Chapter 4
The Rise and Decline of Ecological
Attitudes, 19291940 (continued)
New Deal Impacts on the Park
Service
The variety of programs taken on during the New Deal impacted the
Service and the national parks in significant ways. Prior to 1933 the
Park Service administered a system consisting mostly of large natural
areas in the West, along with a few archeological sites in the Southwest
and historic sites in the East. During the New Deal the Service's
expansionist tendencies led it into enormous new responsibilities in
recreation and historic site management. Especially with CCC funds, it
extended its activities and influence far beyond national park
boundaries, becoming involved in complex planning, intensive
development, and preservation work with state and local governments from
coast to coast. By the mid-1930s, after all of the Service's CCC
operations had been consolidated under Conrad Wirth, some observers were
claiming that, given the size of the programs under Wirth, there were in
fact two National Park Services: the "regular" Park Service, and "Connie
Wirth's Park Service." [153]
The Service's official organizational chart, revised no fewer than
eight times during the 1930s, reflected the bureau's growing
diversification and professional specialization. The sequence of charts
showed an increase from three Washington branches and four "field"
professional offices (of landscape architects and engineers, among
others) in 1928, to a complex organizational maze of ten "branches" (or
their equivalent) and four newly created "regional offices" on the 1938
chart. (The regional offices had been established in 1937, largely at
Wirth's instigation, to correspond with the regional organization used
by the CCC.) On the 1938 chart, specifically identified functions
relating to the Service's growth and expansion during the 1930s included
management of historic sites, archeological sites, memorials, parkway
rights-of-way, and District of Columbia parks and buildings. In
addition, under Assistant Director Wirth's Branch of Recreation, Land
Planning, and State Cooperation were the Land Planning Division, the
Development Division, and the U.S. Travel Divisionthe last created
in early 1937 to stimulate travel to the national parks. [154]
Additional changes for the Park Service were detailed in a 1936
internal report, which noted that in the previous three years Service
expenditures had increased "about fourfold and its personnel about eight
[fold]." From 1930 to 1933, total appropriations had amounted to
$11,104,000 annually. Over the next three years, total appropriations
averaged $51,824,000 annually a remarkable increase. Similarly,
personnel figures rose from a monthly average of 2,022 employees in 1932
to 17,598 in 1936, with about three-fifths of the 1936 employees paid
from CCC funds. (In Washington alone, management of the federal
buildings and the public parks for which the Service was responsible
required about 5,000 employees by 1936.) The overall figures included
money and personnel for managing the fifty-six historical and
archeological parks brought in by Roosevelt's 1933 reorganization, plus
staffing for a number of newly created parks. [155]
The various New Deal emergency relief programs that the Service had
so successfully tapped funded most of these staff increases. The 1936
internal report revealed that between July 1, 1933, and June 30, 1936,
the Service's emergency relief funds totaled $116,724,000, far greater
than the $38,748,000 in regular Park Service appropriations. As stated
in the same report, the "biggest single factor" in expansion of the
Service's operations was supervision of recreational planning and
development. The report indicated that, in state parks, up to 91,000
enrollees living in 457 camps had been directed by as many as 5,499 Park
Service employees. The relief programs had not only helped bring the
national parks "to new levels of physical development," as the 1936
report put it, but had also fostered "new and important fields of
activity" for the bureauthe many and varied Park Service programs
of the 1930s. [156]
Within the national parks themselves through 1936, the Service
managed as many as 117 CCC camps with 23,400 enrollees, and employed as
many as 2,405 "national park landscape architects, engineers, foresters,
and other technicians." [157] This last
figure alone exceeded the total of Park Service employees in 1932, prior
to the beginning of Roosevelt's emergency relief programs, and was a
reflection of the heavy emphasis the New Deal placed on forestry and
recreational development in the national parks. Much later, in 1951,
Chief Landscape Architect William G. Carnes estimated that the Service
in the 1930s had employed as many as 400 landscape architects at one
time. By comparison, the Service employed a maximum of 27 biologists in
the mid-1930sa tiny fraction of those employed in recreational
development. Of the biologists, 23 were funded by CCC money and the
remaining four were paid through the Service's regular appropriations.
[158]
The total funds and positions accounted for by the Park Service
during this period attested to the New Deal's interest in recreational
development of national and state parks, and also to its emphasis on
large resource surveys and national planning. With these programs the
Service's foresters, architects, landscape architects, and engineers
increased their influence. And by the mid-1930s, the Park Service
claimed that its "preeminence" in the recreational field had reached
"new heights," with its mission expanded to aiding the conservation of
"parklands everywhere." [159] Although
certainly meaningful, the emergence of a scientific perspective in
national park management seems diminished, even overwhelmed, by the Park
Service's extraordinary expansion and development during the 1930s.
It is significant that when Cammerer's health forced him to step down
in 1940 to become regional director in the Park Service's Richmond,
Virginia, office, one of Secretary Ickes' top choices to succeed
Cammerer was none other than Robert Moses, the "czar" of New York's
park, parkway, and recreational development. Ickes thought that the New
Yorker would provide "vigorous administration"in sharp contrast to
his disregard for Cammerer's abilities. The secretary's interest in
Moses, conveyed to President Roosevelt, certainly suggests a perception
of the National Park Service as much more of a recreational tourism
organization than one committed to scientific and ecologically attuned
land management. Moreover, it was Roosevelt's personal animosity toward
Moses, rather than any concerns that his aggressive developmental
tendencies might overwhelm the national parks, that seems to have led to
the President's rejection of Moses as a possible Park Service director.
