| North Cascades |
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Chapter 13:
VISITOR USE, CONCESSIONS, AND DEVELOPMENTS
In the history of North Cascades, there was an inherent tension between wilderness preservation and traditional national park management. No aspect of the park complex's management revealed this tension more, perhaps, than the agency's attempts to accommodate the average visitor. During the complex's second era of management, agency officials addressed some of the more grandiose plans as well as devised new plans to meet the basic needs of visitors in a large-scale planning effort. The 1988 general management plan, spearheaded by Superintendent John Reynolds, emphasized that the visitor use pattern evident at the park's creation was well established. More than 90 percent of the parkland was considered wilderness, while the remaining non-wilderness sections of the parkland saw more than 90 percent of its visitors. The new plan also revised proposals now considered inappropriate or simply unrealistic in an age of environmental activism, and given the agency's stronger interest in maintaining the integrity of the park's ecological systems. As in the past, the plan focused primarily on the two geographic regions of the complex, the Skagit and Stehekin districts. Essential to the planning effort was the role of the Ross Lake and Lake Chelan national recreation areas as wilderness thresholds, buffer zones to the park wilderness, and the zones set aside to provide visitor services typically found within a national park. In a sense, the new planning effort would expand the wilderness threshold concept to its fullest.
In the Skagit District, one of the most evident visitor use patterns was that most of 800,000 visitors to the North Cascades traveled along Highway 20 and stayed within the highway corridor for the duration of their visit. The challenge was to convey to these visitors and all visitors, Superintendent John Reynolds believed, the meaning and value of North Cascades as a wilderness park, to make them participants in, rather than observers of, this wild landscape. [1]
The general management plan used his idea as its central theme. Certainly, there were other areas of the parkland that drew the agency's attention, especially Stehekin, but Highway 20 symbolized the challenge of managing a park for wilderness while still meeting the needs of everyday visitors. Highway 20 was the wilderness threshold of the Skagit District. Superintendent Reynolds suggested that the highway was "an interpretive and inspirational visitor enjoyment facility." It provided outstanding scenic driving opportunities, as well as access to visitor facilities -- concessions, campgrounds, existing and planned overlooks, waysides, and trails. Moreover, it was the single most important means of communicating "park values to visitors, and will be throughout the park's history." With wilderness as the park's main theme, the highway, like other national park roads, was the central means of conveying this to the motoring public. Indeed, the highway was and would be as close as many would come to experiencing the park's wilderness values. [2]
Interpretation was an integral part of relating to visitors the meaning of North Cascades and thus influenced many of the developments planned and completed along Highway 20. Although addressed in previous management plans, interpretation received a boost in importance from the 1988 general management plan. Besides expanding on the park's interpretive themes of wilderness, natural forces, humans and the environment, the plan stressed the need for a visitor center along the highway within the park complex. The park complex's 1976 interim interpretive prospectus had suggested the need for such a facility in order for visitors to stop and learn about the park landscape through which they were traveling. And the 1988 general management plan made it one of the highest priorities for North Cascades. The visitor center, proposed for an area just west of Newhalem, would provide "an inspirational and informational introduction to the North Cascades," according to the plan, using a film and exhibits to inform visitors about the parkland's wilderness, the role of wilderness in American life, resource issues facing the park, and the full range of opportunities available in the park complex. Park planners realized that what visitors learned at the visitor center, through various forms of media, would perhaps be their closest encounter with North Cascades, their only chance to reflect on its wilderness mission and to appreciate the landscape they could not see themselves beyond the highway corridor.
