conceivable, despite the fact that the Service is guided technically in
76 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
all physical developments. The decisions of public institutions supported
by tax funds under the democratic form of government are sometimes
nullified by public pressures in the processes of legislation and ap-
propriation.
I cannot overemphasize the desirability of not opening up more of
park areas to motorize travel. As a means of primary access to centers
of visitor accommodation and reasonable approach to primary exhibits,
roads serve a justifiable function in national parks. Extension of motor
highways beyond this limitation is only justifiable when objectives
achieved outweigh the resultant physical destruction, disturbance and
impairment of wilderness values. On such a basis, designated primitive
areas of national parks may never be violated by motor highway develop-
ment as long as natural values survive.
The inherent desire of human kind to tarry, relax and seek new in-
spiration in areas of surpassing natural beauty and charm has been
markedly lessened by the tempo of modern life. The disturbing factor
to the wilderness enthusiast is that man generally is a lazy creature,
grown softer with the advent of the automobile and the paved highway.
He has become so accustomed to the comforts of the modern automobile
that vacation habits have been modified to its use restrictions. He
superficially views the passing panorama of scenic splendor at maximum
allowable speeds, his tempo for rest, relaxation and wilderness enjoy-
ment being geared apparently to the speed of his car. He wants roads
developed to remote objectives, and exhibits a gregarious tendency to
remain overnight where crowds are densest.
Yosemite's glorious high wilderness country attracts only the limited
few from the congested valley floor, even when the remarkable mani-
festations of tumbling water have seasonally recessed almost to the dis-
appearing point.
For the past 17 years, I have observed the growth of these trends
with increasing concern. As a responsible field officer, I have been forced,
reluctantly, to realize that indicated desires of the vast majority of the
more than 15,000,000 park visitors of the past year constitute a
mandate that is perhaps inescapable as to primary access roads and
adjacent visitor accommodation in new national parks.
However, by the same token, in view of changing travel trends and
vacation habits, the policy of the National Park Service in perpetuating
wilderness areas and aspects is assisted and fortified.
It has been publicly stated that true wilderness areas are not by their
nature compatible with national parks. The answer to this question is
that national parks are the only recognized areas that today actually
provide complete preservation of wilderness values. Search where you
may, you will not find in any approved Act of the Congress, like author-
ity and instruction to insure equal preservation of wilderness values on
other publicly administered domain. By the nature of their authority,
NATIONAL PARKS 77
approved Congressional Acts are more permanent and binding on their
administering agencies, and less subject to change than the pronounce-
ments of lesser administrative authorities.
To establish primitive areas within national forests, the Secretary of
Agriculture had to terminate lumbering, grazing by domestic stock,
mining and other commercial uses on lands embraced therein, to exclude
public roads for mechanized transport, public airplane landings, and
public concessions, such as hotels and summertime homes. Activities
terminated on these lands were legally established functions of Forest
Service management. Excluded developments and operations were per-
missive uses of forest lands.
Perhaps it is the modern world that invented loneliness in the deserts
of civilization, from which the automobile now provides the primary
means of escape to the charm and loveliness of open country. People
generally are beginning to look back upon primitive nature as something
of exceptional value and fundamental significance to mankind. In real-
ity, contacts with nature through the vast period preceding the rapid
growth of civilization had a very great effect on mankind.
The perpetuation and preservation, unimpaired, of wilderness values
of national parks continue as its most potent ideals and functional
objectives.
The Primitive Areas in National Forests
C. M. GRANGER, Assistant Chief, Forest Service
1GREW up in Pasadena, California, and led the life of the usual
small-town dweller with occasional trips to the seashore or to the
near-by mountains, but never an excursion into more remote frontier
areas other than by train across the deserts of the Southwest in the pre-
automobile days. I went to college in Michigan, took the examination
for the Forest Service, and in July, 1907, was sent to what is now the
Sequoia National Forest at the southern end of the Sierra Nevadas. I
was given assignments which took me, in company with the various dis-
trict rangers, to the back country where travel was then exclusively by
horse and pack horse. I remember as keenly as if it were yesterday the
great thrill I got in being in a country where no other persons were en-
countered for days at a time and in the realization that it was nearly
one hundred miles to the nearest railroad station.
My conviction is that the average person is similarly thrilled by
getting into country which has the principal elements of great remote-
ness from the daily experiences and artificialities of life and the custom-
ary surroundings. This belief is so firmly lodged in the minds of those
who direct the land-planning policies of the Forest Service that it has
brought about a definite and large-scale provision within the National
Forest of areas where this experience may still be enjoyed.
78 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
In those early days, however, when the National Forests were still
young and much of their area still unopened, the prevailing sentiment
in the western country was that there was still too much wilderness.
The urge was for development, for more roads, and there was, of course,
a sharp rise in this curve of desire for development with the advent of
the automobile. Then, too, the men of the Forest Service themselves,
whose job involved the administration of individual areas larger than
some of the Eastern States, felt unduly handicapped by the tediousness
of horse travel over terrifically rough country. This handicap was espe-
cially oppressive in dealing with forest fires, where prompt suppression
required prompt access.
Thus, in a comparatively few short years, much of the untouched
country was opened by roads, and there came a sudden realization that
relatively there was not a great deal of the old wilderness left. A definite
plan for assigning considerable areas to indefinite retention in the
wilderness state began to take form.
My recollection is that this movement was first sharply focused on
the Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota. Here there existed
the only large area of roadless canoeing country in public ownership left
in the United States. A little group of men, including Aldo Leopold,
asked for the exclusion of roads from the territory embracing the choice
canoe routes. This proposal at first threw some consternation into the
ranks of the men responsible for fire protection in that extremely difficult
fire country, because they did not see how the country could be saved
from fire without roads. Rather quickly, however, these administrative
necessities were reconciled with the acknowledged importance of keeping
this country a canoeing country, and not one for the invasion of auto-
mobiles.
In casting about over the National Forest areas to find those portions
which might be classified as primitive areas, we naturally found that in
many cases there were certain established uses often antedating the
creation of the National Forests. In many cases, the grazing of cattle
and sheep had been going on on these areas almost from the beginning
of the livestock industry in the West. Prospecting or actual mining
operations had also found their way by trail into some of the most remote
areas. Therefore, it was impossible to find many really large tracts
wholly free from the invasion of any economic use.
Nevertheless, there were found a good many quite sizable portions
of the National Forests which, despite some economic use, still retained
most of the characteristics of the wilderness the early frontier and
which could appropriately be classified so as to retain that character
indefinitely. Under this concept, these areas were given the designation
of wilderness areas (the term now is primitive areas) and dedicated by
specific order to that form of use. Naturally, the available areas were
mostly those undeveloped because f relative scarcity of economic
NATIONAL PARKS 79
resources within their borders, so there was no measurable conflict with
demands for economic utilization of the resources of the National Forests.
For each one of these primitive areas a specific plan has been pre-
pared embracing the principles of management which are to apply.
This plan is formally approved by the Chief of the Forest Service, or,
in some cases, by the Secretary of Agriculture, and can be changed only
by the formal act of the approving officer.
In most cases, the management plan provides for either no utilization
of the timber or very restricted logging. On about two-thirds of the
areas the continuance of grazing as an already established use is per-
mitted, but in most cases the grazing use is rather limited. Reservoir
developments are found to be quite unlikely on practically all of the
areas. Hotels or other resorts and developments of similar character
inconsistent with a wilderness classification are positively excluded.
While in some cases pioneer roads had already invaded parts of the
areas, further road development is excluded in nearly all cases. Con-
sideration is now being given to eliminating from primitive areas those
portions where roads have already been constructed or which cannot
be properly protected without building roads. Trails necessary for pro-
tection or the use of the area itself, and the essential fire protection im-
provements, are provided for. Incidentally, the growing use of radio
greatly diminishes the need for telephone lines into these back countries.
A recent development has been emergency landing fields for fire pro-
tection, but with their use for commercial plane travel prohibited.
Today, there are in the National Forests 73 primitive areas totaling
over 14 million acres. They range from a few thousand acres to one
which contains over one and a half million acres ; 30 of the areas contain
over 100,000 acres each, and quite a few more are not far below that
figure. As can be seen from the map, these areas range throughout the
West, and include every major forest type.
Current review will no doubt show that a number of these areas are
too small or otherwise not qualified to retain the classification of primi-
tive area as more recent definitions describe it. Naturally, most of these
primitive areas are in the West, though there have been established in
the Eastern National Forests quite a few small natural areas (an area
which is preserved altogether in an untouched condition), principally
for study of the natural laws which control forest growth. A census
recently conducted shows 40 more areas of 100,000 acres or more each
still devoid of roads. These are no\\ being studied to determine which of
them may be given a primitive area classification.
How many primitive areas should there be in the United States?
Where should they be? How large should they be? These questions are
hard to answer. It is relatively easy to say how many campgrounds
are needed to take care of a fairly measurable camping load, but who
has a measuring stick which will define quantitatively the area which
80 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
can profitably be used in its primitive condition to serve the intangible
and immeasurable spiritual needs of the people? The only immediate
answer is to keep roads out of the remaining roadless areas until more
study and more experience show specifically for each area whether its
highest use lies in retention as part of the frontier or in development.
Fortunately, the National Forests are so vast and offer such a variety
of recreational use along with their other uses that it is possible to pro-
vide extensive primitive areas as a part of the balanced program of
recreational and economic use of these public properties. These National
Forests primitive areas are supplemented by those portions of the Na-
tional Parks which are found to be suitable for similar reservation and
the very substantial areas recently given this classification of the Indian
Reservations.
What is the best method and agency for the administration of these
primitive areas? My answer is that by their very primitive, frontier
nature the best administration is the least administration. Formality
spells the death of the very reason for being of such areas. What they
need is to be allowed to lie outdoors with only such administration as
is necessary to protect them from destructive processes which are not
a part of the normal operation of nature's laws, or where nature's laws
must be partly held in check to prevent the destruction of the values
which form the basis for the classification and dedication of these tracts.
The simplest, most appropriate and most economical administration
and protection for a primitive area is that which can be afforded by the
manager or custodian of the public reservation of which the primitive
area is a part. These primitive areas would lose their quality if overrun
by great throngs brought into them by the medium of too many organ-
ized trips. Their very charm and their spiritual value lie in the fact that
one may find solitude in them. Anything savoring of Cook's tours on a
large scale would be fatal. Their use by other than hikers is best facil-
itated by simple dude ranches near their perimeter where those seeking
outings in such an environment may be adequately accommodated with
horse transportation and guides if need be. These facilities should, of
course, include those of sufficiently unpretentious character so that the
purse of the person of limited means will not be too small to take ad-
vantage of them.
The question has recently been raised as to whether these areas
should be given a definite legal status which will prevent changes in
their boundaries or the revocation of their classification by administra-
tive action. Fear is expressed in some quarters that today's order by
the Secretary of Agriculture of the Chief Forester setting aside one of
these areas might be modified or reversed by the successor of one of
these officials. I think there is no categorical answer to this question.
On the other hand, there is nothing in history to suggest hasty or ill-
advised public action of this character by such administrators. In the
NATIONAL PARKS 81
beginning, it was felt unwise to say as to any area that forever and ever
its use will be of such and such a character. Economic conditions change,
recreational habits change, centers of population shift, and many other
fundamental changes occur which bear directly on policies and programs
of use of public resources. Such changes, of course, could be recognized
and provided for by suitable Congressional enactment if primitive areas
were safeguarded by law. On the other hand, there is a good deal to be
said in behalf of administrative authority to meet changes as they
arise, provided that authority is exercised only after consideration of all
of the public interests involved, which in most cases might appropriately
be decided after public hearings on proposed changes. Furthermore,
the adoption of the reservation-by-law method might readily involve
delays and frustrations which would seriously retard and unsettle the
movement.
Whichever course is ultimately decided upon, the important thing
is to recognize and provide for the very great, if wholly immeasurable,
needs for places where a person may go and find all the values that go
with solitude and the interests which lie in seeing sizable samples of
what this country looked like in the days of Lewis and Clark and their
contemporaries .
Service of State Parks to National Parks
RICHARD LIEBER, President, National Conference on State Parks, Indianapolis, Ind.
If them hast wanderings in the wilderness
And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor
A) I have been asked to contribute to the important subject under
discussion this morning you will soon find yourself in the sad fix of
Euelpides in Aristophanes' "Birds" when he inquired, "Who brought
that owl to Athens?" So anything I could say on the subject would add
little information for those present who are already better informed.
It seems that we park people, national as well as state, foresters, wild-
life students and enthusiasts, in short, we Nature lovers, agree on essen-
tials yet more or less stumble over policies, if not expediencies, in carry-
ing out that which is demanded of us, namely the dual but conflicting
duty of presentation as well as the preservation of these extraordinary
places of natural beauty and interest under our care, whether they
be state or national properties.
I have been asked to speak on the "Service of State Parks to National
Parks." Being deeply interested in both of them it is my honest aim to
seek for light instead of engendering heat. It would be much easier for
me to reverse the subject and call it "Service of National Parks to
State Parks," for that has been the case if you do not look any farther
back than '33.
82 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
During the 18 years of its existence the National Conference on State
Parks has cooperated with the National Park Service. This cooperation
naturally has not been free from selfish interest because the planning of
state parks has ever leaned heavily upon the ideals and experience of
the great national prototypes.
Calling a group of men together for its first meeting at Des Moines,
Iowa, in 1921, it was the thought of Stephen Mather that the creation of
state parks should not only relieve pressure on the National Park Service,
but also that much of superior scenic beauty still available in the States
could be preserved if the various States would undertake the work.
I have always felt that it was not in Mather's mind to create state
parks merely as a relief to the National Park Service from the necessity
of opposing or being compelled to take over undesirable properties for
national use, but inclined to believe that he hoped, as we all did, that
the creation of state parks would relieve the pressure not only in the
establishment of areas but in their use after their establishment.
While this particular relief has not yet come about, there is as much,
if not more, need for state help. The greatest service which at this time
an intelligent state administration could render through its park service
is the lessening of the load of so-called historic monuments wished or to
be wished onto the National Park Service for restoration and mainte-
nance. If the Government can help with the initial cost, well and good,
but administration and maintenance in all fairness should rest with the
States. Such a Monument is part of the State's historic past as well as
an asset in its economic present. Aside from that, an unreasonable in-
crease in National Monuments and their cost ultimately will mean a
serious loss of much-needed funds to the National Parks as well as the
diminution of interest in and respect for a system which would include
nonsignificant if not commonplace memorials.
It must be left to some future historian to trace out what actually
happened in these last 18 years of extended park service, both in the
parks and to the parks. Far from relieving pressure of use on national
properties the result has been an increased pressure both on state and
on national parks. When we built the first state park in Indiana there
were 65,000 registered automobiles. There were no auto highways as
we know them today. Indiana now has a million or so of registered cars
and nearly 60,000 miles of hard-surface Federal, state and county roads.
The pressure came on us all at once and that which originally was
planned as an adequate service area became quite insufficient to take
care of the unexpected influx of visitors. I have always believed that a
compact service area in which we necessarily sacrifice the natural aspect
of the scene is in itself the best safeguard for preservation of any given
park, provided that we restrict to a minimum the building of automobile
roads and as we have been charged, metropolitan promenades, some-
times called trails.
NATIONAL PARKS 83
Let us be clear then what we mean by our general theme "wilderness"
or what it is that we are trying to preserve both in the national and
state parks, likewise what the forces are which endanger this wilderness.
If by wilderness we mean the fortuitous residue now held in public
ownership, a third question looms up, namely, is it our purpose to pre-
serve intact so far as that is humanly possible this wilderness residue
or are we proposing in a manner to make museum specimens out of
this, that or the other feature in these public parks?
Over 300 years ago Captain John Smith and a band of English
colonists made an onslaught on the American landscape. Now the con-
quest of a continent has been finished with all of its attendant gruesome
waste.
The creation of our national as well as state parks is part of the great
conservation movement which set in when we began taking stock of our
national resources. So far as we parkmen are concerned there are still
stately remnants of the pristine glory, in fact we can justly claim that
some of the finest examples are in public possession, but nevertheless
we have to face the fact that they are remnants and that any future sub-
division will spell utter destruction.
I think that some bewilderment has come about in the use of the
term "wilderness" which, according to definition, is "a tract or region
uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings." What we perhapss
mean is the preservation in its natural aspect of the area we have selected
as park, barring only the unavoidable elements of intrusion demanded
by service to the visitor and the provision for his physical comfort. For
that reason I have never quite liked the idea of setting aside wilderness
areas in state or national parks. If the area is a real park one of out-
standing beauty and interest it must follow that the entire property
should be treated, conserved and, if necessary, brought back as much as
possible to its natural condition.
Speaking of saving wilderness areas in parks sounds to me in many
cases either as an apology further to proceed with "improvements" or
an alibi for having so far artificialized the natural prospect. There are
many things that we now wish could have been handled differently.
I well realize how easy it is to find fault even with what we have done
ourselves and how difficult it was in the beginning to chart a course when
the sudden change in national transportation set in, bringing masses
and masses of people into these public properties, who had to be taken
care of.
We realize now that the automobile has been the most powerful
single factor in increasing this pressure. What a strange thing this
automobile is! At one and the same time it has enhanced our appreciation
and enjoyment of the scenery and on the other with concomitant high-
ways has maimed and destroyed it. With respect to our parks, the
majority of the millions and millions of folks who come in, unwillingly
84 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
destroy, yet every automobile tire and every human foot leaves its
depreciating imprint on the scenery.
In February, 1935, Secretary Ickes made a statement on state parks
which by implication also fits national parks :
When state parks are more removed from crowded centers, if I had my way,
I would foster and cherish the wilderness aspect of these areas. I hope as the
States develop their own park systems, they will have in mind that citizens
in time to come would like to know what the country in each State looked like
before we civilized people came in and began to work our will on it.
It is high time that we lend action to this thought. As administrators
we should have the courage to say "no" when more and more service
with inescapable artificialities is demanded. Frequently we have taken
an ill-advised step simply because we saw no avenue of escape. That
happens every time, as the sapient Mr. Dooley used to say, when we
take the second step without having considered the first one. With the
current great expansion of recreational facilities we have not used
enough care to separate the distinctive qualities of parks and have only
too often over-expanded their recreational services instead of primarily
maintaining the sanctity of its perfect natural entity. The strange thing
is that, from the Secretary down to any one of us, we want to keep these
great public possessions, whether state or national, for the enjoyment
of this, and to preserve them for coming generations. Director Cammerer
over and over, in the best tradition of his office, has pointed out the
inviolability of a great national heritage. But, do we always succeed?
Conrad Wirth, speaking at the Skyland meeting of the National
Conference on State Parks three years ago, submitted a clear-cut division
between state parks that are primarily set aside for preservation and
parks that are primarily set aside for recreation.
In support of my own thoughts on the subject I wish to quote from
it the following sentences as fundamentals.
While there is a tendency for park conservation areas and the park recrea-
tional areas to grow together, we must always bear in mind the distinction
between them, and forever seek a means of separating these two types. I say
this because if the bars were let down and no consideration given to park con-
servation areas (and that is an easy thing to do, for park recreational areas are
very popular with the masses), we should soon find that they would encroach
so far on our conservation areas that the latter would cease to be such and
would automatically become recreational areas.
That is exactly what is happening both in the States and in the Nation.
Much of this wrong approach, forced on us as the inescapable results
of an enormously expanding tourist movement, may still be cured; all
of it must be avoided in the treatment of new properties. Do not let us
yield to this vast rushing army of vacationists, viewing them as masses
who have to be satisfied in whatever reasonable or unreasonable thing
NATIONAL PARKS 85
they may demand, but rather as they surely would wish to be considered,
as eager, thoughtful and kindly folks who would want to enjoy and to
come under the spell of majestic nature instead of becoming, against
their will, part of the forces of progressive destruction.
State Departments might well cooperate with the National Park
Service to tell their people that any provision to take care of possible
peak loads will ultimately not only spoil their own enjoyment and ap-
preciation but will with certainty ruin that which we all love and which
we have sworn to preserve.
Nor is there a better opportunity for the States to show their ap-
preciation for the great help the National Park Service through Fechner's
CCC camps has extended to them.
My concern therefore is not to set forth my own thoughts of deep
love and reverence for our public wonderland nor of my vast pride in it.
My hope is rather that we may find the help of millions and millions of
our people who will, in better understanding of the great difficulties,
work with us to protect the remaining scenic glory of our great country.
Let us all consider these marvelous and inspiring spots, large and
small, as a sacred inheritance which, with all the strength at our com-
mand, we must protect against change and thus transmit them to future
generations in order that they too in their time may find understanding
of and inspiration in their own primeval America.
Wildlife on the National Forests
H. L. SHANTZ, Chief, Division of Wildlife Management,
U. S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture
THE national forests grew naturally out of the public domain, and
were set up near the beginning of the century as a result of strong
leadership calling for a check in the destruction of timber, and with it,
watersheds and drainage channels. This general movement which gave
us the national forests and the national parks is now demanding that
protection be given not only to Federal land, but to state and private
lands as well.
The great block of land, comprising 170,000,000 acres of national
forests in Federal ownership, must meet, by reasonable adjustment, the
requirements of agriculture, industry and recreation. The best present and
future use of land involves a careful consideration of physiographic
and biological factors and the social and economic needs of the national
and local human society. It must be managed on a land planning basis and
the principle of multiple use reasonably applied.
The Forest Service must, as a managing agency, determine the
relative needs for production of forest products such as timber, pulp
and chemical wood; use of forage by livestock, use by wildlife; and
recreational use by men. For about twenty years the Forest Service
86 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
has been making special wildlife studies, stressing stock-taking and the
accumulation of data and their analyses as pointing the approach to a
possible solution of the many and varied management problems.
Wildlife management in a modern sense is in itself new when applied
to so large an area as that comprised in the national forests. In the minds
of many, wildlife is still "ferae naturae," a thing of wild nature, which, like
the wind and the sunshine, is not definitely tied to the land on which it lives.
But the problem is not a simple one. The physical environment, the
biological interrelationships, the social and economic interests, divided
legal authority, and the conflict of various agencies, make the problem
very complicated. The Forest Service is attempting to meet these
problems by placing its program on a sound factual basis with regard
to the animals involved, the resources of soil, water, forage and weather
conditions, to give equitable consideration to the various uses of the
forests, and to meet the reasonable demands of conflicting interests and
public agencies with comity and amity. We seek to know the resource in
food, the extent to which this food is being used during different periods
of the year, the extent to which wildlife and domestic stock injure other
forest resources, the desirable size of herbivorous and other game popu-
lation and which are the best and most desirable methods of controlling
population.
The larger game animals are relatively evenly distributed over the
national forests of the West. On the Pacific Coast our forage is utilized
by large herbivorous game animals more than by domestic livestock,
and the same is true of northern Washington, Idaho and Montana. In
the central and southern Rockies both wildlife and domestic stock use
is heavier. In the West more than 75 per cent of all the big game animals
are on the national forests for at least part of the year. On these forests
there has been a rapid and a sustained increase in number of big game
animals since the forests were established.
The winter range problem is undoubtedly largely controlling in
optimum numbers of big game. It pertains mostly, however, to lands
outside the national forest boundaries, particularly in the western
country. In general about 9,000,000 acres of additional winter range
with more management in the better interests of wildlife are needed to
go with present numbers of big game on the national forests, and about
25,000,000 acres with more consideration to wildlife requirements are
needed to go with the summer game range capacity of the national forests
even under present conditions of domestic stocking. Just how close these
balances can be brought together is problematical, and certainly it will
require very definite cooperation among all interested and affected
agencies to bring about a more satisfactory year-round condition. The
study that has been made of this factor in wildlife management deserves
mention among the important developments.
The determination of the number of deer or elk or other large herbiv-
NATIONAL PARKS
87
ora, their seasonal drift, and the extent of over-utilization of browse
on part or all of the range, has occupied every national forest region.
Deer, protected by a buck law and control of predators, have over-used
their range, especially in winter. This is true particularly in eastern
Oregon, northeastern California, central and south Utah, in the Lake
States and on the Allegheny National Forest and the Pisgah National
Forest and Game Preserve. Elk in Washington, Montana and Wyoming
have badly damaged their range. Careful surveys of range utilization,
migrations, and of the harmful effects of overcrowding have been made
as guides to better management.
Plans under which the States and the Forest Service operate together
to improve the conditions for game or fish production, set the number
and sex of the game to be removed, in order continually to balance use
with the amount of available forage and properly to adjust use by differ-
ent animal species and recognize other desirable uses of forest lands,
have been entering into in many places, thus enabling the Forest Service
really to manage game and fish as it would any other forest product.
Regulated hunting is recognized as the only remedy for the over-con-
centration of big game on many of the national forests, a condition
which is gradually becoming worse. Continual buck killing does not
control over-population and results not only in an unbalanced sex ratio,
but deterioration of the herd partly by a lack of natural selection of
males, and directed by shortage of food due to over-population. These
facts are becoming increasingly evident as a result of careful checking
combined with weights and measurements of the kill.
It is being generally recognized by such game authorities as Seth
Gordon, Harold Titus and others, that more conservation will probably
destroy rather than perpetuate herds of herbivorous game animals. To
this end agreements in game management such as those now employed on
the Selway in Idaho, with Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina,
on the Pisgah and Kaibab, and with many other States, in which sex and
number to be taken can be decided on the basis of biological need, will
prevent catastrophes such as occurred on the Kaibab some years ago.
The 1937 population of big game was nearly 150 per cent higher than in
1924 and the number of deer had more than doubled in ten years. Figures
for 1937, some based on actual counts and some on estimates, indicate:
1,493,000
deer o
n 157 natic
138,000
elk
93
54,000
black-brown bear
132
17,000
antelope
35
10,500
mountain sheep
56
5,100
grizzly
26
6,700
moose
29
17,500
mountain goats
28
6,200
peccary
5
600
wild boar
2
88 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Our estimates of fur-bearing animals have not progressed as far as esti-
mates on big game animals and more thorough observations are needed.
