The State Park Movement in America: A Critical Review

by Ney C. Landrum

Overview

Essentially a phenomenon of the twentieth century, America’s pioneering state park movement has grown rapidly and innovatively to become one of the most important forces in the preservation of open spaces and the provision of public outdoor recreation in the country. During this time, the movement has been influenced and shaped by many factors—social, cultural, and economic—resulting in a wide variety of expressions. While everyone agrees that the state park movement has been a positive and beneficial force on the whole, there seems to be an increasing divergence of thought as to exactly what direction the movement should take in the future.

In The State Park Movement in America, Ney Landrum, recipient of almost two dozen honors and awards for his service to state and national parks, places the movement for state parks in the context of the movements for urban and local parks on one side and for national parks on the other. He traces the evolution of the state park movement from its imprecise and largely unconnected origins to its present status as an essential and firmly established state government responsibility, nationwide in scope. Because the movement has taken a number of separate, but roughly parallel, paths and produced differing schools of thought concerning its purpose and direction, Landrum also analyzes the circumstances and events that have contributed to these disparate results and offers critical commentary based on his long tenure in the system.

As the first study of its kind, The State Park Movement in America will fill a tremendous void in the literature on parks. Given that there are more than five thousand state parks in the United States, compared with fewer than five hundred national parks and historic sites, this history is long overdue. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with federal, state, or local parks, as well as to land resource managers generally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826220189
Publisher:	University of Missouri Press
Publication date:	07/01/2013
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ney C. Landrum is Director Emeritus of Florida State Parks, where he developed one of the largest and most respected park systems in the country. He is the editor of Histories of the Southeastern State Park Systems. Now retired, he lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

Read an Excerpt

The State Park Movement in America

A CRITICAL REVIEW

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By Ney C. Landrum

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS

Copyright © 2004 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8262-2018-9

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CHAPTER 1

"Parks Americana"

The Genesis

America is truly a land of parks. Look anywhere across this vast, sprawling continent—from the city centers to the suburban neighborhoods to the remotest hinterlands—and you will find those special places where Americans like to roam, romp, or relax. As different as these sundry properties may otherwise be, they are all still affectionately known by the people as their "parks."

While the idea did not originate here, it most certainly achieved the pinnacle of its expression in the myriad forms of parklands that grace our countrysides from one ocean to the other. In numbers and variety, the parks of America put this country in a class by itself. Not only have they helped shape our landscapes and preserve our national heritage, but, as an exciting and universally popular concept, parks have become permanently ingrained in the American psyche and helped mold us as a people.

Almost from the time European settlers established themselves on these shores, they began setting aside various plots of land for their common use and enjoyment. Dictated at first by practicality, the preservation of public spaces in time became a form of aesthetic expression as towns and cities continued to grow and develop. Most of these early efforts evidenced a strong European influence, of course, following the ideas and models that had been brought over from the Old World countries; but adaptation to new and challenging conditions on this continent soon brought about distinctly American variations. Such modest beginnings hardly constituted a foundation for an American parks legacy, but they did establish valuable precedents for public open space preservation that have served us well to this day.

America's parks as we now know them, however, were not entirely—not even primarily—an inherited idea. But neither were they envisioned during their formative years as the quintessential part of our national character they were destined to become. Springing up randomly here and there, America's parks were at first merely part of a slowly coalescing idea—an obscure concept that had yet to be nurtured and nourished by a succession of visionaries for another two centuries in order to attain its present state of refinement.

Today, we take great pride, and justly so, in America's magnificent national parks—over 125 thousand square miles of forest and mountains, wetlands and desert, along with sites containing the most important shrines from our nation's dramatic past. It was "the best idea America ever had," opined the British Ambassador James Lord Brice in 1912. "Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, [the national parks] reflect us at our best rather than our worst," concurred the writer Wallace Stegner decades later. While probably no area of government endeavor has been able to escape controversy altogether, our national parks seem to have been unanimously applauded and admired almost from the very beginning.

