A Study of the Park and Recreation Problem of the United States

Cover

Contents

Foreword

Supplemental Foreword

Introduction

Recreational Habits and Needs

Aspects of Recreational Planning

Present Public Outdoor Recreational Facilities

Administration

Financing

Legislation

A Park and Recreational Land Plan

A Study of the Park and Recreation Problem of the United States

HISTORY OF STATE PARK LEGISLATION

Legislation dealing with the establishment, development, and operation of State parks—with a history of virtually the same length as that of national park legislation—has naturally reflected the changed, and changing concept of the scope of importance of the State recreational undertaking.

The earliest State parks, starting with the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in California, were created by individual and special legislation. Since neither the phrase nor the concept, "State park system" existed, the creation of a park almost invariably involved the concurrent establishment of some agency, usually a board or commission, to administer that park alone. Even long after many States had embarked on the creation of "systems," there were survivals of these single-park commissions, set up in law several decades previously, and they survive today in Massachusetts—perhaps the earliest State to give currency to the idea of a system—Pennsylvania and several other States. A separate commission still administers Mackinac Island State Park in Michigan. The California Redwood Park was separately administered until the State Park Commission was created in 1927; Watkins Glen and other New York State areas were individually administered under laws passed many years before, until the present system of regional park commissions was established in 1924.

The State of Massachusetts established a Board of Park Commissioners by an act passed in 1870, but this board was concerned with the ultimate Boston Metropolitan Park system rather than with a State-wide system of parks, and the present Boston Metropolitan District Commission offers the interesting anomaly of a State agency administering a metropolitan system.

We have in this early legislation—more comprehensive than anything, State or Federal, which had found its way to the statute books up to that time—many features since reflected in other park legislation, State and local. These include the "staggered" terms of office for the commissioners, special assessments against benefited real estate, and a very broad grant of police power.

The first act passed by any State creating an agency charged with administration of all State parks and related areas was apparently that of Wisconsin which created a State Park Commission in 1907.

Figure 45.—Big Trees of the Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, California

It is quite understandable that the earliest State parks were individually created by legislation. Increasingly, as State-wide administrative agencies have been established, the power of creating new parks has been handed over to them, on the reasonable assumption that an agency primarily concerned with parks would do a better job of selection than a legislature would do. Even after this came to be a generally recognized power, legislatures continued, and continue from time to time, wisely or unwisely, to pass special legislation of this sort. Minnesota, with several properties that were classed a few years ago as "city State parks" exemplified the unhappy result of this haphazard and unscientific method of selection. However, it can be matched in a number of States where the State park agency has been equally impotent in resisting local pressures or lacking in ability to say "no" to prospective donors of park lands.

Early legislative grants of authority to park boards or commissions were generally very limited in scope, and, with the exception of those States which have come into this field within the past five or six years, have evolved from the simplest grant of power to administer to a gradual extension of power to meet needs as experience indicated that needs existed.

This extension of power is perhaps best exemplified with respect to exercise of the power of eminent domain. This power, old in law in its relation to undertakings acknowledged to be publicly necessary, has been extended rather cautiously in the field of State parks and even today nearly a third of the State park agencies do not possess it.

Legislation providing for what might be called a State park survey, recognizing the need of park planning on a State-wide scale, dated from an act of the Wisconsin legislature passed in 1907 which made possible a study by John Nolen in 1909. General authorizations to investigate prospective or desirable park areas or to make State studies have gradually found their way into the park laws of other States, though the Olmsted survey of California in 1928 was the result of a special legislative authorization and appropriation, as was the Iowa conservation study of Jacob L. Crane, Jr., carried on in 1931 and 1932.

The trend toward creation of departments of conservation, or, as Georgia and California call them, natural resources, or toward a consolidation of more than one conservation activity under a single person or group, has gained considerable momentum in the last decade. During the past five or six years there has been an increasing tendency also, in those States which started by placing parks under the State forestry authority, to give them coordinate status with forestry. Minnesota, Georgia, Tennessee, and more recently Alabama, are among the States which exemplify this trend. A similar trend toward coordinate status, from one of subordination to the fish and game department, is exemplified in Missouri.

State park legislation in those States new in the field has recently tended to tie in with more or less comprehensive legislation affecting the whole conservation field. Cases in point are Tennessee and Georgia. Until its 1937 act was passed, the latter had no park legislation.

Figure 46. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

An interesting trend in relationships between park authorities and other State agencies is indicated by legislation, most of it approved during the past decade, which authorizes State highway departments to construct roads to and in State park areas, using highway rather than park funds. This authorization is, of course, highly desirable so long as decision as to location and character remains with the park authority.

A related trend is that which tends to bring counties and cities into a cooperative relationship with the State, either for actual administration of parks which mainly benefit local populations, or as contributors to the support of parks so located.

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Last Modified: Mon, Aug 9 2004 10:00:00 pm PDT
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