NPS Family Tree MENU Contents Foreword Introduction Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Acknowledgements Abbreviations		Family Tree of the National Park System Part IV part IV GROWTH OF THE NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM 1933-1964 RECREATION AREAS, 1933 - 1964 Between 1933 and 1964 important new terms were added to the National Park Service lexicon—"recreation," "land planning" and "state cooperation." The Service responded to the emerging social and economic forces of the New Deal era, among other ways, by greatly expanding its cooperative relationships with the States, securing enactment of the comprehensive Park, Parkway and Recreation Area Study Act of 1936, and initiating four new types of Federal park areas — National Parkways, National Recreation Areas, National Seashores and Recreational Demonstration Areas. By the end of this period fifteen such areas had been authorized or established under the administration of the National Park Service. Because they had much in common, they were collectively designated Recreation Areas in the Reorganization of 1964. National Parkways: 1933, June 16 Blue Ridge, Va.-N.C. 1934, June 19 Natchez Trace, Miss.-Tenn.-Ala. 1949, Aug. 17 Suitland, D.C.-Md. 1950, Aug. 3 Baltimore-Washington, Md. Recreational Demonstration Areas: 1936, Nov. 14 Catoctin Mountain Prk, Md. 1936, Nov. 14 Prince William Forest Park, Va. Reservoir-related Recreation Areas: 1936, Oct. 13 Lake Mead, Ariz.-Nev. 1946, Dec. 18 Coulee Dam, Wash. 1952, June 27 Shadow Mountain, Colo. 1958, April 18 Glen Canyon, Ariz.-Utah 1962, May 31 Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity, Calif. National Seashores: 1937, Aug. 17 Cape Hatteras, N.C. 1961, Aug. 7 Cape Cod, Mass. 1962, Sept. 13 Point Reyes, Calif. 1962, Sept. 28 Padre Island, Texas The origin of Recreation Areas as a category in the National Park System stemmed in important part from widened responsibilities assigned to the Service beginning in the 1930's. A central feature of these new responsibilities was administration of hundreds of CCC camps located in State Parks. The National Park Service had actively encouraged the state park movement ever since Stephen Tyng Mather helped organize the National Conference on State Parks at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1921. It was natural for the Service to be asked to assume national direction of Emergency Conservation Work in state parks when that program was launched in 1933. Fortunately for the Service an exceptional administrator, Conrad L. Wirth, was available to lead this complex nationwide program. It was a large and dynamic undertaking, at its peak involving administration of 482 CCC camps allotted to state parks employing almost 100,000 enrollees on work projects guided by a technical and professional staff numbering several thousand. As Freeman Tilden observes in his valuable book, The State Parks: Their Meaning in American Life, published in 1962, the fruits of CCC work are still an admired feature of state parks throughout the United States. As this program got under way it became painfully evident that in the 1930's most states lacked any kind of comprehensive plans for state park systems. Furthermore, the interrelationship of parks, parkways, and recreational areas was even less understood. Against this background the Service sought comprehensive new land planning legislation. The result was the Park, Parkway and Recreation Area Study Act of 1936. Its purpose was to enable the Service, working with others, to plan coordinated and adequate park, parkway and recreational area facilities at federal, state and local levels throughout the country. In 1941 the Service published its first comprehensive report, A Study of the Park and Recreation Problem in the United States, a careful review of the whole problem of recreation and of national, state, county, and municipal parks in the United States. Interrupted by World War II, Director Wirth arranged for these studies to be resumed with the inception of Mission 66, and a second comprehensive report was published in 1964 entitled Parks for America, A Survey of Park and Related Resources in the Fifty States and a Preliminary Plan. Numerous land planning studies of individual areas, river basins, and regions accompanied and supported these comprehensive reports. The four new types of Federal Recreation Areas added to the System between 1933 and 1964 were generally consistent with recommendations in these studies. Descriptions of these types follow: National Parkways. The modern parkway, fruit of the automobile age, appears to have its origins in the Westchester County Parkways, New York, built between 1913 and 1930. At first, Congress also applied the idea locally — in the District of Columbia — but later undertook projects more clearly national in scope. Congress authorized its first parkway project in 1913, the four-mile Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, to connect Potomac Park with Rock Creek Park and the Zoological Park. In 1928, Congress authorized the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway to link the District of Columbia with Mount Vernon in commemoration of the bicentennial of Washington's birth. This project fulfilled at long last an idea started in 1886 among a group of Alexandria citizens. In 1930 this highway was renamed the George Washington Memorial Parkway, and enlarged in concept to extend from Mount Vernon all the way to Great Falls in Virginia, and from Fort Washington to Great Falls in Maryland (Alexandria and the District of Columbia excepted). One leg of this parkway network — the one that links Mount Vernon to the District — has been completed for its entire length and portions of two of the other three legs constructed. The George Washington Memorial Parkway was added to the National Park System in the Reorganization of 1933, the first Recreation Area to be incorporated into the