As important as they are, however, the national parks are only one component of America's vast public park estate. Probably best known and certainly most widely used of all parks are those countless areas, large and small, provided by local and regional governments. These close-to-home playgrounds and green spaces cater to millions of users every day, wherever people have clustered, from the tiny hamlet to the huge metropolis. Impressive, too, in their own right are the thousands of state parks—some of them older than the first national park—which collectively comprise almost twenty thousand square miles of scenic landscapes and cultural treasures. Sharing characteristics of both the national and the local parks, state parks nevertheless occupy their own special niche and have their own devoted clientele. Whatever their identity—national, state, or local—among this smorgasbord of parklands there are special places to satisfy the needs and desires of every American. For a park-loving people, we are indeed abundantly blessed.

But what happened along the way to make the United States of America the preeminent land of parks—the world's leading exponent of the modern parks concept? What social forces came into play to motivate the settlers, planners, and developers of this new land to create our unique "Parks Americana"? It is a long, involved, but eminently gratifying, story—a fascinating drama in several acts—and well worth a quick review.

The European Contribution: Parks as Urban Landscape Features

America's first "parks" were merely expressions of borrowed urban planning doctrines that had influenced the design of European cities for centuries. The Spaniards brought with them to the New World the concept of the central plaza, which served as the hub and focal point for the development of their towns and cities. Soon afterward, the English arrived with a similar idea, the commons, sort of a communal "front yard" to serve the needs of the newly settled townspeople. Originally the domain of the city planners, such landscape features as these were standard fixtures in most of the towns of the period.

Some of the more progressive colonial cities, however—again borrowing from precedents brought from Europe—went much further, adopting sophisticated plans that incorporated squares, boulevards, ornamental gardens, and fountains. Although many of these more elaborate projects never got off of the drawing board, cities such as Philadelphia, Savannah, and Washington were meticulously planned and eventually became showpieces to rival their older sisters in England, France, and Italy.

Today, virtually every city and town in America has designated open spaces—whether as part of a formal plan or not. They all follow in the tradition of the early prototypes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which in retrospect may be seen as the informal beginning of a public park movement in America.

As the practice of urban planning evolved and began to rely more and more on the inclusion of open spaces, landscape architecture emerged in the mid-nineteenth century as a whole new field of professional endeavor. The principal exponent of this new school was none other than the legendary Frederick Law Olmsted, who, with his collaborator Calvert Vaux, first made his mark with the design of New York City's famous Central Park. With this precedent-setting project, Olmsted departed from the European tradition of parks—which saw them primarily as passive art objects—by taking advantage of the natural terrain features to incorporate a variety of uses, both passive and active. In this regard, Central Park was an important turning point in the emergence of a clearly American style of urban parks, and it was to become a major influence on park planning and design throughout the country.

Urban America and the Playground Movement

Although by the early 1800s a goodly number of open spaces had been formally set aside in America's growing cities, very few of them were designed with active recreational use in mind. They were created as landscape ornaments to be passively admired and enjoyed, and to help define the city's desired growth pattern. They also might be used for public gatherings and for outdoor events such as fairs and expositions, and even for drilling the local militia; but the occasional recreational use as a bowling green or a football field (probably for a form of rugby or soccer) was the exception. Recreation for personal enjoyment was simply at odds with the strong, even harsh, work ethic that the Puritans and other abstemious Protestant sects had brought with them from Europe. (As Thomas Macaulay put it: "The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.")

This widespread attitude was to change rapidly and drastically, however, as the nineteenth century progressed. As the nation flourished economically and its population became more urbanized, cities and towns continued to grow and to assume broader responsibilities for their citizens. Among those responsibilities of course was the need to provide for public health, safety, and social well-being. Response to this important need took many forms, but one of the first was the improvement of schools and the extension of educational opportunities to the masses. This expansion of public education programs not only produced a more enlightened populace but also introduced the concept of health and physical fitness into the schools. From there it was only a short jump to intramural, and then to intermural, athletics and the eventual spread of active recreation programs to every town and city in the country.

