Presenting Nature

Cover

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Overview

Stewardship

Design Ethic Origins
(1916-1927)

Design Policy & Process
(1916-1927)

Western Field Office
(1927-1932)

Park Planning

Decade of Expansion
(1933-1942)

State Parks
(1933-1942)

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916-1942

VII. A NEW DEAL FOR STATE PARKS, 1933 — 1942 (continued)

THE PARK, PARKWAY, AND RECREATIONAL AREA STUDY

Support for state park development and the leadership of the National Park Service in surveying and fostering recreational resources nationwide increased in the early 1930s. This support went beyond the development work of the CCC through Emergency Conservation Work and the creation of RDAs and resulted in a cooperative effort between the National Park Service and state governments to formulate a national recreational policy. By executive order of June 30, 1934, President Roosevelt established the National Resources Board "to prepare . . . a program and plan of procedure dealing with the physical, social, governmental, and economic aspects of public policy for the development of land, water, and other national natural resources." The board was to submit a report on land and water use by December 1, 1934. The National Park Service set up a Recreation Division headed by George Wright to study the topic of national and state parks and related recreational activities and prepare the chapter on the recreational use of land in the United States. This preliminary report showed the need for an exhaustive nationwide survey of recreational activities. The proposal for such a study immediately gained the support of the Department of the Interior. [44]

In 1935, an advisory committee was appointed to help the park service formulate policies and programs relating to state park work. This committee included the retired head of Indiana's parks Colonel Richard Lieber, former park service director Horace Albright, and several planners, park promoters, and association representatives. By this time, CCC work in state parks was being planned and supervised by experienced architects, landscape architects, engineers, foresters, wildlife specialists, geologists, and archeologists. By mid-1935, approximately 150,000 men and 6,000 technicians had been involved in emergency conservation work in both national and state parks. The park service cooperated with the National Recreation Association at this time to conduct a study that resulted in the publication of Municipal and County Parks in the United States in 1938. [45]

It was not until passage of the Park, Parkway and Recreational Area Study Act of June 23, 1936, that the National Park Service was authorized and given funding to make a comprehensive study of the public parks, parkways, and recreational-area programs of the nation. The study was to assess the legislative provisions for recreation and conservation at all levels of government and examine the existing resources. The act also authorized the park service and other federal agencies to aid states in planning, establishing, improving, and maintaining parks, parkways, and recreational areas. Other important features of the act were its recognition of the principle of regional planning and the provision that two or more states could enter into agreements with one another to develop recreational areas. The act, although limited in its scope, codified the cooperative relationship that the National Park Service had had with state parks informally since 1921 and through Emergency Conservation Work since 1933. For the national parks, it extended the meaning of "recreation" as used in the National Park Service policy statements of 1918 and 1932 to include intellectual and aesthetic pursuits that more closely embraced scenery preservation, study, and interpretation. It also broadened the scope of national parklands to encompass the diverse types of parks managed by the service in the mid-1930s—the large natural parks, monuments, historic sites, battlefields, military parks, and parkways—and made way for new areas such as seashores and lakeshores.

State surveys of recreational areas were conducted as a basis for the national study. Recreation was classified into five broad types: physical, aesthetic, creative, intellectual, and social. Parks were divided into four types: primitive, modified, developed, and scientific. The state surveys resulted in reports, many of which were individually published. They functioned as comprehensive plans and as guides to recreational resources that coordinated the activities of parks, forests, wildlife refuges, and reservations at all levels of government into a single recreational system for each state. These studies were later incorporated into regional and national studies. In 1941, the National Park Service published A Study of the Park and Recreation Problem in the United States. By this time, thirty-four states had completed detailed studies assessing the condition of their parks and their needs for recreational areas. The momentum for state and national park cooperation continued despite the war, and the first grants-in-aid bill was introduced in 1945. The bill was unsuccessful, and it was not until 1964 with the passage of the Land and Water Bill, that a grants-in-aid program for park development was realized. [46]

The concept of the nationwide state park recreational program was set out in a brochure published by the National Park Service in 1937. Entitled The CCC and Its Contributions to a Nation-Wide State Park Recreational Program, the brochure emphasized the accomplishments of the CCC in state park work and in RDAs. Not only had ECW made possible the development of existing parks, but it was a catalyst in the acquisition of new lands: thirty-seven states had acquired a total of 350 new park areas covering 599,091 acres, and eight states—Colorado, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia—established their first parks as a result of the stimulus provided by the CCC. This promotional brochure upheld the physical, social, moral, and educational value of outdoor recreation and called for state and regional planning to ensure that recreational facilities were within reach of every American. It called for planning at all levels—in the park itself and in the selection and coordination of recreational resources across a state or among a group of states. [47]

In 1937, the National Park Service began publishing an annual yearbook on park and recreation progress, which brought together articles by noted experts on a range of topics related to the federal relief work in public recreation. Over the next seven years, articles appeared on park planning, sports, park structures, landscape architecture, and park administration. In the first issue, Wirth proclaimed, "The greatest resource of any nation is its human wealth, and in the conservation of the human wealth recreation plays a major part." He set out the three components of a nationwide park and recreation program: (1) the park and recreation system, (2) access and travel, and (3) use and direction. He wrote, "It is through properly directed use that the physical, mental, and spiritual benefits of outdoor recreation are produced with equal emphasis to achieve social adjustment of the individual in order that he may live a full, useful, and complete life." Wirth and other park service officials saw their work as a social-humanitarian effort. They were laying the foundation of a federal and state partnership in recreation that would significantly contribute to the human wealth of the nation. [48]

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