Such information as has been assembled indicates present populations
of 142,600 beaver, 227,000 muskrat, 129,000 raccoon, 146,000 mink,
270,000 skunk, 313,000 weasel, 150,000 fox, 73,000 marten, 47,500
badger, 6,500 otter, 9,000 ringtailed cat, 700 fisher and 600 wolverine.
These estimates do not by any means indicate the maximum possibilities
of fur -bearer populations on the national forests.
Estimates of predators show about 238,000 coyotes, 96,000 lynx and
wildcat, 4,100 mountain lion, and 3,000 wolves on the national forests.
The number of game animals killed in 1937 by predators was approxi-
mately 113,000 deer, 1,200 antelope, 4,600 elk, 1,500 mountain goats,
790 mountain sheep, and 52 moose. The estimated kill by hunters was
103,000 deer, 13,000 elk, 82 antelope, 700 mountain goat and sheep,
150 moose, 62,000 coyotes, 11,500 lynx, 712 mountain lions and 300
wolves. The predator kill is greater than the hunter kill in all game
animals except elk and moose.
With over 70,000 miles of trout streams and large numbers of ponds
and lakes, we have with the CCC and in cooperation with the Bureau of
Fisheries and the state fish and game departments and state universities,
made real progress in stream and lake surveys. With this factual mate-
rial at hand, fish planting can be undertaken with assurance of success.
These studies are used as a basis for management plans whereby
stocking and take are controlled in the interest of maintaining the high-
est possible sustained yield. As an example of the extent to which such
studies have received attention, last year 30 lakes on the Snoqualmie
National Forest in Washington were given physical, chemical and biolog-
ical surveys, 130 on the Willamette National Forest in Oregon, and
1,003 bodies of water in the Lake States. In California on the Inyo
National Forest, 35 separate stream areas have been set aside for studies
of trout planting, food requirements, and the effect of fishing efforts.
Retaining dams have resulted in permanent streams in which natural
spawning has restocked many otherwise sterile lakes of the High Sierras.
Stream-bank improvement, by fencing and the resulting improvement
in fish food and conditions favorable for trout, has greatly increased
fish production in New Mexico.
As the big game herds gradually developed in the Yellowstone Na-
tional Park, the Forest Service has withdrawn domestic use of the area
surrounding the Park until now we have a land area equal to 78 per cent
of that of the Park on which domestic stock is not allowed to graze and
which is held, except for the use of itinerant dude-ranchers' horses and
Forest Rangers' horses, entirely for the use of wildlife. In handling our
problems we have had the most friendly cooperation of the Park officials
and we have worked together to secure a solution to the difficult problem
of excess of elk on both summer and winter range.
NATIONAL PARKS 89
The difficulties hampering ideal game management are chiefly (1)
physical, such as unfavorable site, soil, plant cover, and variable weather;
(2) biological, such as lack of balance between forage and number of
domestic stock, forage and herbivorous game, conflict between game
and domestic stock, between varieties of game, excess population on
restricted areas, and depleted population on other areas; (3) political,
in many of the States a lack of delegated authority or organization to
enable them to cooperate with the Forest Service on this phase of our
land management program; (4) ownership problems, in the inclusion of
areas of privately owned land within the forests, and a lack of proper
balance between summer range on the forest and winter range which is
often on private ranch land in the valleys and foothills.
From the standpoint of the public there are those who wish nothing
killed not even the predators; there are those who want all predators
exterminated; there are sportsmen who see only the game and cannot
see the depleted range; there are farmers whose crops are being destroyed
by game animals; and there are those who think we can feed our excess
of big game, thereby developing a semi-domesticated herd.
The Forest Service is seeking a balanced economy which will some-
how deal justly, with these conflicting interests, protecting our wildlife
and the land on which it roams, and meet, in so far as possible, the social
and economic needs of the Nation and at the same time considering the
local need; in other words, the management of the resources under a
principle of sensible proportions according to locality.
National Parks and Wildlife
JOSEPH S. DIXON, Field Naturalist, National Park Service, San Francisco, Calif.
SINCE the national parks were set aside to preserve their outstanding
natural features unimpaired for the benefit of future as well as our
present generation, protection becomes a primary and major function
of the National Park Service. This is particularly true with regard to
the endemic plant and animal life found in our national parks, especially
of those native species that have been exterminated from their former
habitats by encroaching civilization. Many species have thus escaped
impending extinction by persisting in areas that have subsequently been
made national parks, which have become veritable "cities of refuge"
for them.
The National Park Service has taken steps to have one "wildlife"
ranger appointed in each national park, whose primary duty is to keep
the Park Superintendent and the Wildlife Division informed as to plant,
fish and all other wildlife conditions in that park. Through the cooper-
ative efforts of the entire ranger force, an annual census is taken of the
larger birds and mammals in each national park. The method used is to
90 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
count the number of deer, elk or bear in typical are?,s of known size or
acreage and upon these counts is based the estimates which are gotten
out each year. It has been our experience that if the same area is covered
each season by the same man at the same time of year, accurate com-
parable results are obtained.
Probably one of the most exact censuses recently taken is the winter
count of the Kaibab deer herd. Here, following a fresh fall of snow, with
national forest, national park and Arizona state game officials cooperat-
ing, it has been possible, with an adequate number of riders, to cover
the main winter range and to count most of the deer in a given area.
However, one fact is generally agreed upon by all parties, which is
that preservation of habitat, including food, shelter and safe breeding
places is essential to the continued existence of any species. The need
for preservation of the various types of ecological habitats is essential
if we are to maintain any adequate supply of native wildlife in our na-
tional and state parks. This is the reason why the major portion of the
time and efforts of the wildlife technicians of the National Park Service
has been spent in examination and study of possible and probable effects
of the hundreds of projects that are proposed each year in our national
and state parks. The inter-relation of living animals is also studied by
our wildlife technicians. Thus one man is giving special attention to a
study of the food habits of the coyote in Lava Beds National Monument,
and another to a study of the food habits of the coyote in the Yellow-
stone region.
Another example of great importance has been forage problems of
deer in Yosemite, Sequoia and Zion National Parks. In all three areas
mule deer have increased until they have become so numerous that they
have threatened to destroy certain native plants and shrubs which are
most palatable to deer and hence their preferred food. When the most
desirable food is exhausted the deer turn to the less palatable food plants.
In order that we may have some "yardstick" by which we can measure
this "deer pressure" on native vegetation, we have erected, through the
help of CCC enrollees, a series of small selected fenced areas or plots
in representative forage areas on the floor of Yosemite Valley, as well
as in Sequoia National Park and at other critical areas. These sample
plots are small, usually being 50 feet square, and are fenced so as to
exclude deer but to admit small mammals and birds. Some surprising
results have already been shown by these fenced plots. Thus the first
season after the plot had been fenced at the lower margin of the Bridal
Veil Meadow in Yosemite, I found that the deer nipped off and ate 80
per cent of the heads of the cow parsley just as the flowers started to
unfold while inside the fenced area none were destroyed. In a similar
manner, the second season I found by actual count 60 fine, healthy
plants of the Small Tiger Lily (Lilium parvum) in full flower inside the
fence and only four flowering plants of this species could be found out-
NATIONAL PARKS 91
side the fence where they formerly had been equally numerous. Similar
surprising results have been noted and recorded in other fenced sample
plots.
Another important phase of ecology study in Yosemite is carried on
by the Yosemite School of Field Natural History. Each year a group of
twenty graduate students chosen from universities from all over the
United States gather for six weeks of intensive field work in Yosemite.
Three weeks out of the six are spent in special ecological study. Each
year a special area is chosen on our Boundary Hill reserve area. In this
selected area a detailed study is made of every living thing found there,
starting with geology and soil formation and continuing on up through
plants, trees, insects, amphibians, birds and mammals. The location,
kind and size of each growing tree, shrub and plant is accurately plotted
on graph paper. Photographs are taken and the whole finished report is
placed on permanent file in the Yosemite Museum. Not only does this
give definite data for present administrative use but it also provides
accurate, detailed information for the future. Thus it will be possible in
1997 by consulting this permanent record to learn just what the condi-
tions were there in 1937. An accurate record of conditions as they existed
on the floor of Yosemite Valley in 1837 would be priceless to us today.
In our national parks we are making special efforts to preserve such
vanishing typical North American mammals as bison, bighorn, wolverine,
timber wolf, fisher and pine marten. Let us examine into the areas that
offer possible hope for the future for certain of these species. Let us
take the grizzly bear and timber wolf as examples of large carnivorous
animals which cannot well be maintained on the open cattle ranges of
the west because of their destructiveness to domestic livestock. The
grizzly bear which was selected as the state animal of California was
formerly one of the best-known and most widely distributed species of
mammals in California. Yet, through the coming of civilization and the
settlement of the State, this, the outstanding mammal of California,
became extinct in practically one generation. In my study and investi-
gation of the faunas of the national parks of the west I find only two;
Yellowstone and Mount McKinley National Parks, that have sufficient
size, climatic conditions and practically an adequate natural food supply
to insure perpetuation of a breeding stock of grizzly bears and timber
wolves. Even California, with its four national parks, was unable to
save its native grizzly bear from extinction.
Fortunately in the case of the Trumpeter Swan, steps were taken in
time to preserve this largest living North American waterfowl from im-
pending extinction. Not only has this rare species received special pro-
tection in Yellowstone National Park but through the coordinated work
of the Biological Survey critical areas in the Red Rock Lake area have
been secured as Federal wildfowl sanctuary. The future home and
existence of the Trumpeter Swan now seem definitely assured.
92 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
In a similar manner the Rocky Mountain Bighorn, including the
various geographical races, needs protection for the future for it has
been killed and greatly reduced in numbers over much of its former range.
I wish to place the greatest possible emphasis on the need for pre-
serving the ecological niche or habitat of the animal that is to be pre-
served. No animal lives entirely by itself alone. It is dependent upon
many other factors involving other plants and other animals, including
man.
Our aim in national parks is not only to preserve certain native trees
and animals but also to preserve the whole original primitive picture
by permanent preservation of typical native plant and animal com-
munities. Such native communities are valuable sources of scientific
data that will be increasingly difficult or impossible to obtain elsewhere.
The need for such areas is keenly felt by the biologists of today and
future generations probably will feel their need even more keenly. I
therefore firmly believe that the human need for, and value of, such
primitive plant and animal communities will be greater in the future for
the education, inspiration and enjoyment of the people than it is today.
If we are to effectively insure the future of our outstanding native
wildlife three steps are necessary:
1. We must see that an adequate pure native breeding stock of the species
is preserved and maintained to insure its future.
2. Not only must the species itself, but the accompanying plant and animal
community or ecological background be preserved to insure proper
preservation of the animals.
3. There must be adequate technical supervision of men trained in this work
which should not be turned over to a construction or camp foreman.
Wildlife management calls for wildlife training and experience.
A National Park Service Fish Policy
DAVID H. MADSEN, Supervisor of Fish Resources, National Park Service
IN REVIEWING the history of the National Park Service, we are
confronted with the fact that our policy with reference to fish and
fishing has, until recently, been entirely inconsistent with our policy
regarding every other form of wildlife in the national parks. If we had
followed the same policy with reference to wild animals in the national
parks that we have followed with our fish-stocking program, we would
probably have the red deer of Europe intermingling with the mule deer
of the Kaibab; we would have mountain goats in the Tetons, Chinese
pheasants in Yosemite and so on. Conditions similar to these have
actually taken place in our fish-planting program. We probably have
no less than 20 to 30 non-native species of fish permanently established
in national park waters. There is not a national park where fishing is
NATIONAL PARKS 93
important that has not been subjected, in a greater or lesser degree, to
this violation of national park policies.
Since we have encouraged fishing in the national parks and the result-
ant program of fish hatcheries and fish planting in order to maintain
good fishing it does seem our definite duty to predicate that policy upon
the theory that we will, insofar as possible, protect the native species
of fish in the national parks. With this definite purpose in mind, we have
developed, and there has been approved by the Director, a definite fish-
planting policy. This policy has for its purpose the protection for all
time of such national park waters, as are not already contaminated,
against the introduction of non-native species. As a result of this policy,
it is our belief that there will always be lakes and a few streams in the
national parks that will remain natural insofar as aquatic life is con-
cerned. The policy further states that in waters where non-native fish
now exist with the native species, the latter will be favored in every
instance to the fullest possible extent. The policy further provides that
no agency, Federal or state, shall in the future be permitted to plant
fish in any national park except with the approval and under the direc-
tion of regular National Park employees. The policy further provides
that no aquatic vegetation of any kind shall be introduced into the park
waters for the purpose of improving fishing. The whole purpose of the
policy is to give the National Park Service complete control over the
aquatic life in the parks in the same manner as it controls other forms
of animal life. The Service also supports the trend away from the use of
natural baits, and whenever possible regulations are drawn permitting
only the taking of fish by artificial lures.
While this policy is only slightly more than two years old, it has been
enthusiastically accepted by the general staff and by the various Super-
intendents, as well as the American Fisheries Society. The necessity for
the strict application of such a policy is apparent from what has already
been said. Much more emphasis might well be placed upon its im-
portance.
The insistent demand on the part of sportsmen for more and better
fishing everywhere calls for an ever-increasing output and a wider dis-
tribution of fish. Unless due regard is given to the species used, this is
a permanent threat to waters of the national parks. This demand has
been effective in bringing about the establishment of great fish hatcheries
within and adjacent to the national parks and national forests. The out-
put of these hatcheries is distributed by the Bureau of Fisheries, State
Game Commissions and State sportsmen's organizations in order to
"improve" fishing. In order to insure the continued existence of our
native fish populations, it is mandatory that a well-trained staff of park
employees supervise all fish planting.
While we hope we have succeeded in establishing a policy which will
protect the national park waters from further abuse, our position in
94 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
state parks where the Service has cooperated in development of water
resources, has not been clearly defined. An extended field trip was
taken early last year inspecting state parks throughout the Middle
West. A considerable number of areas were visited where, under our
direction, lakes were being created whose primary purpose in many
instances is to produce fish. We were disappointed to find that some of
these lakes, created at great cost, were stocked with fish before they were
really completed. Enthusiastic sportsmen's organizations had, in some
cases, improvised small dams creating ponds of an acre or two in the
basins where lakes were being developed. These same enthusiasts had
seined fish from back water pools and planted them in the makeshift
ponds long before the dams themselves were completed.
It does seem reasonable that, since we have already wrought such
havoc because of our lack of planning and study, we should, insofar as
possible, protect the waters under our supervision against the same
mistakes in the future. The National Park Service has a great opportu-
nity and responsibility for preserving and in some instances restoring
the normal relationship between all forms of aquatic life, including fish.
While we are, and I think we shall be, compelled to operate fish
hatcheries and maintain reasonably good fishing in the national parks,
we should keep constantly in mind the fact that insofar as possible it
is our plain duty to maintain the parks in their natural and primitive
conditions. To accomplish this we must have complete control over every
activity which has to do in any way with changing the natural biological
balance in national park waters.
STATE PARKS
PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE NATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON STATE PARKS HELD AT
NORRIS, TENNESSEE, MAY I I-I4, 1938
STATE PARKS
The President's Message
RICHARD LIEBER, President, National Conference on State Parks, Indianapolis, Ind.
IT IS not accidental but on purpose that again we have turned to the
South. For the eighteenth time we have come together in annual
meeting to discuss state parks. Beginning with 1921 these conferences
were held as follows :
1921. Des Moines, Iowa 1930. Linville, North Carolina
1922. Bear Mountain State Park, New York 1931. St. Louis, Missouri
1923. Turkey Run State Park, Indiana 1932. Virginia Beach, Virginia
1924. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1933. Bear Mountain State Park, New York
1925. Skyland, Virginia 1934. Pineville, Kentucky
1926. Hot Springs, Arkansas 1935. Skyland, Virginia
1927. Bear Mountain State Park, New York 1936. Hartford, Connecticut
1928. San Francisco, California 1937. Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
1929. Clifty Falls State Park, Indiana 1938. Norris, Tennessee
Geographically distributed, seven were held in the South, six in the
East, four in the Central East and one in the far West. Regional meet-
ings were also held in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois,
Minnesota, Alabama, California and Arkansas.
During all this time we have seen our work grow and flourish. As an
organization we started with little; just with an idea. And in a sense it
may be said of us what Jung said about Columbus, "who, by using
subjective assumptions, a false hypothesis, and a route abandoned by
modern navigation, nevertheless discovered America." Withal we got
there and the object of our attachment has slowly but steadily risen into
clearer perception from attempted classification and coordination.
There is not much satisfaction to be obtained by looking up defini-
tions in the dictionary when it comes to parks or park matters. We our-
selves, as yet, have not fixed the exact meaning nor will we get a very
clear picture by way of chronology. Yet it so happens that the first
designated state park, now part of a great national park, gives us our
cue, for it still remains the ideal of scenic and inspirational value. The
reference of course is to Yosemite Valley. Yosemite Valley and Mariposa
Big Trees were granted by the United States Government to California
in 1864. There and then spoke to us out of the wilderness a commanding
voice: "Protect the sources of your inspiration and your might."
The forthcoming report of the Park, Parkway and Recreational Area
Study will disclose not only the number of state parks but also it is
hoped will properly evaluate them. A digest of the completed study in
this fashion could not only give proper appraisal to the properties them-
selves but moreover of the spirit and the quality of understanding of
each State in that particular field. In this manner we would discover the
need of parks and recreation in this million-geared and complicated
world of ours.
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98 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Speaking for myself, I would not at all be interested in the work if
the function of parks and recreation would merely be to provide shallow
amusement for bored and boring people. Folks so disposed should be
referred to bingo or any other of the abounding inanities.
Fortunately for all of us, parks have a quite different meaning which
concerns itself, Antaeus like, with the physical necessity of man to keep
in touch with nature. It is that eon-old longing of the soul to find a
haven of rest. No matter how much we do indirectly by way of sports
and athletics for the body, the spiritual hunger and search for things
hidden is the true answer to the question, "Why parks?" Parks are the
dietetics of the soul a refuge, a place to regain spiritual balance and
find strength and, if needed, a place of resignation from the turbulent
world without.
So with tongue in cheek, let us consult the etymologists on the
meaning of the word "park." An enclosed place. Such an enclosed place,
they tell us, was paradise, or shall I say, is paradise. An intermediate
Elysium, as some hold, for the souls of the righteous during the interval
between death and final judgment. Shades of Dante and Milton. The
old story of human hopes and aspirations, of agony and of defeat.
Paradise Gained and Paradise Lost. So our attempt to recreate man by
re-creating an environment, if humbly approached, will nevertheless
leave us with a feeling that we are following out the age-old craving
of our errant and searching souls.
The great national parks have blazed the way, the state parks have
followed; of late in such profusion that we must determinately address
ourselves to their proper use and management. While state parks, as
such, are nearly 75 years old, the greatest expansion so far has happened
within the last five years. How much of this ambitious program will
live depends chiefly upon three items :
Proper Selection
Careful Planning
Business-like Administration
A state park cannot be planned but has to be found; after which plan-
ning may begin. When I look back only 25 years and see how some of us
had to proceed in the preparation of an area, I am surprised that not
more mistakes were made. There was only one saving grace we did not
have enough money to make big mistakes. So in paying a deserved
compliment to the Branch of Recreational Planning and State Cooper-
ation of the National Park Service for building up a corps of competent
scientists and technicians the highest praise is that they have not made
more mistakes notwithstanding the vast amounts at their command. This
indicates the superior quality of the technical and scientific staff.
Could it be improved? Of course it could, but it can much more
easily be depreciated. It should be improved by putting the whole
"works" under competent Civil Service, and by whole "works," I mean
STATE PARKS 99
not only the unprotected part in the National Park Service, but the
entire CCC staff. The building, planning and maintenance of all parks
are so completely bound up with public weal that we should eliminate
all partisan politics. It has truly been said that Democracy is the luxury
of a rich nation, but are we really so rich that in the wasteful turnover
of politics we can afford to sacrifice knowledge and experience and bog
down once more to hit-and-miss practices of the rule of thumb? Nor if
we persist in this extravagant and altogether foolish method have we
any right to speak of popular government? That sort of thing is not
popular and never has been popular. The people are merely helpless be-
cause their opinion and wishes have not been followed. I remember the
time when the people wanted parks and did not get them because the
politician saw no profit in them. But after they had been established,
parks and recreation suddenly became of great value because the faithful
could be given jobs in them.
We are concerning ourselves with the recognition of exceptional
talent discovered in our CCC ranks ; the preservation, use and advance-
ment of such welcome talent in park and recreational work. We have
prepared a plan which means even more than the offering of opportunity
to the individual; it means the serving of a national ideal that to each
citizen however humble be guaranteed equal chances. The charity of
social security may well begin in society's own home.
See what has come out of the richest farm in Christendom, the acres
of one Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln in Indiana.
If you agree to the Committee's report prepared by Roberts Mann,
and follow it with driving action, we will see results of which in another
18 years it will again be said, "They started with little; with just an
idea." And in that hope and expectation I propose a name. Let the
graduates from our proposed Park School be known as The Railsplitters.
That name, I take it, will be fully understood without benefit of ex-
planation from deserving patriots.
Let us now consider Park Administration. Just as much as the
planning of a park must be along the line of knowledge and experience
in the particular field, so the administration must be business-like. A
park to live must earn its living. Ways have to be found by the States to
put their investments on an income basis. If they are made dependent
on appropriations, these appropriations will either be treated by the
legislators as charity or as a political investment. In neither case will
parks live very long or lead a useful, happy and successful life. On the
other hand placed on a business basis and operated in the interest of the
people, it is astounding how much service can be furnished for so little
outlay. Parks are not eleemosynary institutions. Park visitors are
citizens of a State who pridefully consider themselves stockholders in a
growing concern and not suppliants of charity. In other words, they
still are citizens and not "deficitizens."
100 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
The last four years have witnessed an increase of about 80 per cent
in state park holdings. This addition of some 600,000 acres to the older
state park holdings naturally need not prove the obvious fact of their
existence as it must show a capacity for survival. To do that this vast
and interesting domain must be put on a business footing, for it is a
business as far as its management is concerned. And it can serve spiritual
needs only if the material ones are securely taken care of.
I warn, as I have so often done, against a fateful dependence upon
continued Federal and even state aid in the sense that the cost of part
maintenance be put upon the people's tax duplicate, Federal or state.
To start a park either public or private funds have to be expended.
That has been, done in full measure, funds not only for acquisition of
land but also for plans and projects.
From now on the entity will have to demonstrate whether it be an
asset or a liability; a success or a failure.
So much for the general principle. In actual experience you will find
that some of your infants will not do as well as others. Some have to be
supported a bit longer, just as among your own children some attain
stature and independence early while others have to be helped along.
But while you love them all alike, you would go broke if the majority
remained dependent on you for life.
As an example, let me give you some figures out of the experience of
the state park system of Indiana, not because I consider its set-up
superior to others but because I know it best.
Four Indiana parks, with Turkey Run far in the lead, in 1922 had a
total income of $10,855.40. Compared with this the report for 1937
shows park earnings of $164,296.35 for a total of 9 parks. Of these parks
3 are more than self-supporting (115 per cent, 117 per cent and 168 per
cent) ; 3 approach complete self-support. The average at this time for all
large parks is 91.5 per cent. The memorials are 40 per cent self-support-
ing, which in the nature of things is a good showing. The total for all
properties, including cost of administration, is 80 per cent. It is con-
fidently expected that within a few years the entire system will be self-
supporting.
Besides the stated park income, the Division receives further funds
through the sale of sand, gravel and by way of coal royalties. The former
amount to $65,099.73; the latter $1,539.59. To these three items is to be
added the appropriation of $41,812.94, making a grand total of available
park funds of $272,748.61.
When we started the work in 1916 OUT appropriation was just $10,000
and for that reason it was necessary that we should find an income. It
would carry us beyond reasonable time to refer in detail to this system ;
however, it is at your disposal through our office.
We have seen then that the selection of park lands is akin to the
work of the artist. It is a form of creation; a vision. Park planning is a
STATE PARKS 101
technical job and park management a business enterprise. If these
three items are harmoniously balanced they produce as a result park
Service. This is fulfillment of the promise to provide a delightful place
amid natural surroundings for re-vitalization and recreation.
We thus close the circle. Having had our vision of a Park, having
carefully planned and managed it, we have truly helped to provide "A
thing of beauty and a joy forever," for this Park Service in its widest
sense is nothing else but a vision attained.
Responsibilities of the State
ARNO B. CAMMERER, Director, National Park Service
THIS conference is timely. We urgently need to confer. Parks are a
vital ingredient in the daily bread of our Nation. Parks will succeed
or fail by what we do in the near future. The person who cannot recognize
the loss has never seen the opportunity.
In the last five years, parks have been projected from a position of
comparative obscurity to a position of large national prominence. Most
of you are concerned with some phase of park work. You are all, there-
fore, familiar with the accomplishments in the park field national, state
and local and there is no need for me today to review the encouraging
steps of our progress as I did last year. Because of that progress, in-
finitely greater importance attaches to what we do for parks right now.
The same circumstances and source-funds that have accelerated the
park movement have likewise accelerated the competing forms of land
use. Never before have civic and political units been so conscious of
the planned development of their resources. In the development of
local, state, and regional plans, each organized commercial interest has
used every power at its command to be certain that every square foot
of the territory should forever be open to that interest's particular type
of exploitation. Not one organized commercial interest is willing to keep
its hands off of an area of park caliber until it has plowed, harrowed,
winnowed and sifted every particle of the area for the last possible
measure of value; then it is quite willing to turn the area over for the
benefit and enjoyment of the public, to be restored and rehabilitated
at public expense. The story and the play are old, but the cast is organ-
ized and modern.
Advocates of competing forms of land use are alarmed at the rela-
tively cheering progress made by parks. They are out to hit parks and
hit them hard. Their propaganda is so persuasive that they even have
some well-known park advocates quaking in their boots for fear that
parks may be too successful and succeed in strangling the economic
life of the country. This might be termed "shivering at one's own
convictions."
102 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
There is no need to elaborate on that phase of park work. Every
park man is familiar with it, and every park man knows that his watery-
veined friends form the outposts of the enemy camp. But, in the face
of these facts and conditions, is it not time for all true park conserva-
tionists to unite?
