Chapter Nine:
New Directions and a Second Century (1972-1990)
(continued)
A Final Development Plan For Kings Canyon
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In Kings Canyon National Park, at Cedar Grove, the
Park Service attempted during the 1970s to implement the same lessons it
was learning in the Giant Forest/Lodgepole area of Sequoia. The 1971
Master Plan for the two parks called for camping and visitor
accommodations at Cedar Grove, but offered no guidance as to appropriate
size except to note that camping would not be enlarged beyond the
existing 370 sites. In mid-1972, an internal draft statement suggested
that the area would support accommodations for up to 260 people. The
advent of NEPA mandated a fresh start with public input, however, and
this effort began during the summer of 1975, using the format developed
that same summer for use in the Giant Forest/Lodgepole area. Again, the
Service issued a planning alternatives workbook and encouraged comments.
Alternatives ranged from closing the area to the public for use as a
scientific research area, to the other extreme of intensive tourist
development. Only two of the six options called for any overnight use.
Of these one called for no more than 20 motel rooms and no more than 400
campsites while the other allowed over 160 rooms and up to 750
campsites. [11]
Compared to the Giant Forest/Lodgepole situation, the
planning effort for Kings Canyon and Cedar Grove proceeded rapidly.
Surprisingly, considering previous emotions the issue had evoked, public
interest in Kings Canyon remained muted. Largely absent from the scene
this time were the Fresno boosters who had held such high hopes for
Kings Canyon development in the 1940s and 1950s. The generation of
businessmen from the nearby San Joaquin Valley who had supported
creation of the park and demanded a resort at Cedar Grove in return had
passed. Gone were Chester Warlow and others who had dreamed of a
Yosemite-like complex and the thousands who would pass through Fresno to
reach it. The new generation of Fresnans lived in a far larger
metropolis, a self-centered one less influenced by economic developments
in the nearby mountains. Kings Canyon and its rivers meant precious
water and a precious escape from what was becoming a crowded Central
Valley. In Fresno, too, environmental and wilderness enthusiasm had
wrought its change on the population.
During the summer of 1975, most public comment at the
Cedar Grove hearings came not from outside parties hoping to develop the
area but rather from groups and individuals already using the area's
facilitiespeople who enjoyed the canyon as it was. From these
visitors came a simple message: limit development in the canyon. The
highest level of new development that most participants would support
was adding a small lodge while retaining the existing campingone
of the Service's identified options. In May 1976, the Service issued a
draft DCP for the area, supplemented by an Environmental Review.
[12] The preferred option identified in the
two documents allowed a new, twenty-room lodge but no enlargement of
camping or other visitor facilities in the canyon. Superintendent
Stanley Albright announced the plan on June 10, 1976, as well as a
comment period ending July 12. Public comment on the plan was so
positive that Albright signed it with no changes. In less than a year a
quiet resolution had been achieved, bringing an anti-climactic end to
more than three decades of bitter argument over the future of Kings
Canyon. Two years later, during the summer of 1978, Government Services,
Inc. constructed a new Cedar Grove Lodge with eighteen rental rooms
upstairs and a market and snack bar downstairs. Public comment on the
appearance of the new facility was minimal.
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