System. During World War II Congress extended the National Capital parkway network by authorizing the Suitland Parkway to provide an access road to Andrews Air Force Base, and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, whose initial unit provided access to Fort George G. Meade. The first was added to the National Park System in 1949 and the second in 1950. With these projects National Park Service responsibility for parkways in the vicinity of the National Capital reached its present limits. The Colonial Parkway in Virginia was the first authorized by Congress beyond the District of Columbia vicinity. It provided a landscaped 23-mile roadway link between Jamestown Island, Colonial Williamsburg, and Yorktown Battlefield as part of Colonial National Monument, authorized in 1930. The National Park Service now considers Colonial Parkway an integral part of Colonial National Historical Park rather than a separate area. A new era for National Parkways began with authorization of the Blue Ridge and Natchez Trace Parkways during the 1930's. These were not fairly short county or metropolitan parkways serving a variety of local and national traffic but protected recreational roadways traversing hundreds of miles of scenic and historic rural landscape. These different National Parkways started out as public works projects during the New Deal and were transformed into units of the National Park System. The Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park served as a prototype for the Blue Ridge Parkway. President Herbert Hoover conceived the idea of the Skyline Drive during vacations at his camp on the Rapidan. It was planned in 1931 and begun as a relief project in 1932. Following President Roosevelt's election Congress quickly enacted the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 to stimulate the economy. Among other provisions it authorized the Public Works Administrator, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, to prepare a comprehensive program of public works including the construction, repair, and improvement of public highways and parkways. Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, aided by others, seized the opportunity to propose the construction of a scenic roadway linking Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks as a public works project. President Roosevelt and Secretary Ickes embraced this proposal provided the states donated the rights-of-way. They agreed to do so and on December 19, 1933, the National Park Service received an initial allotment of four million dollars to start the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was jointly planned by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Public Roads. Congress formally added the Blue Ridge Parkway to the National Park System in 1936. The Blue Ridge Parkway is considered by many to be a Service triumph in parkway design, providing the motorist with a serene environment conducive to leisurely travel and enjoyment while affording him many insights into the beauty, history, and culture of the Southern Highlands. The 469-mile parkway, sometimes called a grand balcony, alternates sweeping views of mountain and valley with intimate glimpses of the fauna and flora of the Blue Ridge and close-up views of typical mountain structures, like Mabry's Mill, built of logs by pioneers and still operating. Begun in 1933 and well on its way toward completion in 1964, the Blue Ridge Parkway is the best known and most heavily used Recreation Area established by the Service during this period. The Natchez Trace Parkway is the second major National Parkway, a projected 450-mile roadway through a protected zone of forest, meadow, and field which generally follows the route of the historic Natchez Trace from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi. The Old Natchez Trace was once an Indian path, then a wilderness road, and finally from 1800 to 1830 a highway binding the old Southwest to the Union. In 1934 Congress authorized a survey of the Old Indian Trail known as the Natchez Trace for the purpose of constructing a national road on this route to be known as the Natchez Trace Parkway. The survey was completed the next year and in 1938 construction was authorized. By 1964 about half the parkway had been completed linking many historic and natural features including Mount Locust, the earliest inn on the Trace, Emerald Mound, one of the largest Indian ceremonial structures in the United States, Chickasaw Village and Bynum Mounds in Mississippi, and Colbert's Ferry and Metal Ford in Tennessee. Projects for additional parkways proliferated during the 1930's and many were revived after World War II. Among proposals seriously advanced, some of which were carefully studied were: Extensions of the Blue Ridge Parkway, northward to Maine and southward to Georgia. Extensions of George Washington Memorial Parkway, northward for length of C&O Canal and southward to Wakefield and Williamsburg. Washington, D. C. to Gettysburg Parkway. Mississippi River Parkway. Oglethorpe National Trail and Parkway. In 1964 the Recreation Advisory Council, established by Executive Order 11017, recommended that a national program of scenic roads and parkways be developed. Following President Johnson's Message to Congress on Natural Beauty in February 1965, such a program was prepared by the Department of Commerce entitled A proposed program for roads and parkways. It contemplated a $4 billion dollar program between 1966 and 1976. However, the Viet Nam war intervened and no new National Parkways have been authorized in recent years. With deepening national concern for the quality of our environment, in which proliferating automobiles appear to pose more problems than solutions, it seems likely the parkway branch of the Family Tree will remain much as it is for sometime to come. It is revealing to recall that the Wilderness Society was organized in 1935 partly to protest such