The National Conference on State Parks, as well as the American
Planning and Civic Association, should be more than a clearing house
of information. It should be a nation-wide organ for focusing park
opinion and leading park support. Such an organization through its
members and sympathetic friends could implant parks so firmly into
our national consciousness and into our national scheme that no selfish
drives, no predatory raids, would be successful.
The question is: "What will you do about it?"
The second question also rests with the States. It relates to our great
opportunity. What are we going to do with it?
Millions of dollars of Federal funds have in near years gone into the
development and stimulation of the state park movement. The States
and the Federal Government are justly proud of this cooperative under-
taking. But, how far will the States now go to provide for the main-
tenance and proper use of the park facilities that have been given them?
Upon the answer to that question hinges largely the fate of the park
movement, at least so far as this generation is concerned.
The enemy, of course, has sprinkled the word around that the Na-
tional Park Service wishes to get hold of the state parks and control
them. Such a rumor is either the figment of a hysterical mind or else
it is definitely calculated to be misleading. Even some state park organ-
izations have been tipped by this green paint. Obviously the answer
does not lie in a whispering campaign but in the States' shouldering
their own responsibilities. The more they do, the less there will be for
the Federal Government to do and the more will be achieved in the
ultimate. No State that is carrying its share is going to be hood-winked
by the State that says, either, "Let Uncle Sam do it," or "Uncle Sam
wants to do it all."
We park people should be wiser than lambs and not half so sleepy.
We should recognize the propaganda that would split our ranks and
dissipate our efforts in futile bickering among ourselves; we should learn
to ignore that kind of propaganda. Actually, when all the pettifoggery
is stripped away, we have but one simple shining goal, and that is the
welfare of the parks. No other form of land use can take their place,
despite all the glittering promises to the contrary, and no other ad-
ministrative agencies will ever be half as diligent in protecting park
values as the park authorities themselves.
EDUCATION
A Program of Education in Landscape
Management
ROBERTS MANN, Superintendent of Maintenance, Cook County, Illinois
EDITOR'S NOTE. Perhaps the outstanding contribution to the 1938 National Con-
ference on State Parks (which heard many constructive talks) was the Preliminary Report
of a Committee of the Conference, headed by Dean Stanley L. Coulter, of Indiana. The
following is a summary of the report, which is a contribution by the Forest Preserve
District of Cook County, Illinois, to the National Conference on State Parks, through
the medium of the investigational work on the part of Roberts Mann, who is Superin-
tendent of Maintenance for that organization. The complete report is available in mimeo-
graphed form.
THE deeper significance of the term Landscape Management repre-
sents a fundamental function which includes both forest and park
recreation, epitomizes what we are really thinking about mass rec-
reational use of native landscape and transcends any distinction be-
tween arbitrary, bureaucratic divisions of that use.
The development of native landscape areas for recreational use has
proceeded faster than the development of men trained in their design,
operation and maintenance. The almost universal lack of funds for
proper operation and maintenance further increases the crying need for
men with background, perspective and a sense of values.
This Conference recognized that the past four years of ECW, CWA,
FERA and WPA participation have resulted in the creation of new state
and county systems, both forest and park, and the development in
many cases the overdevelopment of existing systems. Much of the work
done has been badly planned and poorly executed. An acute maintenance
problem exists as well as an acute design problem. Men with adequate,
proper training to handle these problems are few. At the same time there
is a wealth of potentially valuable men about to slip back out of sight
men uncovered and partially developed as superintendents, foremen and
even enrollees in CCC camps, in WPA, and as park or forest custodians.
The Conference also deplored the lack of academic standing for men
trained in landscape management as contrasted with foresters, landscape
architects, architects, engineers and wildlife management men. It recog-
nized the difficulty confronting those attempting to hire men for either
the design or maintenance of a recreational area subordinated to the
preservation of the native landscape. The specialist has his recognized
place. We will always require the technician for the major jobs of forestry,
landscape architecture, architecture, engineering, wildlife management
and recreational planning. The man with what President Conant of
Harvard so aptly termed "a unilateral bent" is invaluable for a purpose.
But the field of landscape management requires men of "multilateral"
bent with training integrating the several phases of that field. It in-
volves not a compromise but a synthesis of conflicting ideas and needs.
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104 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Your committee, appointed to consider the development of a course
of instruction in "public land administration," approached the problem
with two objectives : first, short courses of instruction to be given groups
of partially trained men in the lower income brackets, at universities or
regional centers and, second, undergraduate instruction in the univer-
sities. Three other desirable steps have appeared as by-products of the
investigation. One is the inauguration of "return courses" for men in
the higher income brackets, actively engaged in landscape management,
and "institutes" or "congresses" to keep such men abreast of the latest
developments in their profession. The second is the summer employ-
ment of undergraduates specializing in landscape management or some
of its phases. The third is the selection of a short but inclusive title for
this hybrid profession, and I throw the designation "Landscape Manage-
ment" into the ring, aware that there is likely to be as much conflict
over title as there will be over program and method. At least it places
equal emphasis on parks and recreational forests.
Paradoxically, we have been confused by the very eagerness of the
universities to cooperate in a three-point program, though warned at
the outset that such would be the case. This eagerness to be of greater
service and more fully utilize their plants, equipment and teaching
personnel is most welcome as concerning adult education, that is, the
winter short courses for field men in the lower brackets and congresses
for men in the higher brackets, but renders difficult the consideration of
the proper curricula for undergraduate training. This new fluidity and
this responsiveness to the changing needs of the times, motivated by
the ideal of maximum educational service, was the most striking im-
pression received at the several universities visited.
WINTER INSTITUTES FOR NON-COLLEGE MEN
IN THE LOWER INCOME BRACKETS
Winter short courses or "institutes" for individuals in the lower in-
come brackets, usually having less than college entrance requirements
but of exceptional intelligence and aptitude, probably should not be
limited to adults but should be available to outstanding enrollees or
former enrollees in CCC camps. It does not seem advisable or practical
to hold these institutes at regional centers as such, nor indeed at any
college where the teaching staff, the buildings, the woodlot or experi-
ment station, and the available state parks or forests are not of the
highest order. Much of the value in such institutes will lie in the back-
ground and inspiration offered. Subject matter is secondary. What
these men and boys need is background, a sense of direction and a high
standard of values. Subject matter must be presented with these three
needs in mind, and the desired presentation can be given by compara-
tively few men in the teaching profession at the present time.
Subject matter taught in lectures, "labs" and field trips conducted by
STATE PARKS 105
the university staff should be supplemented by lectures from nationally
known leaders in various phases of park and forest recreation. Such men
have many demands upon their time and certain inescapable obligations.
Short consideration was given to the holding of these schools in regional
centers other than universities because of this recognized limitation upon
the participation of outside men of established reputation. And yet a
few such lectures are essential. More background more inspiration!
More than one of the younger attendants at these annual meetings of
the Conference have been inspired to new heights and have gone away
imbued with new enthusiasm for a profession that can attract to it such
leadership.
The designation "institute" was suggested as a euphonious substitute
for the term "short course" to which some opprobrium still clings. The
length should be four weeks. It should commence at least two weeks
after the beginning of the second semester say March 1st. The number
to be given instruction at each university must be greater than 20 but
should not exceed 75. The men sent should be selected carefully and at the
close of the institute a report should be sent to their respective sponsors
rating each man as to attendance, attentiveness, application and apti-
tude. Where possible, as at Michigan and Syracuse, the students should
be housed in supervised dormitories and fed in a dining hall or cafeteria,
rather than allowed to scatter at will through town.
The cost to the sponsor will not exceed $150 per man, being variable
according to the transportation to and from the institute.
The cost of board and lodging will not exceed $12.50 per week. The
tuition will amount to something between $25 and $50. A tuition fee of
$30 probably would cover the allowances to the several instructors for
additional hours of teaching, the hire of an additional instructor, mimeo-
graphed material, and transportation for field trips. A fee exceeding $30
would provide a fund to cover the expense of bringing in outside speakers.
The Conference will have to lend its influence toward securing men of
prominence and speaking ability at a minimum cost.
The cost per man may prove a deterrent to many state forest and
some state park organizations. If one of the great foundations could be
induced to subsidize each of the institutes to the annual amount of $1,000
per university, a full and worthwhile attendance would be better assured.
For reasons too lengthy and impolitic for discussion here, three
universities were selected and approached as best suited for the initial
establishment of such institutes in 1939. The University of California
regretfully declined. Professor Mulford of its Division of Forestry was
keenly interested and sympathetic but obliged to abide by the decision
of President Robert G. Sproul and of the Board of Regents to develop
no new educational projects at present because of a serious financial
situation. He was, however, thinking primarily of undergraduate in-
struction and of "return course" work which would require the acquisi-
tion of two new staff members one in landscape design and one in forest
recreation. Probably a winter institute could be inaugurated at Cali-
fornia if a definite plan were laid before President Sproul and urged.
At the University of Michigan, Dean Samuel T. Dana and Professor
Shirley W. Allen of the School of Forestry have been working with
Professor Harlow Whittemore of the Department of Landscape Archi-
tecture to develop a program.
The New York State College of Forestry, at Syracuse University,
through Dr. Laurie D. Cox, head of its Department of Landscape and
Recreational Management, has submitted a complete program. It is
set up on the basis of a month's work involving 3 hours of lecture each
morning and a laboratory or field trip each afternoon, with a total of
72 lectures and 24 afternoon exercises. Dr. Cox has outlined a compre-
hensive program which would involve about twice, this amount of work.
A student would require therefore two years to complete the program.
I can appreciate the value of a two-year program but I do not agree
with his suggestion that the student in his first year be permitted to
select the subjects he is most desirous of obtaining.
UNDERGRADUATE TRAINING IN LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT
The consideration of proper training for undergraduates to be ab-
sorbed as career men by park and forest organizations presents many
baffling and controversial problems. By the same token it carries with
it grave responsibility. Educators have been wrestling with these or
similar problems for many years with varying success.
The Society of American Foresters in the words of Dean H. S.
Graves of Yale has limited its function to the study of every phase of
forest education, to the establishment of minimum standards, and the
presentation of the results of its study and experience as affecting
changes in or additions to the forest education structure. It would
seem that this Conference should so limit its recommendations relative
to undergraduate training in landscape management.
The Society of American Foresters issued in 1935 a "Professional
Forestry Schools Report," listing 14 schools as "approved" and grading
both these and seven others according to a determination of all measur-
able factors affecting the efficiency of instruction, with due consideration
of the intangible factors of personality which in the last analysis deter-
mine the efficiency of professional instruction. Any committee of this
Conference attempting to deal with undergraduate or graduate instruc-
tion would do well to study thoroughly that report.
The conclusions stated here must be taken as wholly my own and
purposely argumentative. However, they do present a sifted synthesis
of the considered opinions of the many very positive men with whom
I have argued or conferred, some of them leaders in this field.
STATE PARKS 107
1. Basic forestry training is the first prerequisite in training for the design
and administration of native landscape areas for mass recreational use.
The forester and the landscape architect both tend to approach such a task
objectively, from without and above, but the forester, generally speaking,
makes the better administrator. The engineer, the architect and the wildlife
man tend to approach it subjectively, from within, from the viewpoint of detail.
2. Training in the fundamentals, history and design of landscape architec-
ture is the next most important ingredient.
3. Elements of civil engineering, architecture, wildlife management and
recreation management must be included.
4. The inclusion of cultural courses the humanities to develop an under-
standing and appreciation of literature, history, art, music and economics is
peculiarly important as background in a profession so influenced by public
relations. Nearly everyone seems to agree on this point, but the character and
diversity of the subjects to be included provoke endless debate.
5. Not less than five years should be required for the completion of such a
curriculum leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science in Forestry. Six years
would be better still. Dean Graves of Yale believes a good background of general
education essential as preparation for all professional study of collegiate grade,
and urges a four-year course in basic forestry with some electives and several
cultural courses as preparation for not less than two years of graduate study
in landscape management.
The practical yet sympathetic man asks "But what of the boy who cannot
afford six college years?" One answer to that would be the establishment of
scholarships.
6. The proportion of the curriculum given by members of the forestry faculty
seems to have a definite relationship to the quality of graduates turned out.
Technical courses given outside the school of forestry should be specifically
shaped to fit the needs of students in landscape management.
A case in point is the course majoring in "Landscape and Recreational Man-
agement" given by the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse Uni-
versity, 72.7 per cent of the instruction is given by the forestry faculty. The
courses in drawing, mathematics, engineering, architecture, and wildlife manage-
ment, given in other colleges of the university or in other departments of the
College of Forestry, have been pruned of all dead-wood and reshaped specifically
to give the students in that department all that they need and no more. I went
there prepared by a study of the curriculum to criticize a lack of sufficient
engineering training. As an engineer I was amazed at the fundamentals mastered
in the courses given and must concede the sound execution of the designs and
drawings of reinforced concrete, wood and steel structures, of roads and of drain-
age systems. The same applies to architectural designs with complete detailed
plans. The engineering plans were executed as an engineer would make them,
the architectural plans as an architect would make them any contractor could
bid and build upon them. At the same time, the landscape work was superlative
in originality, successful treatment of competitive design problems, draughts-
manship and handling of color.
Such a curriculum not only saves time but eliminates cluttering up the
student's mind with a lot of facts and theorems he may never need. Further,
instead of being a Wandering Jew of the campus he becomes one of a close-knit
group with that cohesive kinship so rich in intangibles for the professional man.
7. There must be equal emphasis on park and forest landscape design and
management for recreational use. The intimate relationships between the prob-
lems of the two types of reservations and the growing importance of forest
recreation admit of no antagonism nor, indeed, of differentiation.
8. The faculty personnel should be composed of outstanding teachers in
108 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
their respective fields to insure the inspiration, background and high standard of
values necessary for success in landscape management.
The multiplicity of subjects studied and the exclusion of all that does not
particularly apply to this particular field may result in confusion and super-
ficiality unless properly presented and correlated.
9. The availability of high-grade state or national parks and forests, as well
as the excellence of the buildings, equipment, library and woodlots or experiment
station, are factors in the suitability of a college to be approved.
10. The standard of graduates should be kept high and the output low.
Students lacking in aptitude should be weeded out and "busted" or required to
transfer to other branches of training. Here again is a delicate and difficult
responsibility requiring the deft, personal guidance of sympathetic, able,
scholarly teachers.
Mass production of "parkers" and "recreational foresters" is unwise.
No one can say just how many landscape management men may be
absorbed each year. Syracuse accepts from 35 to 45 freshmen each year
and graduates from 10 to 15 which the park field seems to absorb with-
out much difficulty. As the forest recreation field widens, and with the
acceptance of standards set up by this Conference, the allowable output
should increase.
It has been argued by some distinguished educators that we should
select one good school and attempt to develop that school by bringing
about there a concentration of the finest teachers in the field. The pit-
falls in such a program would probably defeat any advantages to be
gained. The function of this Conference would sqem to be the formulation
of certain minimum standards and the grading of the several schools
offering instruction in this field.
At least three colleges offer courses in phases of landscape manage-
ment. The New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse is entitled
at present to the highest rating. Its curriculum for specialization in
"Landscape and Recreational Management" is calculated to turn out
well-trained men. They are now working toward a five-year course
which will lighten the freshman year and give more cultural subjects.
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor offers, through its Depart-
ment of Landscape Design, a three-year course in the "Design and
Management of Park and Recreational Areas" which must be preceded
by at least two years of work in liberal arts and sciences. Michigan
now submits to this Conference two possible programs for the establish-
ment of a suitable curriculum in landscape management. They also are
appended hereto. The one outlines a five-year course leading to the
degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Landscape Design in the
College of Literature, Science and the Arts (four years) and the Graduate
School (one year). The other outlines a five-year course leading to the
degrees of Bachelor of Forestry and Master of Forestry in the College
of Literature, Science and the Arts (two years) and the School of Forestry
and Conservation (three years).
The Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science at
STATE PARKS 109
East Lansing, in the Forestry Series of its Division of Agriculture,
offers a four-year course with specialization in the junior and senior
years in a "Recreational and Municipal Forestry" major. P. A. Herbert,
Professor of Forestry, is dissatisfied with the present form of their
course and proposes several changes along the lines suggested.
RETURN COURSES FOR COLLEGE GRADUATES
IN THE HIGHER INCOME BRACKETS
These investigations have suggested the possibility of a third type
of instruction which should be equally valuable, namely: "return"
courses for college graduates actively engaged in landscape management
men in the higher income brackets and "congresses" to keep such
men abreast of the latest developments and trends in their profession.
Most of these men have had good university training in either landscape
architecture, forestry or engineering and now find themselves career
men in a field demanding knowledge of all three of the older professions
plus wildlife management, plus recreational planning. Most of them
welcome an opportunity to supply deficiencies in their training.
Occasional men will find it feasible to enroll at some well-equipped
university and complete the year or more of work required for a master's
degree. Others would be better served with the opportunity to spend
one semester or more taking either credit or non-credit work in various
subjects. Such men would be definitely benefited by fellowships which
the Conference might establish at one or more universities. Course
work rather than theses should predominate.
Comparatively few men, however, will be able to sacrifice the time
and income involved in a year's leave of absence. There are no sabbatical
years in political subdivisions. The majority find themselves so fully
bound by circumstance and the demands of their jobs that they have
little opportunity to keep fully abreast of the developments in their
field, limited time for reading, and little or no guidance in what to read.
It is all too easy for a good man to fall or be forced into a rut.
The University of Michigan has been doing some remarkable work
in arranging graduate study clinics whereby every practicing physician
in the State can, if he will, keep up to date and abreast of the latest
developments in the medical profession. Last year over half of the 3,600
physicians in the State took work in these courses and 15 or 20 were
awarded a "certificate of proficiency" more highly valued than a mas-
ter's degree; 145 were stimulated to attend special clinics outside the
State, as compared with 25 in 1932.
Every two years in New York State the State Conference of Mayors
holds a short course for professional park executives. Last year the
conference met as guests of the New York City Bureau of Parks for
approximately a week's study, with a quite large attendance.
A winter institute or "congress" for professionally trained men
110 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
actively engaged in landscape management would be of service. My
own ideas on such a program are still in the formative stage. The length
of the course, the subject matter and the manner of presentation are
debatable. I would say that one week would be the minimum length
and two weeks the probable maximum. The time of this "congress"
could be made to coincide with part of the institute for men in the lower
income brackets so as to secure the advantage of talks by one or more
nationally known leaders in the profession. Illustrated papers and
lectures might form the bulk of the subject presentation. Round-table
discussions would be of definite value. Reprints of outstanding articles
could be supplied and courses of reading recommended.
It is recommended that institutes for men in the lower income
brackets and "congresses" for men in the higher income brackets be
inaugurated during the winter of 1939, and that the universities of
Syracuse, Michigan and California be designated as three locations for
the initial effort.
PLACEMENT OF UNDERGRADUATES AND GRADUATES
IN LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT
At Syracuse and at Michigan State College the problem of placing
both graduates and undergraduates in summer work was raised. In
most four-year courses the interval between the sophomore and junior
years is taken up by 10 to 12 weeks of summer camp. In five-year
courses this occurs between the third and fourth years. If many of the
boys studying landscape management under whatever name could
be given work in the summer following the year of summer camp it
would be of great educational benefit to them. As Dr. Laurie D. Cox
phrases it, "They would be perfectly willing to accept work in any form
of park activity in city, small town, county or state organization. All
they want is a chance to see parks actually in operation and learn how
the wheels go round." If such boys could be placed as laborers, assistant
caretakers, or on survey parties at a wage barely sufficient to pay their
living expenses, the background of practical experience would pay
dividends in their subsequent year of university training.
Graduates just out of school have a difficult problem which would be
partially solved if they could be absorbed in park and forest organiza-
tions on a temporary basis long enough to enable them to get their feet
on the ground and at the same time subsist.
CONCLUSION
Out of this study I come convinced that mediocre training, mediocre
men and men without peculiar aptitude have no place as designers or
administrators in the field of landscape management.
STATE PARKS 111
New Attitudes in Conservation Education
PEARL CHASE, Santa Barbara, California
WE RECOGNIZE that for about 25 years there has been a growing
realization of the increasing need for the practice of economy or,
as it is frequently phrased, the wise use and development of our resources.
However, the Departments of Conservation or of Natural Resources,
established in many States, have in most instances been slow to realize
their opportunities and slower to develop an adequate technique in
relation to the education of the public on subjects related to the manage-
ment and use of parks and forests, fish, game, mineral, soil and water
resources.
CONSERVATION EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS
Wisconsin and Florida were the first States to enact legislation re-
quiring instruction in conservation in the schools. (Wisconsin, 1935.)
It may not be necessary or wise to enact similar legislation in other
States but rather to encourage work along this line through the usual
professional channels.
The Office of Education of the Department of the Interior has re-
viewed accomplishments in various parts of the country, has held con-
ferences of official and volunteer agencies, and in 1937 began the pub-
lication of an important series of bulletins and bibliographies, both on
the general subject of "Conservation Education in the Public Schools"
and on specific subjects related thereto.
The keynote of the new approach is that, instead of teaching only
a single subject or series of subjects classified as natural sciences, it is
most important to supplement such instruction by work aimed at
developing at all age levels the conservation idea. The fundamental
purpose of conservation education is, therefore, the development of an
attitude of mind and a way of living which will be evident throughout
the life of the individual.
It is important to realize that the organization of a conservation
education program in schools will be greatly benefited if continuing
contacts are established with fact-finding and administrative agencies
within the State. The official agencies will profit from the self-analysis
required, the opportunity to secure a wider understanding of the prin-
ciples governing their policies and activities, and the improved contacts
with an interested public.
In a number of States, original and useful experiments are being tried
with the cooperation of several agencies. In Tennessee the activities
of the Department of Conservation have been described. (See page 115.)
In States as widely scattered as West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico and California,
Oregon and Washington, different approaches have been made to the
112 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
subject, on the part of school departments, largely depending upon the
available leadership, sources of information, public interest outside the
schools and the funds available. It is generally accepted that the ele-
mentary and rural schools and the normal schools of teachers colleges
which train teachers for them, have been most responsive. It is naturally
more difficult to change the attitudes or introduce new material into
secondary or high-school grades and universities.
In recent years, as evidence of their interest, volunteer organizations
have sponsored the establishment of a number of Nature Study Camps
for teachers and leaders of youth groups, notably the Audubon Society,
the Garden Club of America, State Garden Club Federations and the
State Federation of Women's Clubs. Sometimes the camps have later
become a part of a department of state colleges; a few were started
by them.
NEW PROGRAMS FOR YOUTH GROUPS
The Girl Scouts have recently reorganized their program and in-
creased the attention paid to nature study and conservation education,
particularly in connection with their camping program. The Camp Fire
Girls have adopted quite a remarkable and stimulating "far horizon"
program of conservation activity and in 1938 completed its first nation-
wide competition for community projects planned for accomplishment
over a 25-year period.
A useful plan for study and work has been created in the CCC Camps
and everyone will agree that the boys and men in these camps have not
only learned but demonstrated to a nation-wide audience the impor-
tance of knowing how to do things and the value of doing them where
it will do the most good. In some areas it would be helpful if those in
charge of the publicity about this work would emphasize the reasons for
and results of their undertakings, so using the chance for favorable radio
or newspaper notice, to teach lessons in conservation.
The National Youth Administration outlined in 1936 a program in
which the various state directors were urged "to learn from conservation
agencies in the State, how to most effectively cooperate in their work."
CONSERVATION WEEKS
There are hundreds of other national, state and local activities, which
indicate that many are trying to guide public opinion and develop
helpful attitudes of mind. Conservation Weeks were first organized in
eastern and then in the Pacific Coast States. The sponsoring and co-
operating groups usually included the Garden Club of America, State
Federations of Women's Clubs, State Federations of Garden Clubs, the
Department of Education and the Department of Conservation or
Natural Resources. They occur in the spring, on different dates, to suit
local conditions. In most instances the annual Guide Book for Con-
servation Week was contributed by the volunteer agencies and dis-
STATE PARKS 113
tributed and used by the School Departments. California first attempted
a state-wide organization which provided for participation of all Federal
and state agencies and state-wide organizations interested in conserva-
tion. The California State Department of Education published the
Teachers' Bulletin ("Source Material for Conservation Week," 1st
Edition 1935, 2nd Edition 1936), and the State Committee printed and
supplied the General Announcement, poster and Children's Leaflet. In
Illinois, the State printed the official poster.
In some instances, a state program has been developed around a
restricted field, such as the study and protection of birds or native flora,
but usually the programs have attempted to show the very great scope,
number and importance of conservation problems within the State,
and so have encouraged the widest possible participation. The financing
of printed material, particularly for the schools, libraries and state
departments, should be borne increasingly by the States themselves,
for with growing interest, the quantity is greater than individuals and
organizations can adequately supply or afford.
National Wild Life Week has recently appeared as another agency
which stimulates discussion of problems related to wild life. The attempt
has properly been made to include subject matter, such as forest and
water conservation, the purpose of which in part, is to preserve and
protect wild life. The sale of bird and animal stamps designed by "Ding"
Darling financed this movement in 1937. A Conservation Week and
National Wild Life Week can be carried on either simultaneously or
separately in the same State.
OCCASIONAL ACTIVITIES OF PUBLIC AGENCIES
The U. S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, Soil Conserva-
tion Service, Agricultural Extension Service, and Biological Survey all
are trying to improve their approach to their special problems. Two
years ago a talk was given before this conference on "Educational
Opportunities in State Parks" (see paper by Ansel F. Hall, pages 277-282,
American Planning & Civic Annual, 1937).
It is important to remember also that conservation practices should
be taught or discussed repeatedly and in different places, not only in
school but at home, on the playfield, in camp and particularly in public
areas open for recreational purposes from beach to mountain. An
example is the universal need for "good manners" that is, good habits
and the proper attitude of mind with regard to burning matches and
tobacco on the part of both children and adults. If anyone has been in
the habit of throwing away cigarettes and matches when still lighted,
ten to fifty times a day, he is not going to change the habit just because
he is motoring along a rural highway or hunting and fishing in brush or
wooded country. Laws, and warning signs are not protection enough.
Education of the individual is necessary.
