SEASHORE AND LAKESHORE STUDIES

One of the most interesting and worthwhile of the New Deal conservation programs was the shoreline study that set out to preserve miles and miles of Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coastlines for the use and enjoyment of people from all parts of the country. Although full emphasis was not given to shoreline preservation until the fifties, the fact that private development was consuming this resource and leaving less and less of it available for public use was recognized even before the New Deal. Very little had been done, however, to reserve seashore areas for public use. The rush for seashore summer homesites had got well under way during the prosperous early and middle twenties. There had been a big land boom in Florida and along the Gulf coast and up the eastern shore, and the first thing a subdivider, or even individuals would do, would be to level off the dunes to build houses. Of course, during the depression a good deal of this work stopped, but the previous boom had taken its toll. It was most suitable therefore to include seashores in the overall conservation and recreation planning made possible through funds from the PWA, the WPA, and especially the CCC.

In 1934 and 1935 the National Park Service, using its regionalization setup for handling state park work, launched a study of the seashores along the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico. The service received fine cooperator from the Coast Guard and other agencies that had personnel they wanted to keep busy in order to justify their permanent appropriation base, and their technical knowledge provided very important factual information for our investigations. The study was broken down into several parts but had two main emphases: first, those areas of outstanding importance from the national standpoint that might be considered as additions to the national park system, and second, those that were outstanding from the state standpoint and that were needed primarily for active recreation purposes. Shortly after the study was started it was felt that, though the Atlantic and Gulf shorelines were in the greatest danger and in need of protection, the study should be extended to include the Pacific coast as well. This was done approximately six months later.

These studies resulted in the selection of about fifteen areas for possible inclusion in the national park system, and about thirty areas for state park systems, although our proposals were not developed to a stage that justified funding. One particular shoreline, however, Cape Hatteras, had attracted a lot of attention—first, because of the importance of old Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on this stretch of coastline known as the "graveyard of the Atlantic" and, second, because there are several small towns on the outer sandbar inhabited by Coast Guard people and commercial fishermen. Some 1,200 of the First World War veterans who joined the bonus march on Washington in 1932 and who were moved out of the capital area by General Douglas MacArthur were settled in camps at Cape Hatteras so that the men could be employed on a project to reestablish sand dunes that had been overgrazed by cattle and left vulnerable to wind and wave erosion. The veterans were housed on barges on Pamlico Sound, which lies between Cape Hatteras and the mainland. We had also established a couple of CCC camps on the cape, which was a North Carolina state park.

Lindsay Warren was the representative in Congress for that district, and his administrative assistant was Herbert Bonner. Warren succeeded in getting legislation through Congress authorizing the establishment of over seventy miles of public seashore from Nags Head southward to the cape and from the cape over to Ocracoke Inlet. The law provided that sufficient lands would be included within the fishing communities for overnight accommodations for seashore visitors. The law also provided that the state-owned part of the area be turned over to the federal government and that the state would buy and donate all the remaining land necessary to create the Cape Hatteras National Seashore as authorized. This bill became law on August 17, 1937, but the state never got around to fulfilling its commitment.

I mention Cape Hatteras because it was the first national seashore to be authorized. Without the help of both Lindsay Warren, who later became United States comptroller general, and Herb Bonner, who succeeded to his place in Congress, and without the Mellon funding that stimulated state appropriations, Cape Hatteras National Seashore might never have been established—certainly not within its present boundaries. (In Chapter 3 is an account of the part that the Mellon family foundations played in its establishment.) Furthermore, but for this accomplishment, another seashore study made during Mission 66 in the middle fifties might never have got started or might have been delayed so long that many areas that have since been authorized would have been lost to public ownership.

