| |
New Visitor Facilities
| |
|
|
New visitor facilities encourage pedestrian use of Giant Forest.
© NPS photo Steve Collector.
|
|
|
|
Overview
Several of the long-term goals defined in the 1980 Development Concept Plan
(DCP) approved for Giant Forest related to redefining visitor use and
improving visitor experience. Giant Forest would become a day-use area only,
with food service and overnight facilities relocated outside the grove.
Access to Giant Forest’s best-known features would be limited to shuttle
service or walking. No private automobiles would be allowed to park in the
grove, and visitor parking would be consolidated into a single parking
structure at the Wolverton corrals. Dispersed, non-vehicular exploration of
Giant Forest would be encouraged in order to provide visitors with
significant opportunities to interact with giant sequoias on foot rather than
from vehicles.
Upon a more detailed examination of the cost of
erecting a large (1,700 vehicle) parking structure at Wolverton, it became
evident that a single large parking structure from which a free shuttle would
provide access to key features in Giant Forest would be prohibitively
expensive. In 1995, the Park Service invited public comment on an Interim
Management Plan that explored other alternatives for day use of the grove.
This plan was entitled "interim" because it recognized that the 1980
Development Concept Plan remains the park’s long-term goal, but alternatives
to the parking structure and shuttle system were necessary to carry Giant
Forest through the next 10 to 20 years. During this time, a review of the
park’s long-term goals for all areas would be undertaken.
The final
Interim Management Plan was issued in 1996 and called for focusing visitor
experience in three areas:
- Giant Forest Center, comprised of the
Giant Forest Museum, Beetle Rock Education Center, and a connecting nature
trail system leading to Round Meadow and Hazelwood.
- The General
Sherman Tree and adjoining trails.
- Moro Rock and Crescent Meadow, to
be accessible during peak season by shuttle system, by bicycle, or on foot
only.
An additional visitor focus site would be created in the form of
the Pinewood picnic area, but would emphasize recreational picnicking rather
than park features.
Parking would be retained within the grove
primarily in three reconstructed parking lots in Upper and Lower Kaweah and
the Wolverton service yard. Small parking areas accessible to visitors with
disabilities would be constructed near the Giant Forest museum, the Round
Meadow area, and the Sherman Tree. A shuttle system would be implemented to
allow overnight visitors at Wuksachi Village and Lodgepole to visit Giant
Forest without bringing their vehicles to the grove, and to allow day users
parked at Wolverton or the Museum to connect to other features of the grove.
The trail system throughout the grove would be improved and tied in to new
patterns of parking.
Interpretive services and opportunities in
Giant Forest would be improved by installing orientation exhibits, developing
a museum and visitor center in the historic Giant Forest market building,
enhancing and enlarging the self-guiding trail system, and installing an
augmented system of wayside exhibits.
The general principles for
siting and design of the new visitor facilities were to constrain new
construction to the footprint of existing disturbance, limit future impacts
of human use through appropriate facility design, and to maintain a national
park character.
The Giant Forest restoration project - including the
construction to replace facilities in the Wuksachi area, the removal of
development from Giant Forest, ecological restoration, and development of new
visitor facilities - has been the top construction funding priority in the
National Park Service for over a decade.
These new facilities, which opened between 2001 and 2005, are described
in more detail in the following sections.
Note: Files in PDF format
can be opened with the freely available
Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®.
|
|