114 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
While we are discussing the ideal attitude of mind and way of living,
it is not inappropriate to mention methods used to control the behavior
of those using our recreation areas, where the practice of conservation
principles must be enforced as well as taught. Some park executives
have proved that if they have found some particular practices worth
while, they will secure greater cooperation from the public if they explain
or demonstrate how and why these practices are desirable. The ad-
vantage of combining control or discipline with reason is an effective
argument for conservation education.
It is only realistic, however, to advise such "practical hints" as the
digging of narrow roadside ditches to prevent auto invasion of beautiful
meadows as in Yosemite Valley and elsewhere; and the use of such
large or heavy tables, benches or waste-barrels that they cannot be
readily hauled away in the trucks of appreciative park users (see Cook
County Reservation, where Chicago picnickers are reported stronger
than those in some sections of the country). The inexpensive photographs
of park desecration, disorder or destruction caused by a group and
mailed by the park superintendent, with a note, to teacher or group
leader has resulted in the immediate improvement in the behavior of
all the individuals in the group, including the leader's.
The confiscation of plant material in parks or on roads near certain
vulnerable areas can be made into another effective conservation lesson.
In certain areas many believe there should be more such supervised
points of contact with week-end "nature lovers." In Southern California
we can boast that few pick the protected Yucca blossoms, for with
their stalk, they are 6 to 10 feet long, a little hard to hide, and our
"educated public" openly razz the rash soul who tries to observe the
Sabbath by bringing home one of these beautiful "Candles of Our Lord."
EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL
The number of pamphlets, charts and books, on conservation topics
has recently increased rapidly. Many have been published by bureaus
of the Federal Government, a smaller number by State departments and
universities. Many organizations publish occasional bulletins and there
are numerous periodicals now which include or feature articles and notes
concerning our varied natural resources. Among the associations whose
publications have rendered a great service in keeping different audiences
informed and stimulating them to take a more active part in the con-
servation movement, to mention only a few of the more notable, are
The American Planning & Civic Association, The National Association
of Audubon Societies, The American Forestry Association and the
American Nature Association. It is more than a coincidence that the
word "American" appears so frequently in their names.
The most important message which can be brought to you is this:
Those concerned with conservation education and nature study in
STATE PARKS 115
schools and in the youth groups, have one persistent plea which those
in positions like yours should heed. They say: "First, give us more, more,
more factual information and illustrated material. Help us to show how
your work is related to everyday life, but please turn over your material
to curriculum specialists who can best prepare it for teacher and pupil
use." "Second, help us to find ways of making this material available
at the least possible expense."
The demand for and use of visual education material is increasing
rapidly. As more schools are equipped with moving picture machines
and in the larger and more progressive cities and counties, staff members
devote considerable time to collecting maps, charts, pictures, slides,
pamphlets and even films. (The University of California Extension
Division prepared a nineteen-page special catalog of "Films to Aid in
the Conservation of Natural Resources," (Feb., 1918), in connection
with the observance of California Conservation Week.)
The State and local planning boards are busy collecting data and
compiling reports on many subjects of vital interest to citizens. It is
important that planning agencies make available to departments of
education, as well as others, summaries of factual material gathered
and certain maps and charts compiled in connection with their studies
of natural resources.
Taking Conservation into the Schools
JOHN C. CALDWELL, Educational Assistant, Tennessee Department of Conservation,
Nashville, Tenn.
A3OUT fifteen years ago various conservation agencies in Tennessee
began to realize the importance of education as a means of develop-
ing conservation attitudes. The forestry division of our State instructed
its men many years ago to visit schools whenever possible and to interest
teachers and students alike in the forestry program. In 1926 pressure
was brought to bear on the legislature and a course in forestry and
conservation was set up by law with a legally adopted textbook. Still
later the educational trend had its effects in game and fish work and in
1935 the State Game and Fish Commission inaugurated a Division of
Education to start work throughout the State among the schools. Less
than a year and half ago all existing agencies in conservation in Tennessee
were coordinated and a Department of Conservation was formed. One
of the important administrative units of this new Department was an
educational section. It became immediately the duty of this section of
the Department to try to coordinate the educational activities carried
on heretofore and mould them into a new program of conservation
education. One of the first things that was attempted was a careful
study of all the prior conservation education work in Tennessee and a
study of similar programs of all the other States.
116 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Immediately some very interesting facts became apparent. We soon
saw that relatively little true educational work had been done either in
our State or any other State. Instead of conservation education, the work
that has been done to date might better be called- publicity. We found,
too, that in our State the teachers were not trained in any way to teach
conservation. With few exceptions, they knew nothing of the importance
of conservation and had no idea of the possibilities of teaching it. We
found that most of the school work which had been done had been done
independently of regularly constituted school authorities by individuals
who happened to be interested and was generally more nature study
than conservation. Conservation had been taught, it is true, in com-
pliance with Tennessee law with an adopted textbook for ten years, but
we found that this forced teaching had had but little beneficial results.
A study of conservation education carried on by the other States showed
these same failings. A few States have adopted conservation courses
but they have made no provisions for adequate teacher training. It is
worse than useless to expect a teacher, who knows nothing about con-
servation and whose interest in the subject has not been aroused, to
teach the subject successfully.
Some 15 months ago we started a program of conservation education.
The first and most important project we have undertaken is to see that
conservation is properly taught in the schools of Tennessee, under the
supervision of proper teaching authorities. We realized at once that
teachers themselves must be trained and awakened before they can
teach conservation. In Tennessee, county teachers' associations meet
once a month during the school year, generally on Saturday, for educa-
tional programs. We first contacted the county superintendents of
education in the 95 counties of the State, asking them to allow a depart-
ment representative to meet at one or more of their institutes during
the year and explain our conservation program and discuss with the
teachers ideas relative to teaching conservation. During the last year
we met with 37 such groups, contacting some 6,000 teachers, telling
them about the conservation program of Tennessee and our desire to
get proper conservation teaching in the schools. Immediately following
each teachers' meeting, conservation department representatives visited
in that same county, putting on programs at some five or ten schools in
the county. In this way teachers obtain some little mass training but
quite naturally we cannot expect to do much in one or two hours during
the year. However, we consider this early contact of the greatest value
in making our subsequent reception a favorable one.
Our second method of training teachers in the teaching of conserva-
tion is to obtain the introduction of conservation courses into the colleges
and teacher training institutions of the State. During the past year we
have succeeded in obtaining the introduction of such courses in seven
of the leading colleges and universities of the State. Teachers must study
STATE PARKS 117
conservation if they are to teach it. Certainly an English teacher is not
put into a school unless she has studied English. We have met with the
professors selected to teach the courses and have helped them plan their
work and have had department personnel meet with each class several
times during the course and we attempt to supply them with factual
material. We have a surprisingly heavy enrollment in these courses
during this first year and the professors report widespread interest in
conservation.
Next, after training the teachers of the State, we realize that the
general public fathers, mothers, members of the school board, and other
citizens must be sold on our conservation program if we are going to
get successful teaching of conservation. With this in mind, we have
traveled the State systematically from county to county, visiting schools,
colleges, school board meetings meetings of every variety teaching the
people the importance of conservation and telling of our efforts to obtain
its teaching. After all it is the "patrons" the people that send their
children to school who really run the school. In many cases curriculum
content is investigated by these patrons If conservation is to be taught,
these people must be behind it and pushing it.
Some months ago a twenty -foot trailer was bought and outfitted as a
traveling conservation exhibit. The trailer is equipped with exhibits
covering all phases of conservation forestry products, minerals,
mounted birds, and animal skins, charts, maps, graphs; it also contains
excellent motion picture equipment and a powerful generator so that
we can show motion pictures in any school no matter how far from elec-
tricity it may be situated. Since October, when this program started,
we have scheduled some 340 meetings in nearly every county of the
State. This figure may sound large, but much more impressive is the
fact that during the same period it was necessary to turn down 1200
invitations for conservation speakers. That would certainly indicate the
interest in this important subject.
The third phase of this part of our educational program, and one
which naturally follows the first two mentioned, is to obtain the actual
teaching of conservation in our schools. We believe that conservation is
of great enough importance that it should be taught from the first to
the twelfth grade in every school city and county negro and white.
However, a study of the results of twelve years' teaching with an adopted
course and textbook in the fifth grade, made us believe that there should
be better methods to teach conservation than through courses enforced
by law. The State Department of Education in Tennessee has for the
last five years been doing extensive work in the improvement of the
existing curriculum in an effort to get away from the traditional teach-
ing method where the teacher was a slave to the text. In the traditional
old-fashioned school of America the textbook is almost as important as
the teacher. Most teachers follow the textbook page by page with no
118 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
variation. A text is too limited in the amount of suitable material and
it is too didactic and pre-organized. Even the existent flood of improved
textbooks is insufficient to serve the need of the child who is developing
as he should. To meet this problem, the Department of Education has
developed in our State a method of instruction that has been developed
in several other States a system of teaching by the use of units of work,
based on actual condition and experience. A teaching unit which makes
use of local conditions and local problems it is based upon real and
meaningful situation so that the formal tools of reading, writing, and
arithmetic are not learned in isolation. This does not mean that these
basic principles are not learned. They are introduced as they are needed
and there is ample evidence that they are learned more readily and
permanently in this way that is through application. In Tennessee we
are seeking to teach conservation by the use of teaching units which
may be integrated with every existing course in the present curriculum
in such a way that the formal tools of learning are acquired through
the means of conservation as a general theme.
In connection with the larger teachers' colleges of the State, there
are training schools for practice teachers. Trial teaching units are being
prepared by teachers and then used in these training schools. Other
teachers have prepared teaching units during summer months at teachers'
colleges and then applied their work during the school year in their
particular schools. After they have then tried these units, they are taken
by teaching authorities into the curriculum "laboratories" of our three
largest teachers' colleges where they are studied and discussed and put
into better shape. During this present summer, fundamental or "key"
units are being prepared in the largest curriculum laboratory of the
State at Peabody Teachers' College. The best known teaching author-
ities of this, and several other States, will put them into best possible
shape and they will be distributed in printed form this fall to every
teacher in Tennessee. At another of our teachers' colleges, the one
situated in East Tennessee, the whole theme and discussion of work
during the summer months will be conservation and conservation teach-
ing. Some 150 selected teachers will go over all available teaching
material in an effort to produce better teaching units for use in the
schools. Conservation Department personnel meet with these groups
at every opportunity. We do not tell them how to teach conservation
but we tell them what we as conservation experts know should be taught.
In this way we are assured that the right kind of subject matter is being
used. In an effort to increase interest among teachers in the use of
teaching units, we have selected 300 schools, evenly distributed through-
out the State, where conservation teaching by the unit method will be
used during the coming year in every grade and in every course. These
schools will be demonstration schools schools where proper conserva-
tion teaching is demonstrated.
STATE PARK PLANNING AND ADMINISTRATION
State Park Architecture
ALBERT H. GOOD, Architectural Consultant, National Park Service
IT WOULD have been helpful if Mr. Gallup might have polled this
gathering well in advance. A position on "State Park Architecture"
could then be taken with smug assurance. For, if most of you cherish
that outworn notion that all structures regardless of purpose and
excellence are alien and intrusive in all natural park areas irrespective
of degree of scenic, scientific, and historical endowment, it would be
expedient to render the customary lip service.
After all, a brief, conforming "God save the king" for the creaking
credo would be the easy thing to do. There is, however, a haunting
suspicion that to give it a cheery slap on the back would not be accepted
as enough. One is probably expected instead to lift the moribund idea
tenderly from its sick bed, clothe it in colorful phrase, rouge its shriveled
cheeks with synonym, twine a bright verbal garland in its toupee and
insist once again that the down payment on a shroud was money thrown
away.
Such a feat of superficial rejuvenation involves a technique for which
I have no hand and a belief in which I have no heart. The only alter-
native is to cry, "The king is dead; long live the king," and face the
firing squad, if need be.
Burke, by way of the thesaurus that is a collaborator on this paper
says, "Our antagonist is our helper." Here is classic justification for
the dissenter and tremendously reassuring. I rush with eagerness and
delight to render all possible aid to friends of the Model-T notion about
park structures, by being radical, disputatious, and generally disagreeable
in what follows.
During the formative years of the natural park concept, its sponsors
raced against time and threatened exploitation to preserve areas of out-
standing scenic and scientific interest. Among the superlative sites early
dedicated to the natural park idea were the incomparable Valley of
Yosemite and the wondrous Canyons of the Yellowstone and the Colo-
rado. Resentment against buildings invading such scenic splendor was
not long developing. It was there that man must have sensed that in
the midst of primary grandeur his best-intentioned structural efforts
reached an all-time high for incongruity; that structures, however well
designed, could never contribute to the beauty, but only to the use, of
a natural park of real distinction; and that only the most persistent
demands for a facility should trap him into clowning with hammer and
saw in unspoiled wilderness.
He promptly and wisely laid down the principle that structures were
alien and intrusive in natural areas. Applied to the areas with which
his preservational interest was first concerned, and which became the
119
120 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
jewels of the National Park System, this formula was perfectly appro-
priate. It nourished the budding park idea and was a favorable and
protective influence in its flowering. General acceptance of the principle
over the years has so held in check the building of structures to a dese-
cration of top-flight Nature that few persons have been moved to chal-
lenge the statement a half truth, standing very much in need of restate-
ment in the light of today's many-sided park concept.
All Nature is not outstanding, inspiring, breath-taking. The really
magnificent areas have stature because the comparatively few acres
they involve are in sharp contrast with hundreds of thousands of rela-
tively unexciting others. The scenic endowment of some broad, densely
populated sections of the land is definitely subsuperlative, even sub-
average.
Once aware of all this, the sponsors of the natural park movement
could not long remain preoccupied with top-flight Nature exclusively.
The natural park idea was destined for a truly liberal evolution, in-
fluenced by such weighing factors as distribution of population, develop-
ment of the automobile, increase of leisure time, and tardy realization
that the human crop is important among conservational responsibilities
of parks.
The fact that superlative Nature is non-existent near concentrations
of five to ten million people happily has not resulted in these populations
being denied such recreational and inspirational benefits as subaverage
Nature can offer. It has been wisely reasoned that there is more nourish-
ment in half a loaf in the larder than a full loaf beyond the horizon or
no loaf at all. Many park preserves have come into being which cannot
boast the highest peak or deepest canyon, bluest lake or tallest tree, but
do succeed in delivering (f.o.b. metropolitan centers) hills and valleys
to pass for superlative in contrast with tenement walls, and swimming,
sun, and shade to seem heaven-sent to youth whose wading pools have
been rain-flooded gutters of drab city streets.
Tracts of land, admittedly limited or even lacking in natural interest,
yet highly desirable by virtue of location, need, and every other in-
fluencing factor, now bloom attractively on every side to benefit millions.
It is inexact to term these parks, in the accepted denotation of the word
they are reserves for recreation. More often than not their natural
setting is only that contrast-affording Nature which makes other areas
outstanding. Does such a background warrant the "no dogs allowed"
attitude toward structures that obtains where Nature plays the principal
role? Should not structures, on the contrary, be welcomed to a fulfilment
of recreational potentialities and needs and a bolstering-up of common-
place or ravaged Nature? Is a charge of trespass justified? It seems
reasonable to assert that in just the degree natural beauty is lacking in
a park area, useful structures have legitimate place.
Mr. "Bobs" Mann says of the popular curved earthen bobsled runs
STATE PARKS 121
he has built in the Cook County Forest Preserve District, "The thrills
vary as the square of the curves." He does not supply any slide-rule
calculations to prove his discovery rjust leans heavily on the sublime
gullibility of the park- and recreation-minded. His success encourages
me to be equally disingenuous, do some postulating myself, and resent
all requests for supporting calculations. Here it is: The justification
for structures varies inversely as Nature's endowment of the park area.
Which is to say: Deficiency of natural values in parks can only be com-
pensated for by introducing other values, recreational in character and very
generally dependent on structures. It is therefore contended that park
and recreation architecture, outside certain sacrosanct areas, need not
cringe before a blanket indictment for "unlawful entry."
This happy idea of rendering service by antagonizing really has great
possibilities. Some helpful irritation might be applied to those of you
whose hostility to construction insists that even the most essential struc-
tures are unthinkable in parks unless they are subordinated to the land-
scape setting be that good, bad, or indifferent. Now where Nature is
Grade A Certified, perhaps recreation architecture is properly backed
off into some borrow pit or burned-over area where it can be made to
look meek and forbearant. But why should settings that are utterly
commonplace (and many such are being developed and called parks or
recreational reserves) why should these constitute a "ceiling" for the
architecture of buildings that are indispensable if the very establishment
of the area is ever to be justified? Isn't it time for park and recreation
architecture to cease being pathetically humble and self-conscious in
settings of convalescent or synthetic Nature? Instead, should it not
frequently step right out in front and make up for scenic deficiencies by
supplying all the forthright, imaginative beauty it can contribute?
Surely the obligation rests on anyone striving to be helpfully antagon-
istic to spread the benefits at his command quite impartially. An archi-
tect, especially, would be open to the charge of prejudice if he refused
to be as hotly helpful as a mustard plaster to those who believe that the
dreadful curse on park buildings is miraculously lifted when landscape
architects design them. Possibly the bona fide architect's sublime
ignorance of plant materials and road alignment logically disqualified
him for designing park buildings, where the landscape architect's
equivalently amateur knowledge of building materials and truss forms
is no handicap. It always gets very complicated when references to the
architect and the landscape architect must be made in the same breath.
One gropes for a descriptive adjective appropriate to the former which
might truly separate the sheep from the goats. "Bona fide" isn't exactly
sporting; "common" applied to a disappearing species is certainly in-
accurate; and to call the architect "the plain, garden variety" is only
confusion worse confounded, in the circumstances. I think that to dub
him the "simple" architect is very appropriate, for simple indeed is the
122 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
dull fellow if he "amens" the loose logic behind the landscape architect's
taking over the designing of buildings in parks.
There is always a formidable bloc in any park and recreation forum
that clings to the belief that "age cannot wither or custom stale" log
construction, as the supreme expression of park architecture. May its
collective toes be trampled on to its benefit. To be sure, there are parks
wherein reproduction of pioneer construction will always be appropriate,
wherever local tradition is the primary theme, as at Spring Mill,
Indiana, and New Salem, Illinois, and wherever in forested States the
timber stands remain so abundant that structures built of large logs will
not appear to have been a factor of depletion. But it must come to pass
that structures employing logs of suitably generous size in settings of
small second-growth trees, as well as all construction that resorts to a
use of spindling logs, will be seen and chuckled over for the stuff and
nonsense that they are. Of course, there will be diehards, lacking in
humor and other senses, who will solemnly continue to re-create log
cabins of the pioneer era in deforested areas, or within sight and sound
of metropolitan areas and gigantic power dams of the machine age.
They are the quaint theorists who must feel pain because the Bear
Mountain Bridge, joining two high, tree-clad river banks, was not fash-
ioned of logs, pegged together.
The public prints lately proclaimed that a swing band leader had
been moved to streamline the National Anthem so completely that a
copyright was granted on the new version. If this foreshadows a drastic
reshaping of familiar and sacred things to suit the modern mood, let's
set about hauling down from the attic the frayed and faded theory of
park structures. Let us dust off and examine it. It may be that by sewing
a new coat on the old buttons we shall contrive something to fit the
diverse needs of parks today.
State Park Organizations: The various kinds:
Their good and bad points
R. A. VETTER, Assistant Attorney, National Park Service
STATE PARK legislation of varying character, but representing in the
aggregate a considerable mass of laws, has been enacted during the
past few years. Underlying much of this legislation has been a search for
the best form of park organization. Other measures have been designed
to strengthen and extend existing agencies.
Notwithstanding this wave of legislative activity, park legislation
has in no sense become uniform. In the strictest sense, uniformity
would mean that every State employ identical legislation, identically
administered, without regard to local conditions, needs and precedents.
Manifestly, uniformity in so rigorous a sense is neither possible nor
STATE PARKS 123
desirable. Viewed at large, however, it is significant to observe that
certain principles, however expressed, are to be found in so much of the
recent legislation as to indicate definite trends.
Existing park organizations may be classified: (1) The departmental
form, generally designated the conservation department, or name of
similar import, in which are centered all or a number of conservation
activities, including parks; (2) the board or commission form, in which
are centered two or more conservation activities, including parks. These
are designated by various names: the forestry board, the fish and
game commission, the park and forestry commission, etc.; (3) the board
or commission concerned with parks only. While each of these forms has
its champions and its merits, the trend of recent legislation favors the
department form.
In turn, the department form may be further classified as follows:
(a) Those with a one-man director or commissioner; (b) those with an
executive board or commission; and (c) those with an advisory board or
commission. Recent legislation favors the one-man director or com-
missioner; the executive board or commission is second, and the ad-
visory board is running a poor third.
Before leaving the subject of organization, it may be of interest to
observe that while a number of the States have switched from the board
or commission form, as represented by (2) and (3) above, in no instance
has the department form been abandoned once adopted.
Regardless of the form of organization adopted, the paramount
factor in the advancement of its functions is the caliber of the individual
or individuals who man the organization. No administrative arrange-
ment has yet been devised whose purposes cannot be ruined by dis-
interested, incompetent, or subservient officers in the key positions. The
tendency of recent legislation is to take cognizance of this fact, by re-
quiring that all appointees and other personnel be selected solely on the
basis of a knowledge of and interest in the activities of the organization,
and thus discouraging, if not eliminating, partisan or personal favoritism.
By the same token, provision for ex-officio incumbents is found less
frequently. Park organizations composed of or dominated by ex-officio
members whose primary responsibilities and interests are foreign to park
and recreational matters, is partisanship in its worst form.
There is also a tendency to provide that appointees may be either
men or women, a subtle and belated recognition that women are not
only interested in park and recreational matters, but are equally quali-
fied for service in an administrative capacity.
There is a definite tendency toward the elevation of park standards.
In general, this takes the form of a requirement that areas must possess
distinctive scenic and recreational values, or at least some scenic char-
acteristics and unusual recreational possibilities. Areas of historic,
archeological, or scientific interest are now generally recognized as proper
124 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
for inclusion in the park system, especially when such elements are
linked with recreational possibilities.
Where all or a number of conservation activities, including parks, are
under unified control, the tendency is to create separate divisions for
each activity. This provision is generally accompanied by a requirement
that trained, experienced and able officers head these divisions. Also,
there is a growing recognition that parks and forests have divergent
major objectives, and to require that areas be classified and administered
as one or the other.
Unification of control and administration of all parks and recreational
areas is making noticeable progress. But much remains to be done in
this respect. There are now state park organizations with no park or
recreational areas to administer, such areas being under the control of
separate and independent commissions.
The inclusion of parkways in the park system is growing in favor.
There is a growing tendency to recognize that planned and directed
recreational activities have an appropriate place in a well-rounded park
program.
Another trend is toward better coordination and more active co-
operation between the park organization and other agencies national,
regional, state and local engaged in similar activities. Parallel legis-
lation is found in enabling acts authorizing cities, counties and other
political units similarly to cooperate. Not infrequently these local units
are authorized to contribute both land and money for the benefit of the
state park system.
Significant as these trends are, it is equally significant to note that
they represent little that is new in park legislation. Their genesis is to be
found in the earlier park laws. In a sense, States which have pioneered
in park legislation may be regarded as laboratories in which these pro-
visions have been tested and their worth demonstrated by time and
experience. Their adoption by States which have more recently entered
the state park field lends reality to this comparison, and is an enduring
compliment to the early exponents of park and recreation legislation.
In conclusion, and taking the country as a whole, it may be said that
park legislation has made definite progress. There are, of course, States
which do not possess adequate park laws. This, however, is not alto-
gether the fault of the legislators, but may be attributed to a passive
interest in state parks within these States. In fairness to the legislative
bodies, it should be said that their apparent willingness to enact com-
prehensive park measures has been one of the most encouraging aspects
of the state park movement. But legislation is largely a reflection of
dominant public opinion. When a more active popular interest in parks
and recreations within these States is manifested, we may confidently
anticipate that appropriate legislative action will follow.
STATE PARKS 125
A Park Administrator on State Park
Landscape Architecture
D. N. GRAVES, Secretary, State Game and Fish Commission, Little Rock, Ark.
S a whole, I believe state park landscape architecture is now superior
that formerly accepted as the criterion for national parks. This
statement can be verified by visits to state parks in States all over this
great Nation of ours, and also by careful study of state park plans, and
comparing them with those of our national parks.
A study of state park landscape architecture immediately brings us
face to face with the state park landscape architects who have been
responsible for these excellent results. My criticism is not of the results
that have been obtained, for, in almost all instances, the results are very
desirable. The manner in which these results have been obtained, is, in
entirely too many instances, enough to drive a park administrator to the
verge of distraction. Lack of experience has too often caused our land-
scape architects to resort to the well-known "trial and error" method of
treating a given problem. The resulting waste of man days and materials
has no doubt been responsible for these gray hairs now generously
sprinkled among my erstwhile "raven locks." I have sometimes thought
that surely the old copy-book motto: "If at first you don't succeed,
try, try again," must have been coined after watching progress on some
of our projects.
A park administrator, while engaged in park construction, must
carefully weigh the need and usefulness of a given project against its
cost, for all of us are vitally interested in obtaining the maximum of
values from available funds. I believe our state park landscape archi-
tects have been more extravagant with man days of labor than have any
other group of our technical personnel. This extravagance, caused by a
lack of experience, is the result of a condition, and is not to be blamed on
individuals. The ultimate results are to be credited to the excellent assis-
tance given our field landscape architects by more experienced men from
our Regional offices. Prior to the inception of the ECW program in 1933,
the opportunity for a landscape architect to become experienced in park
landscape architecture was extremely limited. This condition did not
exist to such a great extent with regard to our engineers and architects.
This park experience was gained at a tremendous cost of wasted labor.
One great and lasting benefit that has accrued from the ECW program
is the training of an adequate personnel in park building.
On one certain occasion I recall checking into the cost of constructing
a barbecue pit on one of our state parks. Imagine my surprise when I
learned that solid rock has been excavated to a depth of 18 inches, only
to provide for a concrete base for the stone structure. The base was, as I
recall, approximately 5 feet by 18 feet, some twenty sacks of cement had
been used, to say nothing of the labor of excavating the rock. A few
126 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
months later I was relieved when I learned of a landscape architect in
one of our national parks, who had likewise ordered 12 inches of rock
excavation to provide room for a concrete base for some rubble gutters.