crest-of-the-ridge roadways as the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Park way, which its members viewed as intolerable intrusions into unspoiled wilderness. Only a small voice in 1935, the Wilderness Society grew in a single generation to become the single most influential citizen voice among many others behind the Wilderness Act of 1964 which, among other provisions, is intended to keep wilderness roadless. Recreational Demonstration Areas. Like the Blue Ridge Parkway, two other Recreation Areas in today's National Park System trace their origin back to the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 — Catoctin Mountain Park, Maryland, and Prince William Forest Park, Virginia. Among many other features, the National Industrial Recovery Act authorized federal purchases of land considered submarginal for farming but valuable for recreation purposes. The land purchases were made initially by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, but later transferred to the Resettlement Administration so the farmers could be resettled, and then, in 1936, turned over to the National Park Service as Recreational Demonstration Projects. By 1936, 46 projects containing 397,000 acres had been set up in 24 different states, mostly near metropolitan centers, to provide outdoor recreation for people from crowded cities. It was intended from the beginning that most of these projects would be turned over to states and cities for operation and in 1942 Congress provided the necessary authority. By 1946 most of the conveyances had been completed. The National Park Service retained Catoctin Mountain Park, site of Camp David, but 4,500 of its acres were transferred to Maryland. Prince William Forest Park (formerly Chopawamsic) was retained as a unit administrated by National Capital Parks. Some recreational demonstration lands were also added to Acadia, Shenandoah, White Sands, and Hopewell Village. Now largely forgotten, recreational demonstration projects left several permanent marks on the National Park System and illustrated again the ability of the Service to help meet changing social and economic conditions in the nation. Reservoir-related Recreation Areas. Five National Recreation Areas were added to the System between 1933 and 1964. This new type of federal park area grew out of large scale reclamation projects like Hoover Dam and multi purpose river basin development programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority which began in the 1930's and spread to river valleys in all parts of the country after World War II. Lake Mead was the first National Recreation Area. The Boulder Canyon Project Act, passed in 1928, authorized the Bureau of Reclamation to construct Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Work began in 1931 and the dam, highest in the Western Hemisphere, was completed in 1935. The next year, under provisions of an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation, the National Park Service assumed responsibility for all recreational activities at Lake Mead. These were to become extensive, for Lake Mead is 115 miles long with 550 miles of shoreline, several ancient Indian sites, much natural history, and numerous facilities for camping, boating, swimming, and fishing. By 1952 Davis Dam had been built downstream, impounding 67-mile Lake Mohave whose upper waters lapped the foot of Hoover Dam. The National Park Service accepted responsibility for recreational activities around Lake Mohave as part of the Lake Mend National Recreation Area. The great size and importance of this combined recreational complex is easily under-estimated by persons who have not seen it. This one National Recreation Area contains 1,913,816 acres, making it roughly the size of Mount McKinley National Park or Death Valley National Monument. On October 8, 1964, Lake Mead was formally established as a National Recreation Area by Act of Congress. Coulee Dam National Recreation Area was established in 1946, under an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation patterned after Lake Mead. Construction of Grand Coulee Dam began in 1933 and the dam went into operation in 1941. It impounds a huge body of water named Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake, 151 miles long with 660 miles of shoreline. The National Park Service has developed recreation facilities for camping, boating, swimming, and fishing at 35 different locations around the Lake. Coulee Dam is also well known for its visual and educational interest — the immense dam, long views across blue water and rolling hills, unusual geological features, and a variety of plants and animals, all in an historic context of Indians, trappers, soldiers, and pioneers. Although Millerton Lake, California, Lake Texoma, Oklahoma-Texas, and the north unit of Flaming Gorge, Utah-Wyoming were administered by the Service for a time, the first was subsequently turned over to the State of California, the second to the Army Corps of Engineers, and the last to the Forest Service. Three more National Recreation Areas established during the 1950's are still in the National Park System today. Shadow Mountain, adjoining the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, embraces the recreational features of Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain Lake, two units of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. Glen Canyon was established in 1958 to provide for recreational activities on Lake Powell formed behind Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River, one of the highest dams in the world. Both these areas are administered by the Service pursuant to agreements with the Bureau of Reclamation. The Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area, California, was established by Act of Congress in 1962. The National Park Service, however, administers the recreational facilities only at Whiskeytown Reservoir, while the Forest