[160]
The varied programs assumed by the National Park Service during the
1930s did in fact draw criticism. Alarmed over the bureau's
developmental bent, Newton Drury, head of the Save the Redwoods League
and destined to succeed Cammerer as Park Service director, commented
scornfully that the Service was becoming a "Super-Department of
Recreation" and a "glorified playground commission." Because of these
tendencies, organizations such as the Redwoods League, The Wilderness
Society, and the National Parks Association believed that the U.S.
Forest Service might manage the Kings Canyon area of the Sierra (one of
the principal national park proposals during the late 1930s) better than
would the Park Service. Such concerns contributed to a delay of
congressional authorization of Kings Canyon National Park until 1940 and
inspired strong wording in the enabling legislation to protect the new
park's wilderness qualities. Aversion to Park Service emphasis on
recreational tourism development also caused the Redwoods League to
oppose establishment of a national park in the redwoods area of northern
California. [161] This opposition helped
cause decades of delay, with serious consequences for preservation of
the redwoods.
Particularly stinging criticism of changes taking place during the
New Deal came from the National Parks Association, which, since its
founding in 1919 with Stephen Mather's patronage, had been the public's
chief advocate for maintaining high national park standards. The
association feared that the traditional large natural parks were
threatened by too much development, and that the Park Service was
distracted by an overload of new and diverse responsibilities. In a
conservative reaction to the sprawl of New Deal programs, the
association argued that the National Park Service was run by its "State
Park group financed by emergency funds," and that with the new types of
parks, the public was increasingly confused about what a true national
park was. To the association, the "real impetus" behind the expansion
and development of the system was the "recently conceived idea that the
Park Service is the only federal agency fitted to administer recreation
on federally owned or controlled lands. Some persons even go so far as
to assert that its proper function is to stimulate and direct
recreational travel throughout the country." [162]
In the spring of 1936, the National Parks Association recommended
"purification" as a corrective measure. It urged establishment of a
"National Primeval Park System," which would contain only the large
natural parks and be managed independently of historic or recreation
areas, or of state park assistance programs. The intent of this proposal
was to save the "old time" big natural parks from "submergence" in the
"welter of miscellaneous reservations" being created. Furthermore, the
association proposed limiting future additions to the primeval park
system to those areas that had not been seriously impacted by lumbering,
mining, settlement, or other adverse human activities. Only the most
pristine areas were to be included. [163]
During the 1930s the National Parks Association's highly restrictive
approach seems to have had little impact on the Park Service or on the
growth of the system. It was, in fact, criticized by individuals within
the Service, from Cammerer to George Wright. Cammerer and his staff
disliked the primeval parks proposal, believing it would divide the
system into first-class and second-class areas. Writing in the
American Planning and Civic Annual in 1938, former director
Horace Albright, one of the principal proponents of Park Service
expansion, attacked the restrictive standards as being so "rigid" that
they would "disqualify all of the remaining superlative scenery in the
United States." Albright rightfully pointed out that parks like Glacier,
Grand Canyon, and Yosemite, which had been grazed, mined, or settled
before establishment, would not have become national parks had such
standards been used in the past. He claimed that those who wanted only
"unmodified territory" in the parks were actually allied with "other
national-park objectors to prevent any more areas from being
incorporated into the system." [164]
In a scathing letter to the National Parks Association, Interior
secretary Ickes concurred with Albright. Ickes wrote that opposition to
legislation that would include cutover areas in the proposed Olympic
National Park or allow recreation development downriver from the
proposed Kings Canyon National Park "dovetailed perfectly with the
opposition of commercial opponents." He charged the Parks Association
with being a "stooge" for lumber companies that also opposed the parks.
George Wright's disagreement with the association was much more
tempered. In a speech to the American Planning and Civic Association
shortly before his death, Wright stated that he no longer feared that
the system would be loaded with "inferior" parks, a position placing him
in disagreement with the Parks Association. He believed that, in any
event, the Service itself could adequately defend against "intrusion of
trash areas." More important, the failure to act on truly exceptional
park proposals would be much more calamitous than allowing substandard
areas to "slip in." [165]
It must be noted that criticism by the National Parks Association and
others did not focus on any perceived need for ecologically oriented
management of natural resources. Both Newton Drury's assertion that the
Service was becoming a Super-Department of Recreation and the National
Parks Association's proposal for a primeval park system stemmed from
apprehension over excessive development and the kinds of parks being
created. Once an area was placed under the Service's administration, the
specifics of its natural resource managementthe treatment of elk,
fish, forests, and the likeseem to have been of not much concern.
By implication, where no development problems existed the parks were
satisfactorily managed. Expressed largely in terms of opposition to
various kinds of development, the critics' desire to protect the parks
went against the tide of Park Service recreational growth and expansion
under the New Deal. In the end, this criticism had little effect.
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