In both these cases the ultimate result and appearance left nothing to
be desired.
There has often been a warfare waged by our engineers, our architects
and our project superintendents on the one side and our landscape
architects on the other. In most cases all concerned were at fault, for
most problems over which discord has occurred could have been peace-
fully settled by compromise if our technical men had made an effort to
see the other fellow's viewpoint. Good park landscape architecture
consists of treating problems, be they engineering or architectural, in a
manner that will not impair the use for which they were designed, but
that will insure their successful and lasting use, and at the same time
will make the project fit unobtrusively into its natural setting.
Different individuals will treat any given problem in different ways,
any one of which may be equally desirable. The landscape treatment of
such a problem is planned and subsequently executed by one landscape
architect, in a manner suggested by his feeling of what is proper for that
particular problem. I know of cases where such a project has been com-
pletely finished, only to be obliterated and done in an entirely different
manner, due to personnel changes and to differences of opinions of some
late comer who happens to have more authority than his predecessor.
Frequently the delay and expense of these changes are such that from the
viewpoint of the administrator it would have been better never to have
begun the project in the first place.
Prompted by a sense of fairness, I want you to know that by no
means have my observations of extravagance been limited exclusively
to our landscape architects. In this connection I am reminded of the one
classic example of wasted funds that I will always remember. The
gasoline, oil and maintenance account of one of my camps ran faster
than a streamlined train. An investigation revealed the fact that the
project superintendent, who, by the way, was an engineer, had issued an
order that the oil in motors of all his trucks must be changed each Friday
evening at the conclusion of the day's work. This order had been care-
fully carried out for a number of weeks without regard to the amount
of mileage made by the truck that week. I suppose his order had been
prompted by the well-accepted rule of washing on Monday, eating fish
on Friday and bathing each Saturday night.
It has been said landscape architecture is the art of arranging land
for human use with a controlling regard for beauty. This definition is to
my mind the best one I have ever heard. As our landscape architects
have become more experienced in state park work it has naturally re-
sulted that the above definition has been carried out with much less
difficulty than was experienced in the early days of park development.
STATE PARKS 127
State Park Engineering
CHARLES G. ESTES, Chief Construction Engineer, Forest Preserve District
of Cook County, Illinois
STATE park engineering can rightfully be placed in a class by itself,
the same as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or civil
engineering, in that it embraces this entire field, although in most cases
it is more closely allied with civil engineering. It goes still farther.
Landscape architecture has been defined as "Primarily a fine art, and
as such its most important function is to create and preserve beauty
in the surroundings of human habitations and in the broader natural
scenery of the country; but it is also concerned with promoting the
comfort, convenience and health of city population which have scanty
access to rural scenery." That definition also just about fits the subject of
state park engineering as I see it, so therefore, I would insert the name
of landscape engineering into the old line group of mechanical, electrical,
and civil and then a student with an academic training in landscape
engineering would be properly equipped to become a state park engineer.
The successful state park engineer, granting the fact that he has the
proper knowledge of engineering book information and how to apply it,
must possess a definite sympathetic feeling for the landscape architect
and his work. He must possess this naturally or gain it through ex-
perience. Other than the consideration of plant life, their species and
life zones, there should be no marked difference in the approach to park
work by the engineer or the landscape architect. An engineer should be
capable of maintaining the proper balance of the artificial with the
natural. He alone who is modest enough to subordinate his structures
and construction to the landscape will in the end be rewarded with the
additional touch that nature always gives to his work. The state park
engineer must know something about the habits of trees, their root
structures and what he can do in the way of making surface and under-
ground changes among them. He must appreciate the value of trees
and think in terms of them continually in order that he may not become
careless and destroy what it took many years to develop. He must be
alert to all the possibilities that natural tree arrangements offer him for
creating effect in his road layouts, bridge installations and the like. He
should learn the value of vistas and the value of color in his completed
picture, if his work is to be high grade and acceptable.
On the other hand, and I think it appropriate to inject it into this
talk, the landscape architect should know a portion of the technical
answers required in park engineering problems and by all means he should
reconcile his esthetic desires with the more practical thoughts of the
engineer. Without any desire to detract from the landscape architects
I think it is quite common that they have been guilty of a tendency to
maintain too much of the artistic approach to things in our work where
128 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
some old-fashioned thinking with the engineer would be of great help.
I should not be misunderstood here because I am a great champion of
their cause.
It is, no doubt, true that most of the engineers now in state park work
received their former experience in the highway field or in municipal
engineering work. There is a very close comparison in a great deal of the
work performed by the state park engineer and the highway engineer.
The state park engineer can lead the way in directing the highway engi-
neer out of the darkness and show him the dawn of a new day in so far
as protection and consideration of the natural landscape is involved in
his new developments. What has been the practice in the highway field
for the past 25 years? Standardization of most everything that has been
done. The plans for culverts and bridges are generally filed away in mail-
order house style and you could not get a standard headwall length
changed under a court order even though a 100-year oak be only slightly
in the way. Highway cut and fill slopes have been constructed with th e
old 1^-to-l or 2-to-l ratios for so many years that even the universities
have accepted them and taught them to the students. What have been
the results? Erosion, slides, washouts and ugly scars. It has been only
in the last few years that any marked trend toward flatter slopes, sodding
and planting has developed on the highways. In Illinois, where a great
deal of promotional work has been done by Robert Kingery, General
Manager of the Chicago Regional Planning Commission, the effects of
landscape engineering on the highways can be noticed.
The highway department can learn about the landscape from the
state park engineer.
In discussing a few typical problems in state park engineering I will
naturally be guided by those in our own reservation of 35,000 acres in
Cook County. I think our problems are typical of those in most any
state park property. We have hills, valleys, meadows, lakes and many
acres of trees. Being within 30 minutes' ride of over 4,000,000 people,
the properties are subjected to a heavy automobile load. This leads to
a road and parking space construction program of great magnitude. On
last inventory over 1,000,000 square yards of improved surfaces were
accounted for. These surfaces have had a low maintenance cost.
The state park road is generally the first thing that impresses the
visitor. It is the shirt front on Nature's body. Visitors nowadays are
so used to comfortable riding on public highways that unless the same
degree of comfort is furnished in our parks, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer
may not appreciate what your park may have to offer otherwise.
A park road is a cheap investment when constructed properly. If it
is not constructed properly it becomes an expensive maintenance burden.
Assuming that we all prefer the gravel or macadam or improved asphalt
surfaces, there are three things to consider. One, ground water table
control by strategically located tile lines; two, a properly stabilized
STATE PARKS 129
gravel or macadam material with correct clay content for binding, and,
three, cross-sections and longitudinal gradients. When using the black-
top surface it is only as good as its base. With a good base the surface
will be successful only when a rigid control has been maintained, by the
engineer, over the asphalt material.
Continuate with roads and parking areas, in our efforts to control
the automobile, are barriers. Natural planting is obviously most desir-
able. Anything other than that must be designed and installed so it
will be the least conspicuous. A low stone masonry or concrete curb
is desirable for low maintenance cost; while wood log rail barrier is
effective as barrier, it is expensive to maintain. This type of barrier is
fast becoming one of the curses on state park landscapes. More abuses
of design proportions and installations have occurred with this sort of
thing than any other form of park improvement. Now, even the WPA
is going wild with it.
In the early days we installed considerable of it. It was set low using
6-inch rails and 10-inch posts. The right proportions. We are fast elimi-
nating it where possible.
Bridges and buildings, which we all like to play with, are mostly
done in stone. Here the state park engineer must design best to utilize
and assume the most pleasing effect with the type of building stone
material at hand. We cannot create in northern Illinois with stratified
limestone the same effect that you might prefer which exists on a build-
ing or bridge in New York State where different stone formations exist.
Crudity in stone masonry pattern and appearance is what most park
people like, in that it is representative of the pioneer product; however,
the state park engineer must build for permanence and apply certain
knowledge gleaned, since the now tottering pioneer stone structures
were built. This is why the Cook County practice of using a random
rubble pattern with stratified limestone, approaching the ashler, has
been adopted. Our work may appear a bit meticulous, nevertheless, it
is built to stay and is admired, generally, by all.
State park engineering should be recognized by the engineering schools
and they should provide a place for its teachings. The engineer should
be graduated with more knowledge of landscape preservation. Give the
engineering student something to think about other than transit lines,
T squares and triangles.
The National Conference on State Parks has an opportunity here to
perform a much-needed promotional service. State park engineering is a
medium through which the training, particularly, of the civil engineer
may be vastly broadened.
What has the state park to offer the engineer? It offers contentment
in one's work. That is about the best state of mind that one could expect
to attain.
That is what state park engineering has done for me.
130 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Problems of a State Park Superintendent
HAROLD W. LATHROP, Director, Minnesota Division of State Parks,
Minneapolis, Minn.
A STATE PARK superintendent should have a pleasing personality
as he must continually meet park visitors. Many come from out of
State, and do not have contact with any other state employee.
There should be a definite requirement that the superintendent have
some experience in the artisan trades. The best superintendent would be
a jack of all trades, but one who realizes the value of specialized artisans
when necessary.
The fiscal procedure requires that a man have had some experience
in letter and report writing and simple bookkeeping, the latter because
he must control his expenditures against the funds budgeted. In parks
where revenue-producing facilities are state operated, he must be able
to check receipts and determine the probable demand of merchandise
for re-sale.
He must be a conservationist, because the prime purpose of operating
state parks is to permit the wise use of Nature's gifts of flora and fauna
for the benefit of mankind; but where the human element is injected into
such areas, there should be a balance maintained as to how much in-
trusion should be permitted for the benefit of park visitors against the
despoliation of God's handiwork.
The problems of a state park superintendent are :
1. Land and water protection
2. Wildlife conservation
3. Maintenance and improvements
4. Operation
5. Fiscal procedure
A state park superintendent must be constantly on the alert for fire
hazards, which might develop into disastrous conflagrations. He must
guard against trespassing by owners of adjacent or contiguous private
land, for the removal of timber, filling material, and, yes, even sand and
gravel. He is confronted with the problem of keeping up fences to
prevent stock running over the park area.
There is the problem of retaining uniform water levels, being aware
of the effect of pollution or the diversion or retention of waters or streams
flowing into the park lakes. This is a problem in the northern section of
Minnesota. In many cases dams have been constructed and private
property owners have retarded a normal flow of water courses for their
own benefit. This during periods of closure, leaves the stream-bed run-
ning through the park practically dry or causes the lake-levels to drop.
Thus, a good superintendent is constantly on the alert for the protection
of the state park land and waters.
Wildlife conservation presents the problem of assisting the game
STATE PARKS 131
wardens, operating under a separate division, to see that the game laws
are abided by. The re-stocking of the fish species is a seasonal problem,
for the park visitors are very instrumental in the depletion of fish life,
which must be balanced by restocking. He must have sufficient knowl-
edge of the lakes and their food value so that he can be sure the proper
species are planted in lakes suitable for each.
Except in the extremely large parks, the onslaught of civilization has
definitely thrown out of balance the wildlife status of the parks. The
predators for which bounties are paid are permitted to be removed. An
over-population of certain species presents a problem, because of in-
sufficient natural food supply, which must be met by artificial feeding,
to eliminate complete browsing off of the seedlings and young tree growth
which must eventually replace the matured timber.
It is a problem to make the public realize that the native flora,
existing along the trails, are to be seen and not picked. Periodic in-
spection along the trails is necessary, to check the condition of trees,
which might create too great a hazard because of rot or wind breaks.
A park superintendent is confronted with the problem of diseased
trees, which may endanger the sound trees or the public. A balance must
be retained from the human as well as the wildlife standpoint, and the
justification for any action based on comparative values.
Maintenance of facilities and areas which the public use, if properly
carried out, should assist materially in conserving the natural sections
of the parks. The maintenance of park roads is a problem which requires
constant vigilance during the heavy use season, but which must also be
done in off-seasons. In our State, we are confronted with a serious snow-
removal problem. If our park roads were paved with concrete, the
maintenance problem would be much simpler, but they would be so
much in conflict with the naturalness of the areas, that I am partial to
well-maintained oiled or black-top roads, because they are less intrusive.
The roadside ditch and backslopes must be sufficiently maintained so
as not to become a fire hazard, because of thrown cigarette stubs. A
constant checking of culverts and bridges is another problem.
Maintenance of firebreaks is necessary to assure ingress in case of an
emergency. Gates to fire trails are often opened by someone desiring to
drive farther into the wilderness.
There is the problem of maintaining the guard rail, so that it may
satisfactorily serve its purpose. The parking areas must be graded
occasionally, especially after heavy rains, if rutting occurs.
One of the most important maintenance problems is the provision of
a potable and adequate water-supply at all times. During the last few
years, under the various Federal relief programs, we have been fortunate
in establishing gravity systems and in so doing have eliminated the old
hand pump repairing, which was almost constant, but power pumps
need periodic checking. Where springs exist, a constant check must be
132 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
made on the possibility of contamination by ground or surface water.
The use of springs as a water-supply is discouraged.
The cleanliness of the various use areas, the allocation of picnic tables
in each, the repair of stone fireplaces, the cleanliness of rest rooms and
shelters, the safety of docks and beaches, adequate firewood supply, and
the proper functioning of sewage-disposal systems all become major
problems unless they are checked often.
If the maintenance crew of a park is sufficiently large, the problems
are few, for each man is charged with certain responsibility, and an
occasional check by the superintendent will eliminate any serious prob-
lem of unsatisfactory maintenance.
No doubt many park superintendents throughout the country are
worrying about the future of maintenance of the many additional park
improvements received under the CCC and WPA programs, especially
where additional personnel will be difficult to obtain. Consideration
should be given the superintendent's ideas as to the need for certain
improvements. The technician often does not give sufficient thought for
the man held responsible for the operation.
We make our park superintendents responsible for any state partici-
pation given to Federal relief projects, and in a number of our smaller
parks hold them responsible for directing improvement work.
The operation of facilities presents a definite problem to the Min-
nesota state park superintendents. We have found that better service
is rendered the public and the State receives more revenue under a
system of state-operated facilities, rather than under lease. Such
operations include concessions, campgrounds, boat rentals, bath-
houses and bathing beaches. In only a few of the smaller parks are the
concession privileges leased to private individuals.
The operation of boats, which in almost every case is insufficient
to meet park demands, must be assigned fairly during such times and
that no such thing as reserving boats for privileged parties be permitted.
He must see that the operation of the bathhouse is properly carried
out, that towels and suits rented are clean and that every effort is made
to eliminate misuse of the checking and dressing room privileges. It is a
problem to determine the periods when life guards should be assigned to
duty, primarily when funds do not permit full-time service.
Many of the problems of a superintendent can be delegated to capable
employees, but the superintendent must assume the problem of continual
checking of the services rendered.
The operation of pumps, electric generators and telephone lines re-
quires mechanical agility, and the superintendent who has some knowl-
edge of such might avert a more serious problem.
The fiscal procedure of a state park superintendent can be lightened
considerably and be less of a problem if it is held to the simple forms.
The park superintendent knows the extent of funds with which he has to
STATE PARKS 133
work and he is held responsible for his expenditures within this amount.
All purchases are controlled under a system of purchase authorities, by
the state office, which encumbers each at the time on issuance against
the budget item to which it properly belongs, and at such time that
certain budget items are over-encumbered, we hold the park superin-
tendent responsible for cutting down his expenditures on other budget
items to that extent. There are also records for concession operation,
which are very simple, whereby all material received is entered on forms
at the resale value. Periodic inventories are made by our auditors.
Boat rental reports are made daily from numbered tickets, which
are punched for the duration boats are used within every hour periods,
and a charge is made accordingly.
The camping privileges must be accounted for according to the type
of equipment, whether automobile and tent, auto and trailer, which are
punched in specific places on the registration tag, one-half of which is
retained by the visitor and one by the operator.
People in park work are expected to be working the hardest when the
rest of the citizenry are vacationing, but although the problems are
many, there is a personal satisfaction in seeing others receiving enjoy-
ment from our efforts, which is a worthwhile way of looking at our jobs.
Elements of a Good State Park Plan
S. HERBERT HARE, Landscape Architect, Kansas City, Mo.
WITH the sudden and rather miraculous growth of interest in state
planning, a system of state parks is now recognized as one of the
important elements in a state plan, and closely related to other problems
of state-wide planning, such as land use, water conservation, and high-
ways. As in the case of other phases of city, county and state planning
or development, the first essential is a satisfactory legal, financial, and
administrative status. If parks do not have a proper standing under
state laws, their life and usefulness will be uncertain. If they depend for
support on funds from some related department such as from fish and
game licenses, there will always be jealousy on the part of hunters,
fishermen or others supplying such funds, over their diversion to park
use. If the administration of the parks is assigned to some department
or board having only an incidental interest in them, they will soon
become the "step-child" of that department. It seems much better to
include state parks as a department or division under a conservation
commission, with definite allocation of funds.
While a repetition of what has often been said before, perhaps in
somewhat different words, the general functions of a state park system
might be outlined as follows :
1. To preserve unspoiled for present and future generations the best examples
of the characteristic scenery of the State the hills, mountains, streams, springs,
134 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
woodland, prairie, swamps or ledges as well as the flora and fauna which are
an integral part of that scenery.
2. To provide the types of recreation which are normally based on the en-
joyment of natural scenery such as picnicking, camping, boating, swimming,
riding, hiking, and nature study; rather than the more sophisticated types of
recreation requiring artificial facilities and a high degree of maintenance, as
tennis or golf, which are more properly suited to city parks.
3. To preserve areas of special historical, geological, botanical or archeo-
logical interest, such as the homes or birthplaces of famous men, old inns, mills
or public buildings, battlefields, fine specimens or groves of trees, Indian mounds
or villages, unusual rock outcrops or fossil remains of extinct animals.
The "state park" should be to the State what the superb areas of
primitive scenery, known as "national parks" are to the Nation. While
it is difficult to fix a minimum, areas to be classed as "state parks"
should usually include 500 to 1,000 acres and preferably more, at least
enough to make the scenic unit self-contained.
The boundaries of state parks should have careful consideration so
that topographical units of scenery are included. Also in the case of
lakes one of the most common mistakes is failure to include an adequate
border of land around the water to provide space both for reasonable
use and scenic protection. At least three to four times as much land as
water area is usually needed to accomplish this.
Historical, geological, botanical or archeological areas might be
classed as "preserves." These would be comparable to the so-called
monuments under the National Park Service. The extent of these prop-
erties, as well as the recreational value incidental to their primary use,
would be subject to local conditions. Care should be taken that they
will not be overrun or worn out by attendance out of proportion to the
area and facilities provided.
The growing importance of turn-out places along main highways
justifies "roadside parks" as a separate classification. These can be at
scenic points and can provide for picnicking, or even camping if proper
sanitary facilities and supervision is provided. The area may vary from
a slight widening of the right-of-way to several acres. There is a serious
question whether, in the interest of efficiency and economy, such areas
should be placed under the control of the state highway department or
under the state park department. The state highway department can
police them more readily, but may not have as sympathetic or esthetic
a point of view in their development or maintenance. Such parks are
usually best located at stream crossings or at high points having a
scenic outlook.
The value of "parkways" as a part of the state park system cannot
be over-emphasized. Pleasure driving is one of the most common forms
of recreation, but the commercialization of the main highways has made
them unsuitable for this purpose. The roadway of such a parkway need
not have quite as high standard of gradient or curvature as the main
STATE PARKS 135
highways, but should be bordered by a strip of land of sufficient width
to preserve the natural scenery and prevent commercial intrusions. This
width may vary from 300 or 400 feet to 1,000 feet or more, depending on
topographical conditions. The Federal Government is setting an am-
bitious example in these parkways and several States are considering
similar developments. States which have a continuity of good scenery
along river valleys or ranges of hills can most easily develop parkways.
Probably "sanctuaries" is the best term for areas devoted to the
preservation of wildlife. These may be separate areas set aside for this
purpose, perhaps under some related department, without provision for
visitors or they may involve an incidental use in portions of the larger
state parks. All state parks, parkways and preserves should have some
value in wildlife protection and preservation.
It seems hardly necessary to say that the planning of a comprehensive
state park system should be based on data as to physical, social and
economic conditions in the State. These data should usually include
growth, distribution, trends and composition of the population; historical
and archeological facts and location of areas; physiography and geology;
climate and precipitation; present and recommended land use and prob-
lem areas; land values and tax delinquency; and volume of traffic.
What Does the Average Man Expect to Find
and Do in a State Park?
PAUL V. BROWN, Associate Regional Director, Region II, Omaha, Neb.
this subject was assigned me on a moment's notice almost as
JL an after-thought is indicative of something significant. It is proof
that park people in general are backwardly advancing. That is, they
are progressing, perhaps, but like the crayfish their hind ends are fore-
most and their eyes are focused on a receding landscape.
Have I made myself clear? We have been discussing learnedly on the
development of parks and their maintenance and then someone, whose
attention must have been wandering, incidentally strikes a discordant
note by suggesting the subject of the people who are to use these parks
and for whom, presumably, they are being created. May we not accuse
ourselves of loving our parks and resenting our public? I recall a serious
discussion on a park planning and development problem one time that
was broken up by a remark by Bob Roberts, who said in effect:
"We could plan the park in question a lot better and keep it preserved
more economically if we kept the public out of it."
Who is this average man? He is an unknown that every politician and
businessman would like to know and clasp firmly to his bosom. He is
the subject of vast research official and private. The very existence of
136 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
our political and economic and social life depends upon his whims and
trends. It is important, therefore, that we try to find out something
about him, and yet he is too variable to be catalogued or tagged. How
then can I tell you of the average man his wants and needs as regards
state parks and outdoor recreation?
What the average man does in a state park is the subject of a study
that is being conducted throughout the country. But even after these
data have been carefully tabulated it will need intelligent interpretation
and then perhaps we will find that we have a standard pattern that can-
not be applied to any given park area. It has been the contention of
some of us, therefore, that these studies had best be conducted, inter-
preted and applied by the local agency best qualified by familiarity with
the local condition.
Also studies are being made to learn what the average man wants
in state parks. A word of caution in this connection. Your average man
will often express the desire for something that he thinks he wants or
for something which he thinks he should have, but after it is provided he
does not use it. How many of us think we should have the .privilege of
working daily in a rose-garden and yet burn up our surplus energy and
use our leisure time on a golf course? It is advisable not to follow the
expressed wishes of the average man blindly. A careful study of what he
actually does may better provide the key for solving the development
problem. Such advice should be tempered, however, with delayed action.
To point to the miniature golf course should be sufficient to illustrate
the soundness of this advice.
We build parks for people. We believe that parks by providing a
means for an intelligent use of leisure can contribute towards the further-
ance of a better life for people mentally and physically. Yet we may
not set ourselves up as the final judge of what is best for the average
man, but it is our privilege to try to serve him, and to be able to do so
we must provide those things which he will and can use.
This leads us to our concluding observation. Once we determine
who the average man may be, we may find that state parks are not
built for him. The Recreation Study that is now being conducted may
show that the state parks generally are too remote for the use of the
average family in the metropolitan areas and that the accommodations
are too expensive for the average pocketbook. Then too, we may find
that the extensive type of recreation provided in state parks is not in
rhythm with the tempo of our normal. That should not be construed
as a disparaging remark on state parks as we now conceive them. Our
use charts show that there is ample justification for our wilderness
preservation and scenic conservation program as exemplified by our
state park policies. Likewise it does not mean that we should forget our
opportunity to provide outdoor recreation facilities accessible and agree-
able to Mister Average Man.
RECREATIONAL PROGRAMS
Recreational Development in the National Forests
C. M. GRANGER, Assistant Chief, U. S. Forest Service
I AM struck with the extent to which the objects of this Conference,
as quoted in your program, furnish a broad viewpoint and basis for
the whole public effort toward providing outdoor recreation of a non-
urban character. You have stated the objects of your organization as
follows :
To urge upon our governments local, county, state and national the
acquisition of additional land and water areas suitable for recreation, for the
study of natural history, for the preservation of wildlife, and for historical monu-
ments leading to the better understanding and appreciation of the history and
development of our Nation and its several States, until there shall be public
parks, forests, and preserves within easy access of all the citizens of every State
and territory in the United States ; and to encourage private citizens and groups
to acquire, maintain, and dedicate for public uses similar areas.
This statement does several things. It indicates that the program
should be one in which all branches of the Government, local, county,
state, and national, should join; it proposes that there shall be recre-
ational areas of the different types, such as parks and forests ; it suggests
that the dispersion of these should be such that all citizens of this country
should have easy access to at least one of them; it indicates that the
purpose is not only conservation and recreation, but education in both the
ways of the outdoors and in the history and development of our Nation.
It would be hard to find a better exposition of the purposes and
responsibilities in this field of outdoor recreation and education. Al-
though it does not specifically say so, there is the obvious implication
that the efforts and programs of the different divisions of Government
should complement each other rather than be in competition.
Out of this statement, one draws also the obvious inference that the
lands must be in public ownership, or specifically dedicated to public
uses, in order that they may serve the stated purposes.
As a preliminary to the definition, as I see it, of the part which the
national forests should play in this general scheme, may I refer briefly
to the history of the efforts on the part of Government to meet the
spirit of your objective. A study of the creation, development, and
management of city parks, metropolitan parks, and county and state
parks discloses a desire on the part of Government to provide, for the
benefit of the people, areas for play in which there should be preserved
to the fullest practicable extent the natural environment. Putting it
another way, there was the desire to afford city dwellers an opportunity
to enjoy a part of their recreation in surroundings contrasting with those
of the city streets and having the general quality of undisturbed nature.
History shows too that the effort was one of combating encroachment
137
138 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
of the city, or its characteristics, first upon many of the city parks,
thus forcing Government to set up parks outside the city metropolitan
district parks, etc., then the movement of the city toward these parks
and their increasing urbanization. Where this has been true, the next
step has been the provision of county parks, and then the state parks.