Establishing the boundary of Cape Hatteras National Seashore was no easy task. It was necessary to protect shorelines and sand dunes and preserve the natural wildlife habitat while at the same time providing public use areas and allowing space for reasonable growth of existing communities. There were seven small communities on the outer banks on Pamlico Sound. Most of the oceanfront and the waterfowl hunting area was owned by northern interests, yet the local people felt it was their land because they had been using it for years. In order to satisfy the local people, when we started planning in detail we divided the entire project into seven or eight sections and prepared detail maps for each section. Victor Mekins, editor of the local weekly newspaper at Manteo that serves the whole cape, said he would print a special edition with our maps and statements and see that every family within the project, whether a subscriber of the newspaper or not, got a copy. We also announced that the week after the special edition we would visit each community to answer questions and receive suggestions. We knew that some of the people were for the project and that some had strong feelings against it, but many wanted to know more about it before they made up their minds. The main stumbling block was the group of some fifteen or twenty caretakers of the several hunting clubs owned by well-to-do northern people. Fully aware that misunderstandings and lack of information cause most of a public official's troubles, we felt that public airing of the proposal with full explanation of all its aspects was the only way to win local public support.

Representative Bonner, who had succeeded to Warren's seat in Congress, Clark Stratton, our very able young project manager, and I started on our rounds on a Wednesday at the far end of the project at the town of Ocracoke, then moved east to the town of Frisco in the afternoon, and then to Hatteras for an after-dinner public meeting and to spend the night. Everything went along very well during the day. We didn't get too many strong objections, and we accepted several reasonable requests for adjustments in boundary location. But we had gotten indications that we were going to have some trouble that night at the meeting at the schoolhouse in Hatteras.

We arrived at the schoolhouse shortly before eight and discovered that the only people there were the hunting club employees. It turned out that the other townspeople didn't show up because they knew what might happen and didn't want to be a part of it. Clark Stratton made a few opening remarks, got a few Bronx cheers, and introduced me. I started right in to tell them about the project as authorized and the boundary we had worked out around the town of Hatteras, but I didn't get very far. They really went at me. I would stop talking until they quieted down and then try to go on, but to no avail. This went on for about ten minutes, although it seemed longer, and I was about to blow my top when Representative Bonner got up and told me to sit down, that he wanted to take over. He proceeded to tell them in no uncertain terms that he didn't care what they wanted, that the area was going to be established the way the Park Service wanted it, and that they and their New York bosses could go to hell. He told them that they had acted in a way that was a disgrace to the South and that they were just a bunch of puppets for the Yankees. Further, he stated that the Cape Hatteras National Seashore would be a great thing for the cape, the state, and the entire country, and that he intended to see it through to completion. Finally, he said that we didn't want their kind of support and that he had more votes in his backyard than they could deliver on the whole cape. With that he turned to Clark and me and said, "Let's get out of here; it stinks." We walked out and left them sitting there.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has 71,105 acres of native sand dunes, forests, and lakes on two offshore islands and a section of Lake Michigan shoreline. Courtesy National Park Service.

We spent the night in the town of Hatteras and the next morning met with a few people at Buxton. We were disappointed that we had not been able to speak to the people of Hatteras and that not many turned out at Buxton. But at the next town, Avon, low and behold we were received like heroes! A lot of the Hatteras and Buxton people were present, and they had joined with Avon's people to arrange an old-fashioned fish fry. They knew full well what had happened at Hatteras and were pleased with what we had done and what Herb Bonner had said, and believe me, we were pleased that they were pleased.

Point Reyes National Seashore, California, is noted for its beaches backed by tall cliffs, lagoons and esteros, and offshore birds and sea lion colonies. The author made the basic field study for this area in the CCC period. Courtesy National Park Service.

The war clouds were gathering in the late thirties, and by 1939 and 1940 legislation authorizing additional seashore areas seemed impossible. The next national seashore was established in 1961, twenty-four years after the authorization of Cape Hatteras. In the intervening years the war had come and gone, and the cold war had set in and was tapering off. The time seemed right to get back to progressive and much needed conservation programs. Though included in the Park Service's Mission 66 planning program, the new seashore studies were actually started with donations from foundations established by Paul Mellon and his sister, Mrs. Alisa Bruce, while Mission 66 was being prepared. Many of the areas that had been favored for preservation in the studies of the thirties had disappeared or had been destroyed for park use beyond redemption. The new seashore studies program was broad in its objectives, following closely the principle of the earlier studies and including areas of either national or state significance. This time the studies covered not only the shorelines of both oceans and the Gulf of Mexico but also those of the Great Lakes.

Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts, was the first national seashore established as the result of the shoreline studies made during Mission 66 and the first area in the history of the national park system for which Congress authorized funds to purchase the land. Photo by M. Woodbridge Williams, courtesy National Park Service.

