Lake Roosevelt Administrative History

National Park Service Involvement in Reservoir Recreation Planning

Beginning in the 1920s, the National Park Service played a leading role in recreational planning and development for state and local parks, many of which were later turned over to the states to manage. Because of the agency's experience with park planning during the 1930s, it often served as a consultant to new state park and recreation systems. [13]

In 1936, an important piece of legislation codified the cooperative relationship the Park Service had been enjoying with state parks informally since 1921 and through Emergency Conservation Work since 1933. The Park, Parkway, and Recreation Study Act of 1936 extended the Park Service's role in planning recreational areas and facilities at federal, state, and local levels throughout the country. As directed by the 1936 act, the Park Service in 1941 published a comprehensive study of public outdoor recreational facilities that outlined future needs for the nation, excluding areas already being managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This plan was funded by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) emergency conservation work appropriations, and it summarized the philosophy of New Deal recreational planning. The study noted the need for coordination among the federal agencies dealing with recreation and asserted that the Park Service was the logical agency to oversee the work. Four new kinds of national parks were being established or planned: national recreation areas, recreation demonstration areas ("submarginal lands" converted to recreational use, generally turned over to state or highway departments after development), national parkways, and national seashores. The 1936 act allowed the Park Service to plan for recreational uses of public lands in new areas such as these. [14]

The development of recreation facilities by the Park Service outside the traditional national parks became increasingly important to the agency in the 1930s. As the 1941 Park Service report on the nation's recreation facilities commented, "Artificial bodies of water in interesting settings, and man's ingenuity in creating them, have strong recreational appeal." Purists criticized Park Service involvement with recreational areas as a lowering of agency standards; they were uneasy about the consolidation of state and national park planning. Some also found it ironic that the Park Service was administering recreation at certain reservoirs while actively fighting dam proposals in areas where dams threatened national parks and monuments. The Park Service sidestepped the inherent contradictions in its actions by launching a new recreational program centered on large reservoirs. Some saw this expansion of recreational opportunities as a good way to relieve visitation pressure on the traditional national parks. [15]

The first recreational planning by the Park Service done in cooperation with Reclamation was the planning for Lake Mead, the reservoir created in Nevada and Arizona by Boulder Dam. In 1936, shortly after the dam was completed, Reclamation entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Park Service to create the Boulder Dam Recreational Area, the country's first NRA. The Park Service was also involved with recreational planning for reservoirs in the Colorado River basin and in other areas in the early 1940s. Between 1933 and 1964, five reservoir-based NRAs were added to the National Park System, including Boulder Dam (renamed Lake Mead in 1947) and Coulee Dam. The emphasis at these NRAs was on recreation, and consumptive use of park resources such as mining, hunting, and grazing were permitted. In 1997, even after some NRAs had been turned over to other agencies, the Park Service was managing twelve NRAs centered on large reservoirs. The reservoirs that the Park Service continued to manage, including Lake Roosevelt, were believed to have national rather than state or local significance. [16]

Riding a surfboard on the rising waters behind Grand Coulee Dam, July 31, 1940. Photo courtesy of Grant County Historical Society and Museum, BOR Collection.

Newton Drury, National Park Service Director from 1940-1951, believed that national parks should be limited to outstanding scenic landscapes; he was less than enthusiastic about the Park Service assuming responsibility for managing recreation on artificial lakes. He did not object to Lake Mead or Lake Roosevelt, though, because he felt the size of those two reservoirs made them significant to the nation as a whole. Just as World War II was ending, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Michael Straus asked Drury to examine the possibilities for Park Service management of smaller reservoirs expected to be created by future Reclamation dams. Drury openly objected to this concept, and in a 1952 speech he said that reservoirs like Lake Mead inevitably became dominated by local sportsmen and business interests, making them "local romping grounds." [17] Drury was overruled, however, by Straus and by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. Ickes was attracted by the increased appropriations such recreation areas might bring the Park Service, and he also felt that NRAs would reduce the pressure on the system's other units. He and Straus felt Drury was attempting to back off from a serious responsibility of the Park Service and to retreat from the conflicts involved in recreation management. [18]

In the early 1940s, Park Service employees debated among themselves the merits of their agency's administration of Lake Roosevelt. Ernest Davidson, Regional Landscape Architect, for example, did not believe that the reservoir possessed national recreational significance. He argued that many natural lakes in the Spokane area were not being used to capacity and that Lake Roosevelt had much less recreational potential than Lake Mead. LARO's first Superintendent Claude Greider, on the other hand, remained "quite enthusiastic" about the possibilities of the area. He commented that the ultimate recreational use of the area was unknown, so planning should emphasize flexible development. [19]