The latter, of course, have not been established solely to afford outlets
to city dwellers whose near-by parks have become overcrowded or over-
urbanized, but they do in a measure represent the efforts of Government
to maintain reasonably accessible recreation areas of a natural character.
The national parks, appearing in the picture in relatively recent
years, also contribute in a large way to the provision of such outlets,
though their primary purpose was the preservation of the supreme and
not the development of mere recreation areas.
The national forests might be described as a "surprise package" of
gigantic dimensions more or less suddenly unwrapped for the satisfaction
of those who wish and need recreation amid the works of nature on a
large scale. This opportunity has necessarily been circumscribed in the
local park areas originally set aside, because so many of them have, as
suggested above, become overcrowded or overurbanized.
You are all sufficiently familiar with the general character and dis-
tribution of the national forests, so that I need to go into no detail on
that point here. They contain nearly 175 million acres of Government
land about one-twelfth of our land area. Obviously, they are more
important, in terms of area, in the recreation picture in the West than
in the country east of the Mississippi which, nevertheless, contain some
of the best recreation areas in the East.
In addition to vast opportunity for the commoner types of forest
recreation, such as camping and picnicking, the national forests present
widespread opportunities for very distinctive types of "wild land"
recreation, such as trips in the wilderness, climbing high peaks, and what
we may call the dispersed type of recreation, namely, that which spreads
itself over large areas in a nonconcentrated form, such as hunting, fish-
ing, hiking, touring, and the like. And more recently, there is the ex-
tremely popular winter sport type of recreation which the national
forests, particularly in the West, provide opportunities for in large degree.
The opportunities for the foregoing distinctive types are obviously
not limited to the national forests, but in a good many places the national
forests contain by far the greater part of the area on which they may be
enjoyed. The size element is very important because it permits spreading
recreation use and avoiding to the maximum degree the evils of over-
crowding.
I used the term "surprise package" with reference to the national
forest for this reason: The original purpose of setting aside national
forests was in the main two-fold to provide supplies of timber and to
protect watersheds. No one in the beginning of the national forest enter-
STATE PARKS 139
prise could have seen the many uses to which they later would lend
themselves. Yet, the Secretary of Agriculture, when he assumed charge
of the national forests by transfer from the Department of the Interior
in 1905, displayed a prophetic vision of their future use and usefulness.
In his letter of February 1, 1905, to the Chief Forester, he instructed:
That all land is to be devoted to its most productive use for the permanent
good of the whole people .... All the resources of forest reserves (now national
forests) are for use, and this use must be brought about in a thoroughly prompt
and businesslike manner, under such restrictions only as will insure the per-
manence of these resources. . . . Where conflicting interests must be recon-
ciled, the question will always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest
good of the greatest number of people in the long run.
Back of this broad charter was one of equal breadth provided by Con-
gress in the Act of June 4, 1897, which authorized the Secretary of Agricul-
ture to "make such rules and regulations and establish such service as will
insure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their occu-
pancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from destruction."
Thus was laid the groundwork for a type of management for these
properties so flexible as to provide for any suitable type of use. By suit-
able I mean one which in combination with other uses definitely serves
the public interest and is at the same time compatible with the general
character of these areas. Recreation has come to be a suitable use of
major proportion. It has come not by any effort to get people to use
the forests, but because the forests contain that thing which the people
were seeking which could not be denied them, and which should not be
denied them. It has come so fast that in 1937, there were estimated to
be over 14 million visits by people who actually stopped and used the
national forests for recreation of one type or another, and over 18 million
visits by those who just went sightseeing in them. Many millions more
drove through the national forests on travel with some other primary
purpose, but nevertheless got at least fleeting enjoyment from what
they saw while on these areas. Thus, we have these vast tracts in public
ownership under permanent management, which may be said to be
almost a gift from Santa Claus of a large-scale opportunity to find recre-
ation in a generally natural environment.
The basic policy of the Forest Service in recreational management
of the national forests involves several fundamental things: First, the
provision for all forms of recreation appropriate in the forest environ-
ment, but the exclusion of those which do not find their logical outlet in
the forest. Thus, camping, picnicking, hunting, fishing, touring the
forest roads, winter sports, water sports, and the like are traditionally
a part of forest recreation. What we may call the Coney Island type of
thing, namely, the amusement center, is not a part of forest recreation,
and is excluded.
Second, priority is given to the form of recreational use open to every-
140 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
one, with anything of an exclusive nature permitted only where the
general needs are adequately served. Thus, provision is first made for
camping and picnicking facilities, for camps for the use of low-income
groups, and for resorts, before room is made for the desirable but neces-
sarily exclusive use, such as summer homes.
Third, effort is made to provide a balanced program which will meet
the desires of those seeking different types of recreation. Thus, there is
sought adequate provision for the mass forms of recreation, such as
camping, picnicking, and at the same time the reservation of areas from
the mass types of development, so that they may be kept in a wilderness
condition and enjoyed by those seeking that form of outlet.
Fourth, effort is made to determine where recreation values are so
high that other uses of the national forests must be modified in a major
way or excluded ; areas where recreational uses are so nearly absent that
they need little or no consideration, and those areas on which there is
approximately equal limitation of recreational use and other uses and
where both may be enjoyed concurrently without serious diminution in
the satisfaction of those benefiting by the two different groups of uses.
This latter situation is the prevalent one, but there is also provision for
setting aside from other forms of use areas needed for campgrounds and
picnic grounds, for the preservation of roadside and waterside beauty,
for suitable areas of unmodified virgin forests, etc. All these types of
adjustments are included in the multiple-use program.
In introducing developments into the national forests to facilitate
use, such as physical improvements on campgrounds and other struc-
tures of various sorts, effort is made to follow the principles of landscape
architecture and disturb the natural appearance of things as little as
possible. In the earlier years, less attention was given to this, and the
record is indeed not without blemish, but in the accelerated development
of later years, incident to the emergency programs, this has been a
controlling feature. In this connection, I take my hat off to the splendid
example set in so many places in state park developments in which both
state and national park services have done such fine work.
One other major objective in national forest recreation management
deserves emphasis this is the effort to make the recreational opportu-
nities available in fullest possible measure to the low-income groups. We
believe in fostering the building of simple organization camps at public
expense which can be used in turn by different groups for forest vaca-
tions, so helpful to those not able without aid of others to have a real
change from arduous daily occupations. What has already been done in
some places through cooperation between city and private social agencies
on the one hand and the national forests on the other to provide such
opportunities should, we believe, be multiplied many, many times. The
Forest Service wishes to make the National Forests serve to the maximum
degree the objectives so well stated in the platform of your organization.
STATE PARKS 141
Recreational Development in the National Parks
CARL P. RUSSELL, Director, Region I, National Park Service, Richmond, Va.
A FIRST responsibility of the National Park Service lies in the safe-
guarding of the native values that justified the establishment of
the reservations. Our problem now is not one of encouraging travel to
the scenic national parks. Statistics reveal a rapid increase in numbers
of visitors, and that increase will continue. During a seven-year assign-
ment in Yosemite National Park I witnessed conditions change from a
moderate summer vacation program to an all-year operation that
brought 20,000 people in one day to the floor of Yosemite Valley. During
winter months, snow sports enthusiasts fairly thronged to upper levels
in the park that formerly knew little or no activity.
One may say that granite walls and snowy slopes are not noticeably
affected by human traffic. But topography is not the only feature that
makes a Yosemite. The fauna and flora are quite as important in that
Sierra picture as are the domes and cliffs and those biological features
are sensitive, so sensitive in fact that the native character of Yosemite
Valley has already been modified, and continued punishment may alter
it quite completely.
You know, the Service knows, and the park operators know and are
appalled at the threat of destruction to be wrought by the persistent
human load that the parks must carry. In spite of this knowledge, some
people advocate a wide-open policy which will bring to the parks as
many recreation seekers as can be freely crowded into camps, or sold
accommodations in cabins and hotels. Others go to extremes in urging
that we follow Germany in excluding the pleasure-bent tourist from the
more sacred areas, making them available only to scientists and students
of natural history. A reasoning and more reasonable group argues for
the levy of a fee which will automatically control the number of people
who will wish to enter park gates.
Whatever the solution, we face the fact that a maximum load of
visitors must be cared for in national parks, and that the entire crowd
seeks recreation in one form or another. The demand for amusement and
entertainment will transcend the call for physical enjoyment or pertinent
instruction. How then are we to adjust our program of service so as to
maintain the original design of Stephen Mather?
Such able workers as Superintendents John R. White, Edmund B.
Rogers, and the late C. G. Thomson have contributed excellent thought
on park standards and recreational use in papers published in the
AMERICAN PLANNING AND Civic ANNUAL. These Superintendents have
been in full agreement in decrying the development of artificial facilities
in national parks recreation. Baseball, races, tennis, golf, badminton,
artificial swimming pools, slot machines, commercial picture shows,
constructed skating rinks, artificial toboggan slides, constructed ski-runs,
142 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
and ski or toboggan elevators are banned by these executives. In the
words of Mr. Rogers, "Recreation is a by-product of some activity or
state. An activity, physical, mental, or spiritual, may be recreational.
It is not what is done; it is what is assimilated that makes an act rec-
reation."
That most effective conservationist, Aldo Leopold, of the University
of Wisconsin, has just published a revealing analysis of his ideas on out-
door recreation. His essay appears in the March-April number of
Bird-Lore. Mr. Leopold classifies recreationists as (1) trophy seekers,
(2) those who look for solitude in the "wilderness," (3) those who merely
desire "fresh air and change of scene," (4) those who grope for percep-
tion of nature, and, finally, (5) a group possessing a sense of husbandry,
that is, being people of perception, they apply some art of recreational
management to their own lands.
Mr. Leopold's conclusions can be very closely applied to our national
park problem. Actually, he has pointed to the fact that national park
and national forest employees, if working in the field, get a bigger share
of true recreation and get paid for it than any other class of citizens.
Quoting from his paper, "The Government, which essays to substitute
public for private operation of recreational lands, is unwittingly giving
away to its field officers a large share of what it seeks to offer its citizens.
Foresters and game managers might logically pay for, instead of being
paid for, the job as husbandmen of wild crops."
Mr. Leopold, like Mr. Rogers, is definite in his assertion that "to
promote perception is the only truly creative part of recreational en-
gineering. . . . The only true development in American recreational
resources is the development of the perceptive faculty in Americans."
We are not apt to place too much emphasis upon this principle. Director
Cammerer has defined the interpretive objective in Park Service work
as the dominant one and linked with it he recognizes the inseparable
recreational element. "Provision for recreation is the modus operandi
of the system."
Our recreation planners and technicians will, I think, recognize the
prune importance of the "development of the perceptive faculty in
Americans" in all of their planning in national park areas. There may
follow some attempted ridicule in charging that we "make heavy work
of it," but if we undertake organization and supervision of artificial
means of amusement or force facilities for play in national parks, we will
be shame-faced before the critics of later years. Recreation has not
acquired such sanctity that in its name any crime may now be com-
mitted against the public areas in which atmosphere and inspiration are
more important than the lazy disposition of leisure time.
Mr. Leopold's trophy hunters, if they be content with the capture of
trout, taking of photographs, or the recording of a climb on a mountain
top, may enjoy their brands of recreation in national parks.
STATE PARKS 143
Those vacationists who crave the feeling of isolation in nature, may,
in spite of popularity of scenic national parks, find full satisfaction for
their every whim. Mass use of parks means concentration centers and
heavy traffic lanes. It is still a simple matter to leave the crowd and
move alone in vast tracts of unmarked wilderness in the larger scenic
parks.
The fresh-air enthusiast who must have physical activity with his
recreation is easily cared for even in congested areas or on popular trails.
If he finds pleasure in camping, hiking, horseback riding, mountain
climbing, cross-country skiing, or snowshoeing, he can get his deep
breathing and satisfying change of scene in the national parks. This
group, in the minds of some recreational specialists, is the important
crowd to plan for. I can agree that it is important that we plan for this
element in shaping facilities, but campgrounds, riding stables, roads, and
trails probably are not in themselves wholly adequate provision, for in
this class is a multitude of those who would, if they could, accept further
recreational values in understanding the attributes of the out-of-doors
that has attracted them.
He who in his recreation would perceive the natural processes by
which the parks and their biology have achieved form and character
may indulge in his study with no drain upon the natural values of the
reservation, but if the Service keeps faith with this breed of vacationist
and he arrives in ever-growing numbers preparation must be made.
Service officials must know more about the scientific and historic aspects
of the parks than do the visitors. To attain this end, original research
is frequently necessary. A program of interpreting the defined park
stories must be planned and put in operation. This involves lecturing,
guiding in the field, preparation of certain small trailside exhibits, and
the establishment of central contact stations and museum exhibits.
Distribution of publications on the essential subjects rounds out the
program and makes for dissemination of the information among those
who have not entered the park. In all of this provision for a recreation,
based upon the idea of a perceptive faculty in visitors, care is taken not
to make the facilities obtrusive. To impose the geologist's explanation of
canyon-cutting upon the Yellowstone visitor who is intent only upon
enjoying the sublime scene in solitude is as unreasonable as insisting
that he fish for trout. Probably, the important consideration from a
service standpoint is that we be prepared to give the geologist's explana-
tion to the many who do want it.
Those National Park Service officers who have attempted to look into
the future of recreational developments in national parks have been
frank in admitting their inadequacy in picturing ultimate needs, but
all of them, too, have been determined in their official capacities to limit
their activities to those phases of recreation in which the native values
of the parks contribute the essentials.
144 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Accomplishments of the Park, Parkway and
Recreational -Area Study
CONRAD L. WIRTH, Supervisor of Recreation and Land Planning,
National Park Service
EDITOR'S NOTE. See also article on the same subject by H. E. Curtis on page 57.
HILE the fundamentals of recreational planning are similar for
w
all States, influencing factors which modify the problems involved
vary widely as between States and more particularly as between regions.
That is why the Study is being made, first on a state basis, involving
careful analysis of local conditions and requirements, such as the existing
legislative and administrative provisions, the ability of the State to
finance an adequate recreational program, the per capita income of the
people, specific racial requirements, the availability of recreational lands,
and many other considerations. Upon the completion of preliminary re-
ports by a group of States which form a more or less homogeneous recrea-
tional region, it is expected that the work of coordinating these reports
and tentative plans into a regional report and plan will be undertaken.
In any consideration of a park and recreational area system and
program for a State, the matter of proper administration is of vital
importance. It is encouraging to note the successful efforts being made
by the various States in improving the efficiency of their state park
organizations. As a single example, the State of Tennessee last year
established a Department of Conservation under which were brought
several existing state conservation agencies in addition to a newly
established Division of Parks. This is considered a decided step in the
right direction. It is in line with the trend toward establishing the
administration of state parks under a separate governmental unit
distinct from and not subservient to established forestry or game and
fish commission. Furthermore, the tendency is to correlate and co-
ordinate those related conservation agencies; such as those dealing with
parks, forests, fish and game, wildlife and other natural resources, in a
department of conservation, as has been done in Tennessee.
In considering budgetary provisions for state park and recreational
areas and programs, proposals incorporated in the Mississippi report
are cited as exemplifying results of the Study in this connection. These
proposals provide for a director, two technicians, a supervisor of rec-
reation, a supervisor of operations, six park superintendents, a sufficient
staff of stenographic and clerical help, and a force of park employees,
including custodians, lifeguards, and laborers.
This careful attention to fiscal needs characterizes the situation in
all the States. In this connection, you will be interested to know that
22 States which established their first state park budgets after initiation
of the Federal emergency program appropriated $946,006 for 1937-38
against $278,000 for 1933-34. Fourteen States which had state park
STATE PARKS 145
systems prior to receiving Federal aid appropriated $1,919,771 for 1938
compared with $1,258,315 for 1933.
The reports for both Mississippi and Louisiana recognize the de-
sirability of locating areas and facilities near enough to the larger
population centers to permit their frequent week-day as well as holiday
weekend and vacation use; whereas the most important recreational
needs of the rural and rural non-farm sections are for playgrounds,
playfields and small community parks providing opportunities for
picnicking, swimming and group activities of a local character.
Another problem dealt with in the reports of these southern States
has been met by making detailed studies of the special needs of the
Negro population, for whose use areas and facilities are meager or non-
existent at present. Because of their economic condition and lack of
transportation, the Negroes are in need of a greater number of smaller
areas located near their homes, with facilities for day-use activities such
as picnicking, swimming, mass and organized sports, social programs
and other types of gregarious activities.
In Virginia, there has been applied a method of locating and ap-
praising recreational needs, based on an analysis of the factors of time and
cost as they influence travel for recreational purposes. The first step in
applying this method in Virginia consisted of establishing 15, 25 and 50-
mile zones, by highway distances, around each of the state's existing areas.
The extent of each of these zones was predicated on the results of
studies which revealed that frequent week-day use of an area could not
be expected from people living more than 10 or 15 miles away and that
virtually no week-day use could be expected from people living farther
than 25 miles away. People in the lower income brackets must depend on
facilities within 25 miles of their homes for practically all of their recreation.
(Incidentally, these lower income groups comprise 54 per cent of our
southern population, which is a significant factor in all phases of recreation
planning.) Due to the elements of both time and cost, a vast majority of
those people who earned moderate incomes (comprising something like 35
per cent of the remaining 46 per cent of our southern population) would
not travel more than 50 miles for their holiday-weekend outings.
These distances vary in different sections of the country, depending
on such factors as the economic conditions and travel habits of the people,
adequacy of highways and length of work day. Even daylight saving
time has its influence, as has been demonstrated by the larger week-day
use in northern areas attributed partially to this factor.
By using a zone map as a transparent overlay in conjunction with a
population distribution map, those population centers of the State not
served by existing areas were clearly indicated.
It might be added that these zones also provide an excellent means of
breaking a State down into logical and well-defined planning units for
the purpose of analyzing and determining the need for specific types of
146 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
facilities, such as those providing swimming, picnicking, boating, hiking
and other similar activities. It facilitates the appraisal of such in-
fluencing factors as racial characteristics and economic conditions and
otherwise simplifies problems connected with the planning of adequate
recreational area systems and programs.
The serious interest of the States is indicated by the fact that 20
of them are contributing funds or detailing personnel specifically to
assist in its conduct and 17 others are making contributions through the
part-time assignment of personnel and facilities. The Works Progress
Administration has rendered valuable assistance to most of these States in
carrying out the Study through the provision of such facilitating personnel
as work supervisors, statisticians, draftsmen, clerks and stenographers.
The Study is a practical and business-like approach to the task of
conservation for outdoor recreation in that it first takes stock of what
now exists in the way of recreational areas and facilities, then seeks to
appraise the needs of the people and the recreational resources of the
section of the country in which they live.
To a large degree, it is breaking new ground. Certainly no under-
taking of such magnitude in the field of recreational research and plan-
ning has ever before been attempted. This necessitates a certain amount
of trial and error, but through a pooling of procedures and techniques,
made possible by having the National Park Service to act as a clearing
house for successful ideas, it is rapidly formulating a method of study
and planning which should assure sounder future results in the field of
conservation for outdoor recreation.
Camping Trends and Public Areas
JULIAN HARRIS SALOMON, National Park Service
TWENTY-FIVE years ago the first organized camps were established
in Palisades Interstate Park. Last year, according to the official
report, camps in that park were attended by 90,000 children and adults.
That is a splendid record. It is even more significant when we consider
that the number of visitors is not the final test of a park's value but
rather the kind of use they made of it.
These 90,000 campers were in the park under trained leadership
which provided recreational programs. Their stay was made pleasant
and profitable. They were taught how properly to use and enjoy the
park and as a result of their experience, they will, for the most part, have
developed a lifelong appreciation for outdoor recreation. City dwellers
need this leadership and training, for during the past few decades they
have had little opportunity or experience in the use of natural rec-
reational facilities.
Another interesting fact about the 90,000 is that most of them would
never have reached the park if organizations had not existed to bring
STATE PARKS 147
them there and if the park commission had not made the camping
facilities available at low cost. Many children whose parents do not
own automobiles and who could not afford to go on vacations were in
those camps. Some of the parents were there too. Here is a splendid
example of the way in which cooperation between a park and public,
semi-public and private non-profit organizations can contribute toward
a solution of the park leadership problem and of that of providing for
vacations and park use by the lower income groups.
These campers were in the park 24 hours of the day, seven days of
the week and many of them were in the park again in the fall, winter,
and spring. Park-use studies so far made, reveal that on week days our
parks are little used in comparison with Sundays and holidays. This,
coupled with the comparatively short season during which most parks
are open, makes increased week-day use and longer seasons most im-
portant conditions to adjust if parks are to economically fulfill their
objectives. It seems that camping offers a solution.
The camping movement in the past few years has gone forward with
a strength and vigor greater than at any time in its history. New in-
terest and activity in this field is evident in all parts of the country and
with it has come a better understanding of the opportunities camping
offers for recreation, education and the conservation of human resources.
We find in the sponsors of new camping enterprises the schools, churches,
cooperatives, labor unions, stores, industries and public and private
agencies representative of every phase of our national life.
It is natural that these groups and those interested in hiking, water
sports and winter sports should turn to the state and national parks, for
these types of recreation are inherent in a forest environment. Only
on these and other publicly owned areas can be met the great need for
outdoor recreational facilities on a wide scale, at a low per capita cost.
They will not be provided on a commercial basis for there is not sufficient
profit in them and semi-public and private agencies have proved over
the years to be unable adequately to provide those facilities from their
limited funds. In the field of camping this is particularly true. There is
a great need on public areas for camp facilities of all types that can be
made available at low cost.
To a small extent these camping needs have been fulfilled during the
past three years by the development of the Recreational Demonstration
Areas. Last year 21 camps had been completed which operated to a
capacity of 101,000 camper-days. This year it is hoped nearly to double
these figures. Several new camps have been erected or proposed in state
parks during this time but it is quite apparent from the increasing and
continued demand that we shall not go wrong in providing more camp-
grounds, group camps and trail lodges in our parks and recreational areas.
Among recent developments in this field none has greater significance
for park planners than the new interest that is being shown in camping
148 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
by the schools. Some reasons for this are pointed out in a recent state-
ment by Commissioner of Education, John W. Studebaker, who says :
Camping has served to give new meaning to education, lifting it from a
cloistered world of theory into one of realism and everyday experience. Camping
has operated as a liberalizing and progressive force in American education.
The educators of the country are wise who recognize what the camp be it
private or public is now doing to develop the individual's whole personality,
his interests and his abilities. The camp has helped much to develop plans for
using work as a vitalizing force in the educational process. It has taught youth
to learn to do a job while actually at work in it to learn by doing.
There is an opportunity in the camp to get back to a natural type of educa-
tion and individualized development. Here the youth learns how to deal prac-
tically with life situations and to adapt himself to them.
It is greatly to be hoped that camping will continue to contribute to the
progressive development of American education and that public schools will
increasingly make camping activities a part of their program.
In a report on "Human Resources" made by the American Council
on Education to the National Resources Committee this recommenda-
tion is made:
Programs of land usage should provide, in the vicinity of each city, for one or
more large areas which may be used continuously by the public school system.
There are many types of nature observation and study, many forms of art and
craft, and many types of recreation which can best be carried on in the woods.
It should be expected that, throughout the full twelve months of the year,
groups of pupils would go to live in the school camp for a week or so at a time.
Closely allied with the school camp are the new field study trips and
travel camps of which there are a rapidly growing number. You have
probably seen the articles in Time and the Readers Digest on the Lin-
coln School's trips to the South and to the Pennsylvania coal fields.
They are but the forerunners of a great recreational-educational travel
movement for youth, for the schools have recognized that while ex-
perience through reading is good, experience through direct observation
and participation is better. The New York Times said that after the
first Lincoln School trip, tests showed that the senior class almost
doubled its knowledge of soil management, flood control and the pro-
duction of electricity after visiting the TVA site at Muscle Shoals and
rural rehabilitation projects in Georgia and Virginia.
We need to be prepared to meet and help this movement by pro-
viding inexpensive overnight accommodations, such as trail lodges, in
parks of special scenic and historic interest and those located on main
transcontinental travel routes.
On this subject I would again like to quote from "Human Resources":
Schools have only begun to utilize the changes in methods of teaching his-
tory and geography which are made possible with modern methods of trans-
portation and demonstration. In addition to preserving historic spots as public
parks, it is important to build up facilities which will make a visit by youth
groups as rewarding as possible. This means museums of the "active" type
which call for participation, not merely passive observation.
STATE PARKS 149
It involves also adequate camping facilities because such tours should be
made available to the large sections of the population with low incomes. The
time may come when every adolescent will include as an important part of his
development, satisfaction of the age-old desire to "see the world."
When proper facilities have been arranged, a year of travel about the country
might prove no more expensive and much more rewarding to the average Ameri-
can boy or girl than a year of college.
On the Blue Mountain Reservation in Westchester County we have
recently completed our first trail lodge. This structure contains dor-
mitories for 15 boys and 15 girls, a common kitchen, a living-dining-
room and an apartment for the custodian. Four smaller lodges to be
ready for use on July 1, are under construction on the Recreational
Demonstration Areas where traveling youth groups may be accommo-
dated at a fee of 25 cents per person a night. In addition, as parts of
the organized camps, we have provided over a hundred of these small
lodges which are similarly available for use by traveling groups during
the greater part of the year. These lodges are open to any group under
adequate adult leadership.
As young people in this country make their long trips mainly by bus
or automobile, the lodges are located near motor roads. In scenic or
natural areas they will serve as a base for tramping trips afield when
the groups will sleep in lean-tos or other simple shelters on the trail.
This plan was outlined by Regional Director Frank A. Kittredge of the
National Park Service in a recent paper. He said:
Typical portions of the primeval areas of the future must be made accessible
on foot to the boys and girls; the men and the women who shall safeguard these
great primeval areas in the next decades.
The finest possible expenditure both in conservation of our youth and in
conservation of our natural resources will be obtained when the Federal Govern-
ment expends some hundreds of thousands of dollars in building moderate trails,
low-cost shelters, and trailside lodges.
