Chapter Seven:
Two Battles for Kings Canyon (1931-1947)
(continued)
The Forest Service in Kings Canyon
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The Forest Service watched the controversy with
considerable but detached interest. Perhaps in the minds of forestry
officials the entire conflict was a tempest in a teapot, particularly
that between tourism and reclamation proponents. The philosophy and
policy of multiple use would surely allow some combination of these
features to be established. Accordingly, the Forest Service regional
office began planning to develop recreation facilities along both the
South and Middle forks of the Kings River regardless of whether dams and
reservoirs were to be established. The key to any comprehensive
development was Cedar Grove. Here the Forest Service intended to build a
grand resort complex which would cater to the recreation desires of a
broad cross section of the population. Tehipite Valley was to be
approached by road for possible later development.
The earliest planning efforts culminated with a
lengthy document prepared by Forest Service landscape architect George
Gibbs. His plan proposed an enormous infrastructure, so large in fact
that his supervisor angrily rejected the report and forced Gibbs to redo
it. That first report called for camping facilities for more than 6,000
people; up to six fairly large hotels and numerous other structures;
access roads from the west, south, and over the high Sierra from the
east; and even an airstrip. His second report completed one year later
reduced the camping capacity and road plans, particularly eliminating
the trans-Sierra component. Nevertheless, this plan too apparently was
beyond the immediate designs or desires of Gibbs' supervisors. [13]
The Forest Service, like the Park Service, was much
affected by pressure groups, persuasive popular movements, and
infiltration by proponents of different conservation strategies and
philosophies. All of these had combined by the 1930s to create a Forest
Service anxious to please both development and preservation interests.
While the Forest Service has often been accused of catering only to
resource developers and users, they have long responded to groups like
the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society. Hence, despite the magnitude
of the Cedar Grove plans, even after Gibbs' proposals were scaled down,
the 1935 master plan of Sequoia National Forest also called for a
"primitive area" including the upper canyon of the South Fork from the
Roaring River eastward. It also suggested eventual inclusion of the
entire Middle Fork area. This area was to be closed to roads and summer
homes and grazing was to be halted. The only development in the area
would be an expanded trail network, principally for hikers. [14] How long this novel idea had been brewing
and its exact relationship to the almost concurrent Interior Department
proposal for a wilderness park may never be known. What is clear,
however, was the waxing power of the preservation lobby on the national
scene and in the southern Sierra.
While debate continued on the nature and magnitude of
development, the Forest Service, in cooperation with the state of
California, set out in 1933 to build a spectacular mountain road from
General Grant National Park to Cedar Grove, a distance of some thirty
miles. Not until 1939 was the project complete. Meanwhile, in Kings
Canyon itself, beginning in 1937, four large and comfortable campgrounds
with a combined capacity of 335 sites were built near a tiny existing
ranger station. However, plans for Cedar Grove were delayed as the
Forest Service cautiously watched the intensifying controversy. Not only
the threat of inundation but the possible loss of the area to the Park
Service made this a delicate arena in which to spend limited monies and
manpower. And that possibility appeared to be growing ever stronger as
the decade waned. Meanwhile, road plans for Tehipite Valley foundered
after being incorporated into the Sierra Way proposal in time for that
entire road project to collapse. [15]
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