The sports and recreation phenomenon that started with school physical fitness programs was accompanied by a gradual increase in personal leisure time—available not just to the wealthy, but to the common folk as well. By the end of the century, active recreational pursuits had taken on many forms (tennis, golf, baseball, cycling, skating, gymnastics—to mention a few), and a substantial part of America's population was participating with gusto. This transformation from an "all work–no play" society was phenomenal in its impact—a dramatic succession of events characterized by L. H. Weir of the National Recreation Association in 1946: "By slow degrees over a period of more than three centuries, culminating rapidly within the past two generations, the American people have captured an entire new conception of life—a new philosophy of living."

The tremendous growth in active recreation participation in due course created a commensurately huge demand for places to play and facilities to support the more specialized activities. Obviously, mere open spaces would not suffice in most cases; new types of play areas, or "recreational parks," were needed. The response—first by local governments and then by public schools and private organizations—was quick in coming. Countless play fields of every size and description popped up across the country in a groundswell of public recreational interest that, even after another full century, has yet to subside.

In the wake of this recreation explosion, a whole new industry was quickly created to supply facilities and equipment for an expanding array of leisure activities. This in turn ushered in a new field of professional endeavor, the park and recreation specialists. Clearly, new types of expertise were needed to manage and maintain the play areas and facilities and to conduct the numerous organized programs being offered—not only by municipalities and schools, but in time by private organizations such as the YMCA as well.

In 1885, the American Physical Education Association was founded to promote athletics in the schools and elsewhere, and this was soon followed by creation of the American Association of Park Superintendents, in 1898, to enhance professionalism in that growing area of specialization. Thus it came to be that a nationwide boom in active recreational pursuits resulted in a new concept of "parks" and in the process created a new, important, and lasting area of public service responsibility.

The American Frontier and the Preservation Movement

As important as the active outdoor recreation phenomenon was, it was not by any means the only factor that helped shape the concept of American parks. Equally instrumental was the people's newfound interest in nature and the timely awakening of the post-pioneer generation to the pressing need to preserve some of the country's magnificent scenic wonders. Although their origins and purposes were independent, these two very different, yet complementary, park movements generally paralleled each other, both culminating with impressive and irreversible successes by the end of the nineteenth century.

The idea of preservation did not take hold immediately, of course. American colonists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, faced with the rigors of life in a harsh wilderness environment, no doubt had priorities other than parks on their minds. To them, the great outdoors that we now value so highly would have been viewed not as an opportunity for recreation or aesthetic gratification, but rather as a serious challenge to their very survival. The vast, unbroken forests provided materials for shelter, fuel, and food; beyond that, they were simply an impediment, a formidable obstacle that had to be overcome. Thus preoccupied, the early American pioneer had precious little time for civic-improvement projects and scant inclination toward noble visions for the future. Towns might be made more livable by setting aside a central plaza or a commons, but saving any of the spectacular countryside for posterity would have to wait another century or two and the further advance of civilization.

General acceptance of the idea of wildland preservation may have been a long time in coming, but when the momentum finally did shift in the latter part of the nineteenth century, there was no turning back. The pioneers' westward advance across the continent succeeded in taming a once awesome land, but it also began to raise a new consciousness about the lasting impact of such a drastic transformation of the landscape. Settlement and development were destroying the very resources that had lured the settlers west in the first place. Where once the prairies, forests, and wildlife had seemed inexhaustible, the plow, the axe, and the gun had now taken a devastating toll. And with the consequent loss of the prairie flowers, the virgin timber, and the herds of free-ranging bison, much of America's scenic beauty and charm had vanished as well.

Absent some timely intervention, it would take but a few more decades before virtually all of America's virgin landscapes would be irreparably defaced. If anything could be done to spare some part of this magnificent land, it had to be done quickly. Fortunately, the wake-up call sounded in the nick of time.

Public attitudes did not miraculously change from "development" to "preservation" overnight, but midway through the nineteenth century an increasing number of concerned voices began to be heard, preaching the importance of saving some of the most spectacular western landscapes just because they were beautiful to behold. Among the early travelers through the western territories were prominent explorers such as Jim Bridger, John C. Fremont, and John Wesley Powell, who waxed eloquently about the breathtaking sights they had encountered in the Yellowstone Basin, the Yosemite Valley, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and elsewhere. Bridger's early reports of the Yellowstone geysers, in fact, were deemed so incredible they were contemptuously dismissed as "Jim Bridger's lies." Such luminaries as Frederick Olmsted (who had moved to California in 1863), John Muir, and Theodore Roosevelt soon took up the cause, however, validating the earlier accounts and adding momentum to the call for preservation.