Park officials believed that the new visitor center would serve several other important functions. One of these was that it would be an "ideal place to interpret Senator Jackson's contributions to the national park system and the people of the United States." In 1987, Congress dedicated North Cascades to Senator Henry M. Jackson's memory, and the law was one of the reasons for spurring on development because it specifically stated that the agency should establish sites to interpret Jackson's contributions to the establishment of North Cascades as well as to "the national park system." The North Cascades visitor center was one of several places in the park complex chosen for recognizing Jackson. Another function of the building was that it would have an education center for providing environmental and resource study programs to "large numbers of schoolchildren and adults from local communities and the Puget Sound region." [3]
In addition to introducing visitors to North Cascades, the visitor center was a key link in the agency's plans for the Highway 20 corridor. Many of these plans had been introduced in the park's 1986 development concept plan for the highway. In that plan, the Park Service pledged its support to continue its cooperation with other agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service and Washington State, "to maintain and enhance" the highway's "scenic and recreational values." Reasons for this stemmed in part from the highway's popularity. In 1984, the portion of highway crossing the Okanogan National Forest was designated the North Cascades Scenic Highway. More specifically, the development concept plan emphasized the development of new and the renovation of existing day activity sites along the highway and at Cascade Pass. The plan called for interpretive waysides to be incorporated with recreational facilities at a number of popular sites, among them the Cascade Pass trailhead, the Copper Creek take-out, the proposed Pickets overlook, the Goodell Creek campground, Newhalem, and the overlooks at Gorge Dam, Gorge Falls, and Happy Flats. [4]
One of the main ideas behind these interpretive waysides was to bring to motoring tourists and other recreationists the story of the North Cascades' natural and cultural history. Each site, in effect, would provide some elements of the story. Cascade Pass was important because there was no place to see the park's most notable features -- the Picket Range and Eldorado Peaks -- from the highway. In this regard, the pass continued to fill this void. Drivers who wanted to hike the relatively short trail to the pass from the end of the road were rewarded with views of the parkland's mountains, glaciers, and subalpine terrain at close range. Similar to past proposals, the agency planned to use a shuttle service to bring people to the trailhead, if the parking lot at the foot of the pass were filled during peak use periods. The popularity of Cascade Pass made it difficult to limit visitor use, though the notion surfaced again during Reynolds' tenure, and thus difficult to prevent damage to the area's sensitive subalpine vegetation. A compromise of sorts was that interpretive waysides at the trailhead would relate information about the natural environment and the revegetation program. Other areas along Highway 20, namely the overlooks at Diablo and Ross lakes, would interpret the spectacular mountain scenery and efforts to protect this country, as well as the history of public power so evident in the landscape of reservoirs, dams, and company towns along the roadway. [5]
Besides developments for interpretation, the Park Service planned to construct activity sites along the highway so visitors could have a variety of experiences with the park's diverse natural resources. Superintendent Reynolds believed this approach was in keeping with what the Park Service's founding fathers, Stephen Mather and Horace Albright, wanted -- to let everyday Americans experience their national parks, to create ties between them and the natural world. The main goal of visitor use was to "encourage and help people enjoy their natural surroundings free from the distractions of mechanized equipment and imposing structures." [6]
Echoing the 1970 master plan, the 1988 plan wanted to get people out of their automobiles and into nature, even in a limited way. The plan contemplated a number of short trails for highway travelers to give them "the opportunity to enjoy and explore the variety and grandeur of the North Cascades." Some of these were a trail to Thunder View and a trail to Happy Falls. An especially important development was the Happy Flats area near the trailhead to Ross Dam. The area encompassed a wide variety of terrain and environments and offered many opportunities for visitors "to explore and better understand the unique east-to-west ecosystem transitions that occur in the North Cascades." The area was within easy walking distance of the highway and demonstrated, according to Reynolds, how roadside activities could be provided in a sensitive manner. As a rule, however, the general management plan shunned new developments; it excluded any new roads, tramways, or other major visitor facilities except the visitor center at Newhalem. In this regard, it finally put to rest many long-standing proposals, such as tramways, which had been shelved indefinitely. Unlike early park complex managers, Reynolds and others of this generation did not feel the same compelling need to provide a high vista for park visitors from Highway 20. Opportunities were available outside the park complex, they believed, primarily on national forest lands, as well as at Cascade Pass. [7]
In addition to day-time uses, the general management plan noted that Ross Lake NRA would continue to provide a "variety of overnight experiences." With the exception of Hozomeen and campsites along Ross Lake, Highway 20 was the central focus. The two concessions, the Diablo Lake and Ross Lake resorts, still served the general public, however with different rates of success. The Diablo Lake Resort had never been a successful operation and it continued to suffer financial losses throughout the 1980s; it changed ownership several times, but a great deal of the resort's success rested upon traffic from Highway 20, which never provided enough income, it seems, in the short summer season when the road was open. After the general management plan was released, the resort failed. By 1990, the resort's most recent owners listed it for sale. At this point, the concession effectively ended. In December 1991, Seattle City Light bought the facility to use for an environmental learning center, as called for in the city's negotiations with the Park Service as part of the relicensing of the Skagit River Project. On the other hand, the Ross Lake Resort, a popular floating fishing resort, continued to expand and enjoy success. [8]
