| North Cascades |
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Chapter 2:
ADMINISTRATION
The North Cascades Act created a new park complex in October 1968, but the Park Service did not take over management of the region until January 1, 1969. The Park Service agreed to this date with the Forest Service to bring about an orderly transfer of national forest lands, records, and facilities for the new national park. The memorandum of agreement between the agencies, once engaged in a bitter dispute over the proposed park, worked effectively and gave the Park Service time to coordinate interim management of the region with the Forest Service for such things as recreation and firefighting, and set up its own operations. [1]
Two superintendents, Roger J. Contor and Lowell White, would guide the new park area through its first ten years. Roger Contor started as the first superintendent of North Cascades National Park in October 1968. Contor's background in wildlife biology, his experience working in natural area parks, and developing resource management plans and wilderness recommendations helped set the tone and direction for the park's management. Not yet forty years old and a fourteen-year veteran of the Park Service, Contor came to the park complex from Canyonlands National Park in Utah, where he was assistant superintendent. He considered the appointment the high point of his career. Prior to assuming his new job, Contor worked for several months in the Park Service's field office in Seattle, Washington, set up during the last stages of the park's establishment to aid Senator Jackson's legislative staff, conduct field work, and plan and promote the proposed park. His experience here would give him valuable insight into the new area's issues and needs.
Contor and other Park Service officials worked quickly to put the new park's administration into order in the months following establishment. They conceived of the park complex being managed as an interrelated whole with one superintendent and his staff, two districts -- the Skagit and Stehekin -- run by district managers who reported to the superintendent. (The Park Service borrowed this district manager concept from the Forest Service, but it had also been experimented with at Glacier National Park in the 1950s.) The agency also established the park's headquarters at Sedro Woolley, the Skagit District office at Marblemount, and the Stehekin District office at Chelan. By July 1969, the park's staff consisted of seven permanent and forty seasonal employees; the former were composed of career Park Service as well as former Forest Service employees, and the latter, maintenance workers and rangers, were drawn primarily from local communities. [2]
Selecting former Forest Service workers and local residents as employees of the new park complex served practical as well as political ends. Despite participating in field reconnaissance during the North Cascades Study Team's survey of the region and subsequent field work, the park managers knew little about the area under their care, and they gladly welcomed the national forest employees and relied on their experience in the early stages of management. In fact, two former Forest Service employees became the park's first acting district rangers. [3] On the other hand, hiring from local communities demonstrated the Park Service's interest in calming fears that a new park would destroy the local economy. It also demonstrated the agency's interest in striking up good relations with its new neighbors.
Public relations played a significant role in the park's early management. The park campaign left many communities, businesses, and residents surrounding the North Cascades resentful, and some fearful of how the new parkland would affect them. Smoothing over relations was important then to the new park's success, since park managers would be replacing familiar faces in Forest Service uniforms and living among and working with those who may have opposed the park or, at the very least, were leery of the Park Service's new regulations and its overall management mission. Furthermore, public relations were important to Senator Henry Jackson and Representative Lloyd Meeds. These were the politicians responsible for bringing the park to Washington; it lay within their districts, and they had a vested interest in its success.
In late 1968 and 1969, Jackson and Meeds conducted what amounted to publicity tours with Park Service and Forest Service officials in tow, holding public meetings with community leaders in Bellingham, Sedro Woolley, Wenatchee, and Chelan. The meetings enabled the politicians and agency representatives to show how the Forest Service and Park Service had put aside their differences and were now cooperating to coordinate the management of the northern Cascades. The meetings also provided a venue for elected as well as federal officials to mend relations with locals, discuss national park management philosophies and plans, and assure them that the new park would be to their benefit -- no matter what horror stories they may have heard from park opponents, including the Forest Service, during the heated moments of the park campaign.