Service takes care of similar, more extensive facilities at Shasta and Trinity. By 1964, application of the National Recreation Area concept to major impoundments behind Federal dams, whether constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation or the Corps of Engineers, appeared to be well accepted by Congress. Eight more reservations of this type were authorized as additions to the National Park System between 1964 and 1972. National Seashores. The National Park Service made its first seashore recreation survey in the mid-1930's. It resulted in a recommendation that 12 major stretches of unspoiled Atlantic and Gulf Coast shoreline, with 437 miles of beach, be preserved as national areas. World War II intervened and by 1954 only one of the 12 proposed areas had been authorized and acquired — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, North Carolina. All the others save one — Cape Cod — had long since gone into private and commercial development. Seashore studies were resumed by the Service in the mid-1950's through the generous support of private donors. These new shoreline surveys resulted in several major reports including Our Vanishing Shoreline (1955); A Report on the Seashore Recreation Survey of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts (1955); Our Fourth Shore, Great Lakes Shoreline Recreation Area Survey (1959); and Pacific Coast Recreation Area Survey (1959). Detailed studies of individual projects were also prepared as a part of the Service's continuing efforts for shoreline conservation. By 1972 fruits of this program included eight National Seashores and four National Lakeshores of which the first four were authorized before 1964. Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, was authorized as the first National Seashore by Congress in 1937. Land acquisition lagged, however, until after World War II. Then two generous benefactors, the Old Dominion Foundation, established by Mr. Paul Mellon, and the Avalon Foundation, created by Mrs. Ailsa Mellon Bruce, made substantial and equal grants to the National Park Service which, matched by the State of North Carolina, made acquisition of Cape Hatteras possible. Cape Hatteras protects almost 100 miles of barrier islands and beach along the North Carolina coast. The National Seashore combines preservation of unspoiled natural and historical areas with provision, at suitable locations, for beachcombing, surf bathing, swimming at protected beaches, surf and sport fishing, bird-watching and nature study, and visits to such historic structures as Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the remains of shipwrecks still buried in the sand. Cape Hatteras was a pioneering example of a new type of area in the National Park System. Cape Cod National Seashore, authorized in 1961, followed Cape Hatteras into the System. But it was the first of the great series of eleven post-World War II seashores and lakeshores approved by Congress in the last dozen years. It was the first large recreational or natural area for which Congress at the very outset authorized use of appropriated funds for land acquisition. An unusual provision of the Cape Cod act also authorized the Secretary of the Interior to suspend exercising the power of eminent domain to acquire private improved property within seashore boundaries as long as the town involved adopted and retained zoning regulations satisfactory to him. This provision resolved serious problems of conflict between long-settled private owners, the historic towns, and the Federal Government and helped stabilize the landscape without the forced resettlement of numerous families. It also created an important precedent for parallel provisions in legislation authorizing other national seashores and lakeshores where Federal, State, local, and private property interests required similar reconciliation. This National Seashore protects the great outer arm of Cape Cod, known to mariners from the days of the explorers and Pilgrims. Thoreau named it the Great Beach and said "A man may stand there and put all America behind him." For three centuries, Cape Cod, with its magnificent shoreline, was spared the great industrial buildup of our eastern coast. Combined with a seafaring way of life and a proud heritage, this isolation produced a memorable scene: great sand dunes, salt and fresh water marshes, unique villages, weathered gray cottages, fishing wharves, windmills, lighthouses, and an abundance of shore birds, migratory waterfowl, and other natural and historic features. Real estate subdivisions and commercial development threatened Cape Cod in the late 1950's, and Congress authorized permanent protection of some 27,000 acres of seashore and dune lands embraced in a narrow strip almost 40 miles long, from Provincetown to Chatham. The National Seashore concept reached the Pacific Coast in 1962 with authorization of Point Reyes, California, embracing more than forty miles of shoreline including historic Drakes Bay, Tomales Point, and Point Reyes itself. Acquisition of lands is still in progress. Protection of this immensely important and relatively unspoiled shoreline resource, only an hour's drive northward from Golden Gate, is the objective and obligation of the National Park Service under the 1962 act. The National Seashore concept reached the Gulf Coast in 1962 also with authorization of Padre Island, Texas. This great shore island stretches for 113 miles along the Texas coast from Corpus Christi on the north almost to Mexico on the south, and varies in width from a few hundred yards to about three miles. There is some private development at each end of the island. The National Seashore boundaries encompass the undeveloped central part of the island, over eighty miles long. Padre Island is a textbook example of a barrier island built by wave action and crowned by wind-formed dunes. Continue >>>
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