For highway users seeking something more basic, the three campgrounds in the recreation area would continue to meet their needs. Campgrounds for auto tourists had been a great source of contention in the 1970s. Congressman Lloyd Meeds persistently had lobbied the Park Service to increase the drive-in facilities along the Skagit River, especially since development plans for Roland Point had been terminated. By the late 1970s, the Park Service had expanded and improved Colonial Creek and Goodell Creek campgrounds, but it was the Newhalem Creek Campground that provided the greatest increase in camping sites. Listed as the park's top priority for development, Newhalem was opened in 1982. It was thought that after several phases of construction, it would have a capacity of some 450 sites, beginning with an initial phase of some 250 sites. It seems, however, that there were problems with funding and contractors, and when the campground opened there were approximately 120 sites available within five loops. (Later, danger from hazard trees would close several loops.) News of the campground spread slowly. It was located across the river from the highway by way of a single-lane bridge, and it rarely filled. [9]
All three campgrounds offered visitors with "distinctly different camping experiences," noted the general management plan. Goodell, on the highway-side of the Skagit, was and would remain "an intimate, small campground." Newhalem, located across the river from Goodell, was best suited for large numbers of people and diverse kinds of users -- those who wanted a traditional national park car camping experience and those who wanted something similar but with the comforts of home in their motor homes. Newhalem could also be expanded in the future to accommodate more of these types of vehicles, as well as expanded to accommodate a general increase in visitor use. Finally, Colonial Creek would remain a typical park campground for people in tents and recreational vehicles, especially those who wanted to boat on Diablo Lake. [10]
Preserving the park's wilderness character was also evident in the Park Service's plans. The agency expressed interest in studying the Stehekin River and the Skagit River and its tributaries for wild and scenic river status. The agency's plans for water-based recreation also demonstrated this focus. Boating would continue to be a viable form of recreation, but the agency would not go to great lengths to increase its use. In Lake Chelan NRA, the agency planned to move the boat-in campsites at Flick Creek to Four-Mile Creek, a more attractive and protected area. The agency also proposed building up to six more boat-in campsites at Riddle Creek. Yet Park Service officials opposed any expansion or modification of the Stehekin docks for boats or houseboats because these kinds of changes would alter the character of the Stehekin landing.
Although valued for its scenic qualities, Ross Lake differed from Lake Chelan because it was less accessible. In light of the recent High Ross decision, agency leaders decided that they would manage Ross Lake "to retain its character as the only large wild lake in the region, offering excellent opportunities for canoeing, kayaking, and fishing." Repeating the ideas of preservation groups, Park Service managers emphasized that the man-made lake had wilderness qualities; it provided a "different kind of recreational opportunity," primarily non-motorized boating and thus greater opportunities for solitude in a wild setting. By preventing new developments such as the long-promoted access road for boat launching and a marina near Ross Dam, park leaders believed they would also help protect "the unique Ross Lake fishery as a naturally reproducing recreational resource." The decision did not necessarily prohibit motorboat use of the lower end of Ross Lake, yet for practical purposes confined the use of powerboats to the northern end of the lake near Hozomeen. Boaters could reach the lake by way of the access road from Hope, British Columbia; most used the lake for fishing. At the lower end of the lake, boaters had several options. None of them was easy. Boaters could carry their canoes or kayaks down a short, steep trail to the lake from Highway 20, rent fishing boats from the Ross Lake Resort, or make arrangements with the Seattle City Light boat to carry their craft up Diablo Lake and then have it hauled up to Ross Lake by the Ross Lake Resort truck. Congressman Meeds' dream of a lake easily accessible from Highway 20 was dead. [11]
For the rest of Ross Lake NRA, the agency proposed only modest improvements. The management plan envisioned few changes for Diablo and Gorge lakes, except for improving launching ramps on both lakes. Hozomeen would retain its status as "a quiet eddy between recreation corridors to the north and south." All management proposals would seek to ensure that it held on to its "feeling of a simpler time and place with fishing as the primary pastime." In this regard, Park Service plans called for keeping the area's facilities "semiprimitive," for boat launching and camping. Most new construction would take place on the Canadian side of the border with a new visitor center, jointly operated by the Park Service and British Columbia Parks; it would serve both visitors to the park complex and the Skagit recreation area in British Columbia. Other plans called for removing the existing amphitheater on the U.S. side because it was poorly located and moving future programs to the vicinity of the new visitor center. In addition, there would be trail construction and improvements as well as the installation of new interpretive waysides in the Hozomeen area. One proposed trail would follow the lakeshore trail linking the visitor center with the lakeside campground; another was a section of trail along the east shore of Ross Lake connecting Hozomeen with Desolation Peak and Lightning Creek.
http://www.nps.gov/noca/adhi-13.htm