Economic incentives helped most to smooth relations. Meeds and Jackson stressed the advantages communities would experience as service centers for tourists and park administrators. But gateway communities only stood to gain from the new park, and the influence of a powerful senator like Jackson, if they worked to support rather than oppose it. Thus, at Jackson's recommendation, park advisory committees formed in Skagit and Chelan counties to help "coordinate county and community cooperation" with the new park's personnel and capitalize on the tourism the parkland would bring to their regions, especially once Highway 20 opened and the park was developed for visitors. Ironically, many of the park's opponents turned into some of its biggest boosters. "There is no longer a controversy," stated Dave G. McIntyre, chairman of the Skagit Valley Advisory Board. "North Cascades Park is here and we all know it's here to stay. For those of us who might have questioned the idea in the beginning it behooves us to work now for its full development....In a matter of a few years we will be showing the nation one of its most beautiful areas." [4]
The spoils of the park campaign, one might argue, went to the losers rather than the victors. Placing Park Service offices in Chelan, Stehekin, Marblemount, and Sedro Woolley served both practical as well as political purposes. In one respect, the selection of these sites represented a changing of the guard, from Forest Service to Park Service. In another, they reflected Jackson's influence, promises made or implied to local communities about their welfare after the park battle had ended. The location of Park Service offices on the west side of the park complex exemplifies this best. Neither of them lies within the complex's boundaries. The Marblemount Ranger Station was a logical place to locate a park office, for it was situated at the confluence of the Skagit and Cascade rivers, the two entryways by road into Ross Lake recreation area and the park. The ranger station, however, belonged to the Mount Baker National Forest, and the Forest Service did not necessarily have to turn it over to the Park Service, Roger Contor recalled, but they did at Jackson's request.
The location of the park complex's headquarters aroused more interest among the communities in the Skagit Valley. Marblemount, Concrete, and Sedro Woolley vied for the honor and related commercial benefits. Concrete, for example, wiped away sixty years of cement dust after the Lone Star Cement Company phased out its operations and launched a beautification campaign, aimed partially at attracting the federal government as one of the town's new employers. Community leaders portrayed Concrete as the "natural" location for the park headquarters, close to the park but with enough services to support the Park Service operation. [5]
Similarly, Sedro Woolley wanted to be the park's permanent headquarters and boosted itself in a similar light but with far more success. The Northern State Hospital was being shut down, a major source of revenue, it seems, for the city and the park headquarters might fill the void. The signs that the Park Service would choose Sedro Woolley were good. In 1968, the Park Service made Sedro Woolley the new park's temporary headquarters. As Superintendent Contor noted, the city was the "best immediate compromise" in the agency's search for an "'ideal' headquarters location." It was the largest city near the park, accessible year round, and close to major highways. In addition, Sedro Woolley was conveniently situated near sources of supplies, repairs, and services. Moreover, at some sixty miles from the park complex, it was far enough from any one section of the park "so that all districts receive equal attention." Politics also worked in Sedro Woolley's favor. The city had the support of Governor Daniel J. Evans and Senator Jackson. The city commanded their attention, it seems, not only because of the hospital's closure, but also because the Skagit Corporation, the area's largest industry, was located there. Thus, in December 1970, Senator Jackson and Congressman Meeds informed Mayor William O. Pearson (who had vehemently opposed the park) that Sedro Woolley had been chosen as the park's permanent headquarters.
Governor Daniel J. Evans also participated in the healing process after the park's establishment. Evans decided that, despite the divisive nature of the park campaign, the state would back the new park and seek to enhance its management as well as the entire region around it. To this end, he created the North Cascades Reconnaissance Task Force in December 1968. The task force served as a forum for the future development and protection of the North Cascades, especially the access corridors to the new national park and recreation areas. In this respect, it offered a common ground for government agencies -- federal, state, and county -- where plans could be addressed and discussed, and where conflicts could be aired and hopefully resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Moreover, the task force illustrates the kind of complex management environment Park Service officials worked within; it suggests the diversity of management concerns and interest in the new parkland which park managers encountered, and stood to benefit from, as they began to shape the park complex. One might think of it as Washington State's version of the United Nations for the management of the North Cascades. [6]
http://www.nps.gov/noca/adhi-2.htm