These facilities will permit groups of young folks, under auspices of organiza-
tions such as the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, and families to go afoot be-
tween shelters, between places where low-cost subsistence may be had for those
who are unable to meet the expense required to pack in their subsistence and
shelter. There seems no reason why a boy's two weeks' hike through the high
Sierras or through Glacier National Park or Mt. Olympus could not be made to
cost about as little as he now spends for two weeks in a Y. M. C. A. camp.
So far as the future (National Park) System is concerned, we may be hearing
about the forgotten boy and the forgotten girl who are going to run the con-
servation activities of the country in the next generation. There is no better way
of conserving natural resources than to spend a little money in the primeval
areas of our country to make them walkable and livable to our youngsters.
A return to tramping trips and smaller and simpler camp facilities
is indicated in the programs of some of the larger camping organizations.
These groups desire a minimum of facilities which may be easily pro-
vided in most parks. In their simplest form they would consist of camp-
grounds large enough to accommodate a group of twenty or thirty with
150 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
safe water and sanitary facilities. A site of this kind might be further
developed with a cabin, with an attached outdoor kitchen and a wash
and shower house. Such a unit would be useful to a great variety of
urban and rural groups.
So far, I have spoken of the needs of organized groups of young
people. For families and the independent camper the need for low-cost
camping facilities is equally great. Campgrounds have not been as
generously provided in our state parks in the East as they have in the
West. Yet the need for them here is equally great and that Easterners
will use them is known to anyone who has visited the Adirondacks, the
White Mountains and the southeastern national forests. A few cabins
to be rented at $2.50 to $3.50 a day and from $15.00 to $30.00 a week,
have been provided in many of our parks. These serve in a very limited
way, a small part of our population. The same labor and money put into
campground development would serve a great many more.
Campgrounds, when they have been provided, have nearly always
been great mass affairs resembling commercial tourist camps where the
maximum number of tents and trailers are crowded on each acre. In our
organized camp planning we once followed the same mass idea. Because
of its many disadvantages it was abandoned and our big camps are now
broken down into small units. The same idea needs to be applied to
public campgrounds in state and national parks.
Smaller units would need to be distributed over a larger part of the
area than are concentrated campgrounds but they would in the long
run be less destructive to the park. Certainly they would be less likely
to become the unsightly recreational slums which some of our public
campgrounds undoubtedly now are and they would be far more satis-
factory to the campers.
We also need in the East to find ways to provide family camps similar
to those that have been so successfully operated by municipalities on the
Pacific Coast. Here is a field our park systems might well enter. As an
example of their low cost I might mention the San Francisco Municipal
Camp near Yosemite where a cabin and three wholesome meals may be
obtained for $2.00 a day. In addition, an excellent recreational program
is provided in which campers may participate, if they so desire.
The cabins in these western camps are built to rent at a low rate.
They are much simpler than the expensive stone and log bungalows we
so frequently provide and they do not contain the bathrooms and
plumbing that some think are absolutely essential. The cabins are
grouped around central shower, toilet and laundry facilities and the
inconvenience of walking to them is readily accepted as part of the
adventure of camping out. They even get along without electric lights!
Says Superintendent White, of Sequoia, on that subject:
Electric lighting is such an accepted utility that at first it seems necessary
everywhere in public or operator areas. Yet nothing conduces to a quiet park
STATE PARKS 151
atmosphere as general darkness except in or near buildings. We are against street
or highway lighting. Operator's cabins are lit by kerosene hand lamps and candles.
Many visitors like it. Few complain. Some are loud in approval. I think that
with a little pressure we could have had a $100,000 electric light layout at Giant
Forest a few years ago; but we are now glad that the pressure was not exercised.
I am sure that we will find these simpler facilities, which to my mind
are in keeping with the park atmosphere, acceptable to the greater part
of the public which we should be serving.
Camps, campgrounds, and low-cost cabins for the use of schools,
traveling youth groups, recreational organizations and for families are
among the most needed recreational facilities on all types of public areas
now and in the foreseeable future. As we make evident our willingness
to make our areas of greater value to the community by meeting these
recreational needs we may lay claim to substantial and continuing
appropriations to make this work possible.
In closing I want to share with you this recent letter from Lebert H. Weir:
Please accept my heartiest thanks for a copy of the report entitled 'The
National Park Service in the Field of Organized Camping.'
The fact that the National Park Service has gone into this important service
field ought to have a very profound effect in extending it among municipalities
and private agencies in fact it already has, as I see by the report. I sincerely
hope that sometime the educational authorities of the country will incorporate
camping as a part of the regular school activity, organizing their schools on a
year-round basis, utilizing the summer season for camping and other forms of
outdoor life activities, especially for the pupils in city schools. Of course every
park and recreation department ought to do something in the field of camping.
I feel very strongly that one of the greatest social-educational-recreational
services that can be rendered city boys and girls is to bring them into vital con-
tact with the open country just as often and just as long as possible. The more I
see of city life the more I fear for the future welfare of our country, especially so
long as urbanism is the dominant characteristic of our culture. Industry and
the soil must be more closely linked somehow if we are to avoid the ever mounting
numbers of unemployed and the ever rising need for public and private relief. It
is an interesting fact that most of our present-day pathological social problems
arose with the rise of industry and urbanism also our economic problems.
I think that there is no more important thing both in the social and economic
fields than the things you in the National Park Service are doing to turn the
minds and hearts of the people to the first and the last mother of us all Mother
Nature. The longer I remain in this work the more I feel that the park people
hold the most fundamental elements for wholesome recreation both in its
physical and cultural sense.
Value of Water and Shore Line for Recreation
H. S. WAGNER, Director-Secretary, Metropolitan Park District, Akron, Ohio
fin HE opportunity to enjoy restful or inspiring scenery will always be
J. cherished. To come in contact with the sights and scenes of historic
or natural interest remains sufficient recreational opportunity for many.
State and metropolitan parks offer picnic opportunities for the family.
152 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
The further uses of such areas, overnight, week-end and vacation
camping, are by no unusual train of thought, little more than extensions
of the part day use which is involved in picnicking. Where facilities exist,
there seems to be just as much variety in the type of recreation by the
visitor for a day or the party on a vacation for several weeks. In anti-
cipation of this demand therefore, it seems to follow that provisions for
recreation by means of water should be made whenever possible. It
follows also that in regions where natural bodies of water are nonexistent
and where the population is concentrated, this demand is automatically
increased. Where winter sports are impractical there will be greater
demand for recreation by water in the longer summer season, and in
the northerly part of the country the possibility of the year-round use
of such developments through winter and summer sports is equally
forceful. In both cases the value of natural or created bodies of water
in the broad landscape is a foregone and accepted conclusion.
Several writers of note have expressed the sentiment that the land
areas of the world must be reserved for the production of the necessities
of life, and that water areas therefore should be better prepared and
reserved for broader recreational use. Surely nobody will deny that the
appeal of water for people on recreation bent is ages old and on the
increase. Whether the park administrator adjusts an existing body of
water or creates an artificial one seems to be beyond the scope of this
suggestion. It is conceivable that in certain locations, structural pools
are to be preferred to lakes resulting from the building of dams. Here,
it might be suggested, the value of both water and shore line for rec-
reation is almost wholly dependent upon sound engineering design which
has regard for size and character of the watershed and the rainfall. Even
though no troublesome draw-downs are presented as in the case of
water impounded for hydraulic electrical purposes, the body of water
which is expanded beyond the facts and is based upon hopes rather than
on statistics is quite certain to be found in a list of liabilities of a park.
Upon the location of the service features of waterfront activities the
value of such facilities is also nearly wholly dependent. Whenever the
activities reach all around the shore, nearly all of the value is lost. The
sand and turf beaches, the bath houses and the usual features may be
made to contribute to the advantages of many people for many years
only when a balanced and well-conceived plan which recognizes the
maximum possible use has been followed. The overloading of water-fronts
invariably results more disastrously and the damage is often longer lived
than in the over-burdening of facilities created or existing on the land.
The ever-present problem of expense in development and mainte-
nance should be weighed more heavily than it has in the past in this
matter of facilities for recreation by water, despite the fact that such
features lend themselves to operation on a fee basis better than do any
of the other services which are rendered to the public in such parks.
INTERSTATE RELATIONS
Interstate Agreements and Compacts
GEORGE W. OLCOTT, Park Planner, National Park Service
rilHE first interstate compacts respecting any park, parkway or recre-
JL ational area were consummated in 1937: The Palisades Interstate
Park Commission was established as a joint cooperate municipal in-
strumentality of the States of New York and New Jersey; Ohio and
Pennsylvania entered a compact relating to the development, use, and
control of Pymatuning Lake for fishing, hunting, and other recreational
purposes. This same year a bill was introduced before the General
Assembly of Missouri providing for the establishment by interstate com-
pact of the Missouri-Illinois Parkway Commission but did not pass.
While these are the first compacts respecting parks, States have
resorted to this means of furthering their mutual interests ever since
the formation of the Constitution. In 1785, Maryland and Virginia
entered into a compact or treaty regulating the right of fishing in the
Potomac River.
It is well established that States, as sovereigns, may enter into any
compact or agreement with each other, subject to the consent of Congress.
On June 23, 1936, the Park, Parkway and Recreational-Area Study
Act was approved. Section 3 of this act reads as follows :
The consent of Congress is hereby given to any two or more States to nego-
tiate and enter into compacts or agreements with one another with reference to
planning, establishing, developing, improving, and maintaining any park, park-
way or recreational area. No such compact or agreement shall be effective until
approved by the legislatures of the several States which are parties thereto and
by the Congress of the United States.
Although this enactment indicates that such compacts properly re-
quire the consent of Congress, in giving its prior consent to the negotiat-
ing of such compacts Congress recognized the importance of interstate
compacts dealing with recreation.
What are the reasons and necessity for two States entering an agree-
ment regarding recreational development? Why can't each State manage
its own recreation affairs, planning its developments to meet its own
needs and the overflow requirements of the adjoining States without
going to all the trouble of formal compacts, requiring legislative action
by the States and the Federal Government?
These questions can best be answered by considering the reasons for
the recent compact of New York and New Jersey pertaining to the Pali-
sades Interstate Park. After working together for 37 years on the ac-
quisition, development, and operation of this park the two States found
it desirable legally to establish the interstate character of the park.
The statement of Mr. J. DuPratt White, President, Commission of
the Palisades Interstate Park, at the hearing before the Ways and Means
153
154 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Committee of the New York Assembly regarding the then proposed
compact, established many sound reasons for the compact. He said:
The Palisades Interstate Park was established in 1900. The machinery set up
at that time for its management consisted of two separate State bodies a New
York Commission and a New Jersey Commission each consisting of ten mem-
bers. It was contemplated that the activities of the two state boards would be
coordinated through having identical members of the two state Commissions,
five residents of each State. This coordination, however, rests entirely upon
comity and has no basis in law. A Governor of either State may refuse to con-
tinue this policy of appointing identical members. If this should happen, the
management and development of the park as a unit would be destroyed.
In 1925 the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, which had contributed
large sums to the park, employed Mr. Mark M. Jones of New York City to make a
study of the park, its management and operation. The report consisted of 399 pages.
Apparently the only basis for his recommendation against any large or im-
portant financial support was the corporate structure of the Commission. The
survey stated as follows:
"The unity and continuity of the park as an interstate enterprise are not
formally assured at the present time. Legally, its affairs are in the hands of two
separate corporations. Withdrawal or fundamental changes in policy on the part of
either state would sacrifice the advantages of the interstate basis. The present or-
ganization structure, resting on comity and custom alone, does not provide a suffi-
cient guarantee of permanence to warrant large and important financial support."
We believe that the proposed compact will be of inestimable value to the
future of this great interstate project. It will allay the fears of possible donors
that there might be a change in the fundamental policy of either State toward
the park and thus frustrate the purposes of the gifts. With these fears allayed,
the Commissioners look forward to the time when they will obtain gift funds
with which they can provide income-producing operations that will make the
park wholly self-sustaining. The compact will insure for all time to come the
protection of the interests of each State in this project. The compact accom-
plishes this without either State surrendering one iota of its sovereignty. Neither
State is obligated to appropriate anything to the park. The compact will make
clear the status of the park as an interstate project and remove the embarrass-
ments which have arisen so often in connection with laws which are state-wide
but which, if applied to the Palisades Park would seriously interfere with the
interstate aspects of its operation. And finally the compact will legalize expedients
that have been adopted in the interest of the park and make for its efficient and
economical operation.
The reasons, needs, and advantages of the Palisades Interstate Com-
mission established by compact may equally well apply to other inter-
state recreational areas. A single authority simplifies the administration,
development, and maintenance of an area as a single unit. It aids in the
cooperation with other agencies. It will allay the fears of possible donors
as to the permanency of the park.
Roy A. Vetter, Assistant Attorney with the National Park Service,
has stated in his article "Interstate Compacts in the Field of Recreation" :
No participating State need surrender or subordinate its powers or prerog-
atives to the other. Authority deemed incompatible with the purposes and
objectives of the compact may be withheld. Appropriations, both as to amount
and purpose, are determinate by the legislature of each State. While a primary
STATE PARKS 155
purpose of such compacts is to insure permanency of administration, it is open
to the participating States to stipulate the terms upon which the compact may
be terminated.
On the other hand, added authorities and duties may be conferred by a
participating State, to be exercised exclusively within its territorial limits, with-
out the necessity of concurrence by the other. Additional jurisdiction, authority
and duties may be conferred by joint action of the participating States.
The compact, upon adoption, becomes a contract protected by the Federal
Constitution against legislation impairing its obligations.
The Park, Parkway and Recreational-Area Study has brought to
light several desirable interstate areas and others will probably be
planned as a result of the study. There are several metropolitan regions
which include parts of two or more States (for example the Chicago,
St. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Omaha regions). The provision of
adequate recreational areas to serve these metropolitan regions may
involve interstate cooperation and the establishment of Interstate
Commissions as it has in the New York region.
The state planning agencies of Wisconsin and Illinois have recommended
a large park on Lake Michigan at the Wisconsin-Illinois State line. It
would provide a public beach serving the people of Chicago and Milwaukee.
In the St. Louis region the War Department is constructing a naviga-
tion dam which will form a large pool or lake in the Mississippi River.
The lake will be of great recreational value to the people of Illinois and
Missouri. The Corps of Engineers, United States Army, the National
Park Service, the States of Missouri and Illinois, and the St. Louis
Regional Planning Commission have been cooperating for the recre-
ational development of the lakeshore. In the National Resources Com-
mittee report "Regional Planning Part II St. Louis Region" referring
to this project it is stated :
An official regional authority would have proved of great assistance in bring-
ing about the necessary coordination and would also have been the logical
agency to sponsor the project.
The proposed Missouri-Illinois Interstate Parkway Commission
would have authority to acquire, develop, administer, and maintain a
parkway from Chicago to St. Louis along the Illinois River and south-
west to the Lake of the Ozarks. Another interstate parkway proposal
has come from Missouri. Considerable interest has been indicated in the
proposal of a parkway along the Mississippi from Duluth to New Orleans.
Interstate Park Commissions have been suggested as the proper
authority to develop and administer two proposed interstate parkways
out in the southwest: The Raton Pass Parkway between Raton, New
Mexico, and Trinidad, Colorado, and the Anazazi Parkway between
Lupton, Arizona, and Manuelito, New Mexico, which would not only
preserve unusual scenic and historic strips of land, but also provide
outstanding entrances to the States and certain recreational facilities
for tourists and the local people.
156 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Extensive trailways may also require interstate agreements if their
value is to be protected. It has been suggested that there should be an
agreement between the States traversed by the Appalachian Trail as
to the development and maintenance of the trail.
It is certain that interstate agreements or compacts offer a means of
solving some of the problems involved in the ever-widening fields of
recreation and conservation.
Parkways and Freeways
EARLE S. DRAPER, Director, Department of Regional Planning Studies, TVA,
Knoxville, Tenn.
IF YOU drive from Norris to Knoxville you will traverse, for part of
the distance, the Norris Freeway, where you will observe an absence
of billboards, gas stations, tourist camps, beer gardens, and hot dog
stands along the right-of-way, and in the road itself, an absence of sharp
turns, vertical curves, and other hazards to safe motoring.
It is not mere chance that these undesirable traffic hazards and
unsightly roadside developments are missing; nor is it because the high-
way is new and the mushroom of ribbon growth has not yet sprung up.
It is because the road to Norris is a freeway a rural freeway and
standard equipment of a freeway does not include hot dog stands, bill-
boards, blind intersections and the like.
"Freeway," as you probably know, is not just our pet name for this
stretch of road. Freeway is a specific type of highway designed for a
specific type of traffic.
Obviously different from 99 per cent of American highways today,
a freeway is not essentially a through express highway, nor is it solely
a parkway. It embodies principles of design and esthetic standards.
Above all, a freeway is safe. "Free" from the normal traffic hazards
so often attributable to engineering design (or lack of it) intersections,
steep grades, sharp curves, side roads, narrow bridges, and obstruction
of vision. It permits a relatively high driving speed with much greater
safety than the average highway.
Although not primarily a recreation drive, it often features wayside
picnic areas and overlooks. Scenic easements may be acquired to further
protect the natural beauty of the roadside.
But its most distinguishing feature, a feature responsible both for a
large measure of the freeway's safety and practically all of its harmonious
roadside development, is that of controlled access. Owners of property
abutting the freeway have no rights of light, air or access. Through this
factor of control are eliminated virtually all accidents resulting from
cars entering the highway; through this same factor of access control
are eliminated the undesirable roadside developments.
Controlled access, however, and the development of wayside areas
STATE PARKS 157
are often features of other types of road. How, then, is the freeway
especially different from other roads?
Edward M. Bassett, City Planning Authority of New York, gives
us the most concise and precise definitions of the several types of road:
A highway is a strip of public land devoted to movement, over which the
abutting property owner has a right to light, air, and access.
A freeway is a strip of public land devoted to movement, over which the abut-
ting property owner has no right of light, air, or access.
A parkway is a strip of public land devoted to recreation, over which the
abutting property owner has no right of light, air, or access.
From Mr. Bassett's definitions it is readily apparent that the prime
difference between a freeway and a highway is not one of use for they
are both devoted to movement of traffic but one of control, one of
controlled access; whereas the parkway differs from both the freeway
and the highway in that it is dedicated primarily to recreational use
rather than to movement and at the same time it embodies the freeway
principle of controlled access.
During the hectic days of the 1920's parkways all but passed out of
the picture in the wild scramble to build highways, mile after mile of
highways. The accent was on quantity a veritable race between the
States to see which could have the most miles of concrete or asphalt
per car. Today we are paying in lives and in dollars for this emphasis
on quantity and for the lack of selective design.
But getting back to parkways, this type of road first appeared as a
carriage drive. Literally, a "way" through the "park." The coming
of the automobile and its eventual spread to all income levels pushed
the demand for parkways far beyond the limited accommodations of the
carriage drive type. So, bigger and better parkways were built.
You have all risked your necks on many of these parkways.
And it must be remembered that this all sprang from the original
idea of pleasure drives.
Happily, however, we at last seem to be returning to the original
concept of the parkway. Today we see a national interest in parkways,
in purely recreational drives. The magazine Fortune not long ago had a
comprehensive study on the nation's highway system and recognized
the need for a type of road that would take the pleasure driver the
tourist and the Sunday motorist alike off the congested through high-
way with its traffic hazards and its uninspiring roadside signs of "prog-
ress," and put him on a road of his own, a road where he can proceed at
his leisure or speed up at his pleasure, where he can stop to get a view of
the sunset, where he can park his car near a tumbling stream and spread
a picnic lunch in a clean, enjoyable, uncommercialized atmosphere.
More recently, March 26 of this year, the Saturday Evening Post carried
a thoughtful article by Paul G. Hoffman, president of the Automotive
Safety Foundation and of the Studebaker Corporation. Treating the
158 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
subject from the viewpoint of safety, Mr. Hoffman pointed out the need
for a definite type of road for definite types of traffic. Recreational traffic is
a very definite type and the parkway is its corresponding type of road.
For despite the fact that the parkway of today scaling mountains,
penetrating forest wilderness, bridging swamps (as some now under
construction will do) and possessing several undeniable rights would
scarcely be recognized by its parent, the carriage drive through the park,
parkways today perform the same function as they did before the advent
of the automobile. That is, they are first, last and always, pleasure drives.
Mr. A. E. Demaray, Associate Director of the National Park Service,
sums up the characteristics of the parkway :
A parkway is designed for passenger car traffic and is largely for recreational
use. It aims to avoid developments which mar the ordinary highway.
A parkway is built within a wider right-of-way, which acts as an insulating
strip of park land between the roadway and the abutting private property.
A parkway is preferably located through undeveloped areas of scenic beauty
and interest and avoids communities and intensive farmlands.
A parkway makes the best scenery available even at the sacrifice of short-
ness of route.
Grade crossings between the parkway and main intersecting highways and
railroads are eliminated.
Points of entrance and exit on a parkway are widely spaced to reduce traffic
interruptions, and a secondary road is often provided to carry local traffic.
Scenic easements are introduced to secure a maximum of protection without
increasing the land to be acquired in fee simple.
These regulations established by the Park Service for the acquisition
of parkway rights-of-way, nevertheless apply in general to all
modern parkways. The parkways of Westchester County, including the
Bronx and the Hutchinson Parkways, are well known to millions of
people. The new Merritt Parkway, extending through Fairfield County,
is an advanced type of project. The George Washington Memorial
Parkway, from Washington, D. C., to Mount Vernon, is our best-known
national parkway. All of these parkways serve as speedways as well as
park routes and at the present time divert considerable through travel
because of attractiveness of setting.
Two extended national parkways, both at present under construction,
must also be mentioned as they represent long strides forward in the
solution of our highway problem. These two projects are the Blue Ridge
Parkway and the Natchez Trace Parkway, with which you undoubtedly
are acquainted. The Blue Ridge Parkway, when completed, will connect
the Shenandoah National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains
National Park. This road will be more than 450 miles long. The average
elevation of its projected route is 2,500 feet above sea level. Rights-of-
way averaging 150 acres to the mile are being obtained by the States of
Virginia and North Carolina and are being deeded to the United States
in fee simple and under scenic easement. Access to the parkway will, of
course, be limited, and suitable overpasses over important highways
STATE PARKS 159
and railroads are provided for. Adjacent to the parkway route the Fed-
eral government is developing several recreational and service areas
which will provide for overnight accommodations, camping, hiking, and
other recreational opportunities.
The Natchez Trace Parkway will follow the historic military and
trade route from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi. The
same principles of roadside protection and traffic safety are being fol-
lowed in this project as in the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The opportunities for such development are practically yet untouched
and the need is unquestioned.
But what of freeways in the recreational development picture?
Freeways will undoubtedly play their part. In the crowded metropolitan
regions where volume of traffic demands several different types of road,
freeways may serve to divert much of the through traffic now using the
metropolitan parkways and will thus leave the parkways free to return
to their original purpose. In the definitely rural areas, freeways, by
virtue of their superior engineering design and their controlled access,
may serve as both the movement and the recreation type of highway.
That is the role of the Norris Freeway. We have applied freeway
principles to a rural highway and are well satisfied with the results.
The Appalachian Trail
PAUL M. FINK, Member, Board of Managers, Appalachian Trail Conference,
Jonesboro, Tenn.
EVERY forward stride of progress in this or any other country has
been the result of a dream a vision in the mind of some far-
sighted soul who could see beyond the immediate present and visualize
some great thing out in the future. Benton MacKaye dreamed a dream
a dream of a people turning more and more for recreation from the
crowded cities and densely populated areas to roam afoot in the woods
and mountains, to seek the wilderness for rest and physical relaxation
and spiritual up-building. For their use he could see in his mind's eye
a series of woodland paths and wilderness areas, bound together into
one far-flung system by a master trail running North and South down
the backbone of Eastern America, from the Canadian border to the
foothills of Georgia. This long path he christened the Appalachian Trail,
and in 1921 he presented the idea to the public in an article published in
the Journal of the American Institute of Architects.
It immediately attracted widespread attention, particularly in New
England, where recreational use of the mountains had long been estab-
lished and where the New England Trail Conference had already in
existence a coordinated trail system from Maine to the Hudson, a splen-
did nucleus from which to build. Recruits were enlisted and the route
farther South was considered. The first southern terminus suggested was
160 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
Mt. Mitchell, but further study of the terrain has relocated and extended
the Trail until its Southern extremity has rested on Mt. Oglethorpe, in
Northern Georgia. North it has been pushed from Mt. Washington more
than 250 miles across a wilderness to Mt. Katahdin in Maine.
Various outing groups and individuals were contacted and interested,
routes chosen and scouted, and some marking and construction done.
In the spring of 1925 a meeting was held in Washington and there the
Appalachian Trail Conference was formally organized, officers elected
and a constitution adopted, and the movement was all set.
Yet soon interest lagged and the Conference bade fair to die a death
of inaction, until Arthur J. Perkins, of Hartford, Conn., became in-
terested. His energy and enthusiasm put new life into the project; he
visited many places and people, North and South, helped locate doubtful
sections, made valuable contacts and stirred up new interest all along
the line, until the Conference began to function as never before. But
he was not fated to see the Trail completed, for in 1930, just as he pre-
pared to attend the meeting of the Conference at Skyland, Va., he was
stricken by illness and was never able to resume active connection.
Laboring enthusiastically with Judge Perkins was Myron Avery, a
young admiralty attorney of Washington, and into his capable hands
the task fell, to be pushed on energetically until now the Appalachian
Trail stands complete, some 2,050 miles of it, the longest continuous
footpath in the world an epochal achievement, when one remembers
the multitude of difficulties that have had to be overcome. The names
of these three men Benton MacKaye, Arthur Perkins and Myron
Avery will always be remembered as those to whom we give all credit
for the conception and the completion of the Appalachian Trail. At the
same time, we do not in any way minimize the efforts of those hundreds
of other enthusiasts who have labored so faithfully in the work.
To some who are yet unacquainted with it, the name Appalachian
Trail is misconstrued, for they find it difficult to envision a trampers'
trail so long and instead think of it as a motor trail or highway, like the
Appalachian Scenic Highway, so highly advertised a few years ago, and
when mentioned we hear them say, "Yes, I've driven over it." Not so, for
the Appalachian Trail is a, footpath, pure and simple, and save in those few
spots when the necessity of crossing valleys in changing from one moun-
tain range to another makes imperative the following of motor roads for a
few miles, it is not to be traversed by any wheeled vehicle, unless it be the
one seen by a certain trail follower in North Carolina a few years ago.