Although these word-of-mouth reports succeeded in capturing the public's fancy back East, probably just as influential were the contributions of artists such as the landscapists Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, American Indian painter George Catlin, and a host of others. Their sweeping canvases—long before the age of color photography—conveyed images of wondrous scenes that words alone could never adequately describe. In due course, this combination of word and picture was sufficiently impressive to fire the public imagination and prod the country to action.

And with a newfound enlightenment spreading across the country, the concern for preservation was not limited to the frontier West. Back East, also, a call was being heard from influential citizens to save this or that special area before it was too late. The call was soon followed by action—slowly and randomly at first, but ever accelerating, so that by the end of the century successful preservation projects had been accomplished at every level of government. Most noteworthy of course was the inauguration of America's celebrated national parks program with the designation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, but state and local governments and various citizens' interest groups were also becoming increasingly active by that time.

As early as the 1820s and 1830s, recognition of the value of mineral springs and hot springs for public recreational and therapeutic use led to the reservation of such resources in the state of Georgia and in the territory of Arkansas—possibly the first instances of state-administered "park" projects in the country. By 1853, the city of New York was busily acquiring land for its Central Park, and, in 1864, the state of California ventured into the "public use, resort and recreation" business on a substantial grant of public domain land in the Yosemite Valley. Back East, in the mid-1870s, a long-held civic dream was being realized through the acquisition of thousands of acres of "forest reserves" in New York's Adirondack and Catskill Mountains. These few examples serve merely to illustrate the steadily growing interest in natural area preservation that pervaded the country over the latter half of the nineteenth century—a strong and persistent interest that bespoke even greater things to come.

Another Awakening: The Need for Historic Preservation

Closely related to natural area preservation, the public's interest in saving historic sites and commemorating past deeds and events also gained great momentum as the nineteenth century progressed. Even before the century began, concern was being expressed over the casual destruction of older buildings, such as Green Spring in Virginia, which in 1796 was reputed to be the oldest occupied house in North America. As the country grew and aged, redevelopment of older sections was of course inevitable. Many quaint structures and places that had been taken for granted were lost before public sentiment could be aroused. Fortunately, the national conscience was sufficiently stirred by midcentury to bring about a number of notable historic preservation successes. Prominent among those was the Hasbrouck House, George Washington's military headquarters in Newburgh, New York, acquired in 1850 and believed to be the first such project in the country to be opened for public visitation. This was soon followed by Mount Vernon, in 1858, and an increasing number of others.
(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface....................     xi     

Acknowledgments....................     xv     

Prologue....................     1     

1. "Parks Americana"....................     3     

2. The Nature of Parks....................     14     

3. The States Begin to Stir State Park Initiatives in the Nineteenth
Century....................     27     

4. The Momentum Builds State Parks Expansion in the Early Twentieth
Century....................     48     

5. Coalescence The First National Conference on Parks....................     74     

6. "A State Park Every Hundred Miles" The National Conference on State
Parks Goes to Work....................     90     

7. Dubious Progress Assessing the Relevance of the National Conference on
State Parks....................     111     

8. An Unexpected Boon Economic Recovery and a New Deal for State Parks....     124     

9. Recovery and Beyond Depression-Era Initiatives Look to the Future......     141     

10. A Major Interruption Wartime Distraction and Postwar Rebound..........     155     

11. The Continuing Search for Direction The Ever-Resilient National
Conference on State Parks....................     169     

12. A New Era of Federal-State Cooperation....................     182     

13. Signs of Maturity....................     201     

14. A Look behind the Scenes Issues and Influences that Shape the State
Park System....................     220     

15. Anything Goes An Age of Expansion, Experimentation, and Expediency....     233     

16. Looking to the Future The View from One Observer's Soapbox............     253     

Appendix Selected Data on America's State Parks....................     262     

Selected Bibliography....................     267     

Index....................     273