The first postwar seashore legislation passed by Congress as a result of these studies was for Cape Cod. That legislation caused a great deal of difficulty when it came to convincing the good people of Massachusetts that the cape should be made a national seashore. Long hours were spent in meetings with townspeople and with conservation groups. I believe the secret of our success was that we had the strong backing of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Leverett Saltonstall, of Massachusetts, and the state conservation commissioner, Francis Sargent, who later became governor. As with the Cape Hatteras project, the local newspaper, The Cape Coder, was our big supporter, and without the devotion of its editor and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Burling, I don't know what we would have done. The legislation proved to be a milestone in the history of the national park system, because Congress created a precedent by authorizing federal funding to buy the necessary land and all such bills passed by Congress since then have authorized appropriations for land purchase. Until then legislation adding areas to the national park system had required that the lands be either federally owned or given to the government. It was what we often called the beg, borrow, or steal system.

The Cape Cod bill authorized sixteen million dollars for land acquisition, only half the amount we asked for. The foundations that had matched the state funds to buy Cape Hatteras, while not making a definite commitment, had led me to believe they would put up the other half of the Cape Cod funds. Arrangements were made to have a luncheon meeting between the executive officer of the foundations and me at the Cosmos Club in Washington; I invited the secretary of the interior to participate, and he accepted. Toward the end of the meal I opened the discussion with the remark that it was going to cost at least thirty-two million dollars to buy all the land needed for the Cape Cod National Seashore and that Congress had authorized only sixteen million dollars in federal funds. At this point the secretary stated that he didn't think we would have any trouble getting additional funds for this particular project because it was in Massachusetts, the home state of the president. He had in mind another project he felt was very important and needed some funds. I didn't feel I should try to contradict the secretary. The executive officer was a very good listener, but the secretary did not get his money. The result was that in order to get the necessary funding for the Cape Cod project we had to go back to Congress several times for additional authorization and funds for land purchase.

The Cape Hatteras and Cape Cod national seashores opened up a whole new phase of conservation. And Cape Cod is a real landmark in that it set a precedent whereby it is now a policy of Congress to provide funds for the purchase of land needed for the national park system. The seashore conservation studies were the forerunners of the policy of preserving shorelines of various bodies of water, including our free-flowing rivers. The shoreline areas in the table that follows were established during the sixties and seventies and are the result of the study made in the fifties; but it was the seashore studies of the thirties, the CCC, and the Cape Hatteras authorization by Congress that initiated the program under which they were established. The table lists the national seashores and national lakeshores, showing the dates they were authorized or established, miles of shoreline, and acreage. Only seven in the list were recommended in the CCC study. The other eight that had been recommended in the thirties no longer qualified by the time funds were available.

It took from March 1, 1872, the date Yellowstone National Park was established, until August 7, 1961, the date of authorization of Cape Cod National Seashore—a period of eighty-nine years—to recognize that the preservation of our national heritage for the benefit of the people, present and future, is an important federal responsibility that deserves spending federal money to buy the land that will make such preservation possible. Admittedly, I take pride in pointing out that the shoreline preservation program sprouted from the National Park Service CCC program of the thirties and came into full bloom in the Mission 66 period in the late fifties and early sixties. Perhaps more important is the fact that the shoreline program set the policy for the Park Service to assume its full responsibilities as defined by Congress, which backed the program by providing legislative assurance of proper funding.

My pride is expressed on behalf of all those who fired up the shoreline concept and saw it through to completion. I include the United States Coast Guard and the many state park people, as well as our friends in Congress, especially Chairman Wayne N. Aspinall, of Colorado, and John P. Saylor, of Pennsylvania, both of the Interior Affairs Committee of the House; Chairman Clinton P. Anderson, of New Mexico, and Senator Henry C. Dworshak, of Idaho, both of the Senate Interior Committee; and of course Senator Carl Hayden, of Arizona, and Representative Mike Kirwan, of Ohio, chairmen, respectively, of the appropriations committees of the Senate and the House that handled our requests for appropriations. Without their deep interest in and support of the National Park Service objective, our efforts would have amounted to naught.