This man recounted that he had penetrated the depths of the Great
Smokies until the trail he followed had all but "petered out" and he felt
sure no one had gone farther than he. Sitting down to rest, he heard a
noise, and looking farther up the dim trail, saw approaching what he
called "a crazy Indian riding a bicycle." Instead of an Indian it proved
to be the late George Masa, the Japanese trail enthusiast of Asheville, a
STATE PARKS 161
bright bandanna handkerchief tied about his head and pushing before
him the measuring wheel with which he was gathering trail data.
This great footpath, following as nearly as possible the skyline of the
Appalachian Mountains from Katahdin in Maine to Oglethorpe in
Georgia, two thousand and fifty miles of it, every foot complete, marked
and signed and with trail data available so that it may be easily followed
from end to end, is the longest single trail in the world. A metal marker,
of copyrighted and distinctive design, has been developed, that is placed
at frequent intervals and between, on trees and posts, have been painted
white blazes to guide the traveler. The footway has been chopped and
brushed out wherever necessary, and periodically working parties from
the various interested organizations go over the sections under their
care, to clear and maintain the right-of-way.
For the further guidance of the tramper, every foot of the Trail has
been traversed by the measuring wheel and complete trail data have
been compiled, showing distances, connecting trails, water, shelters, and
description of points of interest. This has been made available to the
public in a series of five guide books, covering all the Trail. So now
there is no reason one should have to depend on local information as
he goes along, and getting such directions as were once given a friend
of mine. This friend, asking a native what path to follow, was told,
"Just go down this trail a ways 'til it forks. There you take the right
hand fork and keep on that a spell 'til it forks again. Then you take the
left hand and go with that a far piece 'til it forks three ways. Then it
makes no difference which one you take, for you're done lost already."
Another unique feature about the Appalachian Trail is that it is
entirely the result of volunteer labor, the work of men and women who
have received no compensation for their services other than the satis-
faction of having a hand in putting across so magnificent a project. The
budget of the Conference, including the cost of postage, stationery, paint,
markers, and publications, is only about $500.00 per year. No officer of the
Conference draws a cent of salary or even expense money. The tasks of
scouting, routing, clearing, and marking the trail have been done by vol-
unteers, the working parties being mostly composed of professional men
and women, office workers, college students, and others the white-collar
class who have welcomed this opportunity to get into the out-of-doors.
In telling of the completion of the Trail we must give recognition of
the wholehearted cooperation of the National Park Service and the
U. S. Forest Service. In its way from North to South the Trail passes
through two National Parks and seven National Forests, and in every
instance those in charge aided in every way possible, making available
those portions of their own trail systems that were desired to be included
in the main trail thoroughfare. Had it not been for this great assistance
on their part, years more would have been required before we could
pridefully point to a completed Trail.
162 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
I say "completed Trail" and yet I do not mean just that. For the
moment, it is completed in that it is open, marked and logged the whole
way, but there is yet much work ahead of us. One great problem is
that of maintenance. In a country of profuse and rapidly growing
vegetation, like the Southern Appalachians, the growth is so heavy that
it must be brushed out at least once a year, to make it passable. Wind-
falls and down timber must be cleared away and the footway improved.
Intrusion of new roads and new logging operations calls for partial re-
location; markers and blazes must be renewed the problem of physical
trail maintenance is always before us, as is the somewhat kindred one
of maintaining enthusiasm among the workers, some of whom may be
prone to lose interest if we call the work done.
There is also the task of giving the Trail more widespread publicity,
leading to its greater use by the public. But the greatest task ahead is
that of carrying on to completion another phase of the original concep-
tion of Benton MacKaye, and it is in this that many of you, interested
in public areas through which this Trail passes, may take a hand.
The thought underlying the Trail plan was not simply a path, a way
to follow, and stop at that, but provided for a much broader utilization
of the recreational possibilities so opened. The tramper would need some
place to spend the nights en route, so shelters would be necessary. Some
of these are already built and building, and more will be added to the
list as well as more elaborate camping facilities at points of scenic and
other interest, for those who might wish to tarry for longer periods.
Some of these are springing up already, and that problem will solve
itself as the need arises. But the more vital one, of protecting the Trail
in its status of a wilderness walkway, of shielding it from any commercial
invasion and the building of parallel or intersecting roads that might
destroy its continuity, is before us. A solution, and one that if worked
out will insure the perpetuity of the Appalachian Trail, is the creation of
the Appalachian Trailway, and it is toward that end we are now working.
This Trailway, as suggested by Edward Ballard, of the National
Park Service, at the last meeting of the Appalachian Trail Conference,
would be a continuous strip of land two miles wide, one mile on each
side of the Trail, under public ownership, to be forever withdrawn from
any commercial usage, and where wilderness conditions can be preserved.
What a magnificent domain that would be, a strip of wilderness two
miles wide and going over mountains and across valleys for more than two
thousand miles, with a total area of greater than four thousand square
miles, bigger than the combined States of Rhode Island and Delaware, or
hah* as big as Connecticut, all dedicated to the use of the foot traveler alone.
The magnitude of such a project was enough to bring to life even the
best of dreamers, but the task was started at once. There is abundant basis
for a glimpse into the future that will show us the ultimate and complete
realization of Benton MacKaye's dream.
STATE PARK DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOUTH
Alabama
PAGE S. BUNKER, State Forester and Director of Parks, Montgomery, Ala.
THE need of a park system in Alabama was recognized and dis-
cussed for some years, but it was not until 1927 that the State
Legislature passed an act, usually referred to as the State Land Act,
vesting the state's interests in parks in the Commission of Forestry and
placing such areas under the administration of that department. This
law provided a means of quite limited application by which, upon the
approval of the Governor, certain state-owned lands might be segregated
and devoted to the purposes of state parks. Under this law the Com-
mission established the first state park in Alabama in 1930, without
cost to the State. From that time, until the passage of the DeVane Act
of 1935, most of the land for parks was donated by public-spirited
citizens. By the spring of 1933, the State had acquired seven small
parks.
With the advent of the Civilian Conservation Corps a tremendous
impetus was given the state park movement in Alabama and extensive
acreage was added to existing areas and several new areas were estab-
lished. Thirteen of the Parks have been partly developed by the Civilian
Conservation Corps. Other agencies that have been of assistance to the
State are the Works Progress Administration and the National Youth
Administration. At present there is a total of 15 State Parks and 2 State
Monuments with an aggregate area of approximately 27,000 acres.
Alabama has peculiar natural advantages of extent and variety
equaled by no other southern State. The climatic range from the tem-
perate highlands of north Alabama with their winter snows to the semi-
tropical shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the 21,000,000 acres of forest land
in the State, the altitudinal range of more than 2,400 feet from the
mountains and canyons of northeast Alabama to the deltas and beaches
of the Gulf, and the wealth and variety of flora and fauna form a com-
bination of recreational opportunities found in no other section.
In locating, designing and developing the state parks care has been
taken to coordinate the scenic and recreational qualities with the pe-
culiar needs of most of the people who will resort to each particular
area. Any wholesome form of recreation, regardless of whether it may be
exactly what students of social branches believe most desirable, should
be given comparatively free play. The urge within the breasts of people
to direct the lives of other people is very strong, but this impulse should
be kept well under control. Where the recreational habits of people are
firmly fixed the state park authorities believe that consideration should
be had for local customs and expectations. This does not mean that what
we may regard as better forms of recreation should not be made open to
park visitors, but nothing like an attempt to force compliance with
163
164 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
external conceptions of what people ought to do is in contemplation.
Holding in view these and other more obvious principles of park develop-
ment and administration, Alabama feels that its state park system is on the
way to achieving maximum benefits to the people of the commonwealth.
Georgia
CHARLES N. ELLIOTT, Director of State Parks, Atlanta, Ga.
THE legislation authorizing the Department of Natural Resources,
and creating the Division of State Parks, was passed by the Georgia
Legislature on March 5, 1937. The organization of the new Division
was started on April 1, 1937, with the appointment of a Division Direc-
tor. The Division of State Parks was created to open and operate the
state parks as they became ready for public use. Last year the Division
opened four state parks to the public. This year they will open the
fifth. The money for over 5,000 dollars worth of equipment and for the
operation of the parks, was made from charges for concessions and for
special conveniences and privileges. Charges are made only for special
services. Entrance to the park itself, including police protection,
picnic tables, outdoor fireplaces, trails, roads, shelters, parking space
and some of the games, all normal conveniences, is furnished free of
charge. A family may spend a day in the park without spending one
penny except for gasoline to get there and for picnic lunch.
By this charge for special privileges, three of the parks paid their
own way last summer. We are expecting a much better season this year.
The Division of State Parks is cooperating in related work with other
state and national organizations. We are working with the National
Park Service, which is spending some $750,000 each year in Georgia
to help develop the state park system. In addition to this construction,
which is under the general supervision of the State Park Division, the
Division is cooperating in the development of children's recreational
areas, where the average boy and girl of the city, who would not other-
wise have an opportunity to leave the city streets during the summer,
may go for a week or two weeks, be taught to live with his fellows out-
of-doors, be taught organized play in the development of clean minds,
clean bodies and better citizenship. Three of those Recreational Demon-
stration Areas in the State total some 10,000 acres. They already have
been enjoyed by hundreds of Georgia children.
The Vocational Division of the State Department of Education and
the State Parks Division are collaborating in the establishment of a
Future Farmers Camp in Newton County. There, 3,000 boys will camp
for two weeks each during the summer months. These boys, who are
from an entirely different group than those using the RDP areas, will be
taught organized camping and play. They will be given lessons in Geor-
STATE PARKS 165
gia's natural resources and taught how to appreciate the beauty and the
history of our State. They will be provided with enough land on which
to plant and to study trees, on which to study soils and birds and
animals and other natural resources of the State. They will have almost
half a mile of lake front for boating and swimming and fishing. We
believe that such programs lead any boy to better citizenship.
We are collaborating with the State Highway Department on a road-
beautification program and in publicizing Georgia's beauty-spots, and
in maintaining state park roads.
Some of the other organizations giving the Division of State Parks
special services are the Health Department, which checks all plans for
lakes and swimming pools, tests the water in all state parks twice
each month, and gives the Division benefit of their knowledge and ex-
perience in all matters pertaining to health in the state parks; the
University of Georgia, which is in the process of establishing a course in
recreation to develop Park Superintendents and Rangers in order that
the parks may be more properly operated and maintained, and in order
that the park visitors may have the ultimate in service. The rangers
taking this course will be given scholastic credit for satisfactory work in
the parks during the summer months, and from the most satisfactory
ones we may take our permanent employees. The recreation course is
announced in the University Bulletin this year.
We are cooperating with the State Planning Board and the National
Park Service in making a Recreational Survey of the State to determine
what additional parks and facilities are needed for the public, which
parks are being used and what facilities are most popular. The results
of this survey will be reported to the Governor and to the General
Assembly, with recommendations.
We hope to designate by markers the important historic sites of the
State, which have not already been marked, and through the publica-
tion of a booklet, to give the Georgia people and others a deeper appre-
ciation of our history and the part it played in the making of a nation.
We hope to preserve within the State certain select areas of scenic
splendor, where commercial interests threatened to destroy them.
Through its program to preserve scenic areas in the State, several new
state parks areas have been acquired or are in the process of acquisition.
These include Kolomoki Mounds, Providence Canyons, Little Tybee
Island, Sitton's Gulch and Black Mountain. Plans are under way to
enlarge several of the existing park areas. Legislation has been intro-
duced into the Congress of the United States to enable the State to
acquire 4,000 additional acres of land at Vogel State Park from the
United States Forest Service. Approximately 6,000 new park acres were
acquired during the last year.
Last year the state parks were used by nearly half a million
Georgians and many out-of -state visitors.
166 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
The Division has given special attention to the publicity concerning
areas under its control. Each day, requests come from all over the
United States, asking for information about Georgia.
Many talks, state and national, have been made. In addition to a
special newspaper and mat service to the weekly papers of the State,
and special important items to the daily papers and news organizations
as the Associated Press, special publicity features were put on as :
1. A full page of pictures of each Georgia Park, which ran for 9 weeks in the
Sunday Rotogravure Section of the Atlanta Journal. This brought comments
from all over the Nation.
2. A photographic contest of pictures in state parks. Pictures submitted
from all over the State.
3. Name contest, selecting a name for the lake in Vogel State Park. Over
a thousand names were submitted.
4. Magazine stories on Georgia Parks in such publications as the Atlanta
Journal Magazine Section, Architectural Concrete, published by the Portland
Cement Association; The Georgia Builder, Junior Chamber of Commerce;
Behind the Wheel, an AAA publication, several unpublished articles for magazines
as American Forests, Atlanta Journal magazine section, and others. These are
expected to appear in the near future.
5. Materials prepared by request for several editorials in papers of the State.
Two groups were organized and sponsored by the State Park Divi-
sion: the Butts County Historic and Archeological Society, to develop
and support the museum at Indian Springs State Park, and the Georgia
Park and Recreation Association, a citizens' recreational organization to
promote state park and other recreational activity in Georgia. This
latter group cooperated with the National Park Service in the acquisition
of five historic sites between Atlanta and Chattanooga.
Florida
H. J. MALSBERGER, Director, State Forests and Parks, Tallahassee, Fla.
A*f ACT of the 1935 Legislature established authority for the Florida
Forest and Park Service to commence actively the acquisition,
development, and maintenance of a system of State parks in Florida.
There had been some work done toward the establishment of State parks
as early as 1934. The development of the parks, however, actively com-
menced in 1935 when CCC camps, in cooperation with the National
Park Service, were assigned to some of our park areas.
At the present time, we have nine state parks, of which six are in the
process of being developed with CCC camps. There remain three areas
undeveloped, but a CCC camp has been assigned to Florida Caverns
State Park, commencing July 1. This office is also directing the develop-
ment of the Florida Overseas Parkway, in cooperation with the National
Park Service and the Overseas Toll and Bridge District. The areas
dedicated for park purposes represent an acreage of 15,830 acres.
STATE PARKS 167
Highlands Hammock State Park, which was developed by the
Roeblings and donated to the Florida Board, of Forestry to be admin-
istered as a State park, is the only one at this time which is completely
open for public use. Partial facilities are available at Hillsborough
River and at Gold Head Branch State Parks.
The public facilities to be developed in these parks are consistent
with accepted state park uses and cover the activities expected to be
found on these areas. A very definite attempt has been made, however,
to plan these facilities in conformity with the recreational activities
participated in by the people who use the area. A blanket master plan
has not been forced in the development of the areas; each one has been
studied and planned as an individual unit.
It has seemed desirable, however, to adopt a policy of selecting areas
which had outstanding scenic, botanical, recreational, or historical
values which are unique within the State. Florida has numerous loca-
tions of this character, and it should remain our policy to accept only
areas which meet these qualifications. It should be possible to plan our
State park system with the idea of providing adequate recreational
facilities within a reasonable traveling distance for our residents without
deviating from this policy. Florida has a population of approximately
one and a half million which is engaged primarily in agrarian pursuits.
We are not confronted with a serious concentration of residents in in-
dustrial areas as are many States. It is possible to drive a maximum of
ten or fifteen miles from any city and get into the great out-of-doors.
It is also necessary for us to select areas of outstanding attractions
and develop and operate them in such a manner as to maintain the
reputation Florida now has for being an outstanding winter playground.
A portion of the tourists who visit Florida by the thousands during the
winter months, have probably stopped at various state parks en route
from Maine to Florida. They have a definite perception of the type of
facilities which should be available and the manner in which they should
be maintained. A director of state parks in Florida is definitely on the
spot to provide as good or better facilities than are found in parks in other
States. It is for this reason that it is my belief that our parks must be
maintained in a way to attract visitors by providing first-class facilities
and to be able in a proper manner to compete with the privately
developed attractions in the State which have state, national, and in
some cases, world-wide recognition. It is entirely possible that in meet-
ing the problem of providing adequate facilities for the residents and
tourists it will be necessary in some parks to develop the type of
facilities which will satisfy both classes of park visitors.
It is also our objective to obtain additional beach and lake areas for
the sites of state parks. There are approximately three thousand miles
of shore line in Florida, and it is our purpose to preserve portions of these
beautiful beach areas for posterity.
168 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
In concluding, it may be well to summarize the main objectives of
the creation of a system of state parks in Florida. I would say that
they should be located and developed in such a manner as to:
1. Provide facilities, at a minimum cost, for healthful recreation for leisure
hours for the residents of, and visitors to, the State.
2. Preserve for continuous public use areas of outstanding scenic, botanical,
recreational, and historical value.
3. Eliminate the possibility of future desecration and exploitation by
private development of these wonder spots for which Florida is noted.
Mississippi
J. H. FORTENBERRY, State Park Director, Jackson, Miss.
IN MAY, 1934, an area for Mississippi's first state park was acquired.
Any report that I might make relative to our accomplishments neces-
sarily means that which has taken place within the last four years. It is
true that plans, dreams and wishes for a state park system have been in
the minds of certain interested individuals for a number of years, but it
has taken the help of the New Deal and the present administration to
initiate the move.
To this time we have acquired and set aside as state parks ten areas
which are comprised of approximately 12,500 acres of land and water
and they are scattered the entire length of the State. Two of these parks
have facilities sufficiently developed that we have been able to operate
them for the last two years. Four more of the number are now ready
for the using public. The most recent addition to the parks of Mississippi
is Magnolia State Park on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, located near
Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a place which has served as a resort since
the days when people traveled a hundred miles in an ox cart to enjoy
the pleasant breeze of the Gulf Coast. The next possibility we have for
a state park is one located near Jackson, Mississippi, the property for
which the State Park Department is negotiating at present. This pro-
posed park area is significant for its scenic and historical features, but is
also of special interest relative to the use we propose to make of it. It is
our plan to develop this area as a negro state park, the first area in
Mississippi to be developed exclusively for their use. It is located ap-
proximately 12 miles from Jackson, near the center of the colored popu-
lation of the State, and bids fair to be an outstanding recreational area.
It is our aim and purpose to place a park within reach of every citizen
within the State. To do this it is necessary for us to select some areas
that are not so outstanding in scenic beauty or historical significance.
Yet the areas selected have responded very readily to protection, and
within a short time all of our areas will furnish recreational features
becoming to a state park according to our interpretation of the word.
May I state in relation to the meaning of the word "state park," it is
STATE PARKS 169
our opinion that it is an area that has scenic and/or historical features,
yet is typical of the State, and is in a location convenient to the using
public; that has facilities encouraging the types of education and whole-
some recreation most desired by its patrons.
The facilities made usable and in process of construction on the State
Parks of Mississippi are along the line of other state parks in the Union,
their planning being influenced, generally, by one advising department,
the National Park Service. For the first three years, in our efforts to
develop and conserve our state park areas, we enjoyed the pleasure of
coasting along a level road, encouraged and advised, as well as financed,
by the National Park Service. However, in the last 12 months we have
had a different experience we have learned the truth of the logic that
it is easy to coast along in level territory with the help of others, yet you
must make the hills under your own power, and in the last year we have
marshalled our forces in an effort to make the grade. Our accomplish-
ments have not been as much as we have desired, yet we review with a
degree of satisfaction the fact that we have acquainted a large percentage
of the people of Mississippi with the state park movement, as well as its
prospective benefits. We have secured the advice and help of quite a
number of influential citizens of the State of Mississippi, and have been
able to get the first state appropriation for the support of state parks.
We realize at this stage of the game that our work on the state park
areas has just begun that there are many things yet to do to make these
parks as serviceable as we desire. Although a number of these are in
shape that we can invite the public and furnish a reasonable amount of
accommodations, yet we realize that the parks will be more successful
and more serviceable with the addition of more facilities and additional
equipment. It is further realized that the citizens of the State of Missis-
sippi must be more thoroughly acquainted with the possibilities of our
state parks, and that funds for the operation and maintenance of these
parks must be increased.
May I take this opportunity to discuss briefly some of the recreational
features one may expect on a visit to the parks of Mississippi. You may
enjoy a wide variety of scenery, as well as outdoor action. You may walk
the trails of northeast Mississippi and view the landscape that is very
rugged, almost mountainous, and listen to the waterfalls of the streams
of this area. You may try your skill with hook and line in the fresh
water lakes of central Mississippi that have a background of low, rolling
hills covered with hardwood and pine. You may rest in a cottage located
on the flat lands of the Mississippi Delta that has long been famous as
the most fertile agricultural region of the Union. Or you may spend
your vacation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, in either winter or summer,
since we propose to develop this park for year-round use. We have the
balmy atmosphere for which the Gulf Coast is famous that you will
enjoy during the winter. We also have the cool and refreshing breeze
170 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
that makes this place so inviting for visitors in summer. In visiting the
parks of Mississippi we hope you will detect and enjoy the results of
our efforts to make them typical of our State. You will be greeted with
the hospitality which comes naturally to our citizens. You will be en-
couraged to join in the activities that Mississippians enjoy and you will
without reserve or restraint feel the freedom of a welcomed guest.
It might be well to note that we of Mississippi are a rural people and
that isolation from our fellows is not always desirable, therefore in de-
veloping facilities we have planned for gathering places as well as places
of isolation. We think that with the proper combination of the two our
state parks will become places for education in conservation, both in
natural and human resources.
Louisiana
NICOLE SIMONEAUX, Secretary, State Parks Commission, New Orleans, La.
STATE park development in Louisiana was first undertaken by the
Longfellow-Evangeline Memorial Park Association, which, as it
was unable to raise the necessary funds, induced the state legislature in
1930 to appropriate 10,000 dollars for the purchase of 157 acres on
Bayou Teche. In 1933-4 a CCC camp, under the supervision of the
National Park Service, constructed a lodge, a water supply and sewerage
system, a lighting system, picnic shelters, outdoor ovens, roads and
bridges. More recently the State Parks Commission has constructed a
caretaker's cottage and has secured over 150 pieces of furniture and
utensils to furnish the old Acadian house in the park, which, according
to local tradition, was once occupied by Louis Arceneaux (Evangeline's
lover, Gabriel).
The State Parks Commission, created by Act of the Legislature in
1934, acquired Fort Pike State Park, which consisted of 125 acres pur-
chased by the State of Louisiana in February, 1928, from the Secretary
of War of the United States, primarily for use of a bridge-head. The area
was transferred to the State Parks Commission by proclamation of
Governor Aiken on November 15, 1934. Fort Pike State Park, which is
now improved with wharves and table-and-bench combinations for
picnickers, has long been one of the favorite sport fishing grounds for
residents of New Orleans, many of whom keep motor boats there, as it is
only 30 miles from town by concrete highway.
During the fall of 1935, the State Parks Commission acquired a 500-
acre tract in Morehouse Parish in the northeast section of the State. The
Crossett Lumber Company gave 400 acres and the Morehouse authori-
ties purchased 100 acres. Through a CCC camp, under the National
Park Service, the park has been provided with a lodge, 5 vacation cabins,
water tower, tool house, garage, park roads and sewerage system.
STATE PARKS 171
The Bogue Falaya Wayside Park, at Covington, was opened in June,
1937, under a combined caretaker-concessionnaire plan. The land was
donated by the city of Covington and the development was a WPA
project. This little park, although only 13 acres in area, has over 1,100
feet frontage on the Bogue Falaya River, whose waters are fine for
swimming, fishing and boating.
The Tchefuncte State Park and Conservation Reservation will
include 5,800 acres, purchased from the Great Southern Lumber Com-
pany. The area allotted to the State Parks Commission for recreational
purposes will consist of about 1,000 acres. The preliminary master plan
for this area calls for two quite distinct types of development one to
include a public bathhouse to accommodate 1,000 people at one time,
a clubhouse, a lodge with lounge, dining-room and dance floor, and
individual cottages; the other to cater to organized groups such as Boy
and Girl Scouts and other organizations and clubs. A separate beach and
bathhouse will serve these groups. Bridle paths and necessary roadways
leading to the buildings will be provided. In the park there will be a
fine harbor for yachts and motor boats, and a fine white sand beach about
3 miles long. The park is characterized by large live oaks, magnolias and
other hard woods and some fine specimens of virgin pines. National
park officials have stated that this area will be one of the finest state
parks in the United States, not only on account of its unusual scenic
value but also because of its interesting historic background and its
accessibility to so large a part of the population. It is said that the
site of the park was visited in 1699 by Jean-Baptiste LeMoyne, Sieur
de Bienville II, the founder of New Orleans.
The State Parks Commission has recently accepted an offer from the
National Bank of Kentucky, in liquidation sale, of 4280 acres, to estab-
lish the Chicot Lake Park in Evangeline Parish. The Commission is
negotiating for the acquisition of 1221 acres in small tracts. Of the total
area of 5500 acres to be acquired, some 2500 acres will cover a lake which
will provide aquatic sports and fine fishing.
The State Parks Commission received its first appropriation from
the legislature for the fiscal period 1936-38. The budget for the fiscal
year 1938-39 is $104,000 and for 1939-40, $85,500.
Kentucky
BAILEY P. WOOTTON, Director of State Parks, Frankfort, Ky.
OF KENTUCKY'S twenty-two parks and monuments but ten can
properly be classed as parks. The total acreage of these parks is
6500; however, additional acreages will be added to two of them, bring-
ing the total acreage up to 20,000. Two of the parks will have an acreage
of about 7500 acres each; the others ranging from 87 to 1100 acres.
172 AMERICAN PLANNING AND CIVIC ANNUAL
One of the principal parks of Kentucky is the Cumberland Falls
State Park of 600 acres, embracing the Falls of the Cumberland River,
the "Niagara of the West." This park, however, is in the center of a
United States Forest area comprising some two hundred and fifty thous-
and acres. Therefore, a visitor in this park will enjoy all of the wooded area
that he may desire, including the Falls and other spots of scenic beauty.
The Natural Bridge State Park, comprising 1100 acres, is in the
center of a United States Forest area of perhaps one hundred thousand
acres. The Audubon State Park contains a museum housing the priceless
John James Audubon c 
