WHAT COVERS 13 MILLION ACRES, SLEEPS 60 MILLION PEOPLE AND DESPERATELY NEEDS MONEY?

The answer is America's state parks.

Every year the crowds get bigger and the budgets get tighter. States are finding private financing to take up the slack.

By Hoyt Gimlin

America's great summertime pursuit of recreation pushed attendance at state parks above 700 million this year, higher than ever before. That single statistic speaks volumes. The 5,300 state-operated parks and related facilities draw more than twice as many visitors as national parks, which tend to be far bigger, better known and stronger in public support.

Poor cousins though they may be, the park systems run by the 50 states nevertheless offer beaches and wilderness, military outposts and lighthouses, deserts and mountains, places for hiking, camping, fishing, rafting, skiing and golfing. There are attractions for the history-minded, the gem collector and the wilderness explorer. Possibly the world's biggest tree towers above the earth at Humboldt Redwoods State Park in Northern California. In southwestern Missouri, visitors at Prairie State Park see a remnant of the tall grasses that once spread westward halfway to the Rockies. And each year, half a million schoolchildren, curiosity seekers and history buffs trek to New Salem State Historic Site in Illinois. There, on a bluff overlooking the brown Sangamon River, they view the recreated rude village where Abraham Lincoln spent his formative years.

While generously used — admissions have tripled since 1955 — state parks are anything but generously funded. Belt tightening in state government and rapidly shrinking federal assistance have taken a heavy toll in recent years. A survey by the Conservation Foundation revealed that spending on state parks declined by 14 percent in the first half of this decade. Today, a picture of unmet need and neglect emerges from the conversations and reports of state park officials. Some speak of reduced staffs, unmowed grounds, unpainted buildings and even early closings and shortened seasons at a few parks.

But a spirit of innovation and self-help can also be detected — coming especially in response to diminishing dollar outflows from the federal Land and Water Con-

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servation Fund. Since its inception in 1965, in the Lyndon Johnson era of federal generosity, this fund has injected $3 billion into state and local park projects, and somewhat more into the national parks. A decade ago, that money provided 30 cents of every dollar the states and localities were spending to acquire and upgrade parks. Congress was then a generous guardian of the fund, divvying up among the states a record sum of $370 million in 1979. But by this year the appropriation had fallen to $16.5 million, an average of $330,000 per state — scarcely enough to buy a few acres in some populous areas.

Park advocates thus have been forced to look in new directions for support. Park people in Arkansas united with community economic development interests, historic preservationists, environmental groups and a cluster of key legislators to double an existing tax on real estate sales, with state parks the main beneficiaries of the added revenue.

Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida funnel some of their receipts from oil and gas leasing into conservation and recreation. Texas, Minnesota and Nebraska tax cigarettes for the same purpose. A tax on soft drinks feeds the Illinois Parks and Conservation Fund. Colorado runs a state lottery to supplement state, county and municipal park budgets. California, New Jersey and New York repeatedly have sold state-backed bonds for park development, and several other states havedone so on occasion.

"The number of earmarked [park-designated] funds that have been approved and considered in recent years is probably a record," says Phyllis Myers, senior associate at the Conservation Foundation and the principal author of the series of research reports on state parks being issued by the non-profit, Washington, D.C.-based organization.

In Missouri, the farm lobby became a partner in the parks' successful fight for a fractional increase in the state's sales tax. The added money, currently about $34 million a year, is replenishing the parks' lost funding and financing a program to help farmers control soil erosion. This year a revived Citizens Committee for Soil, Water and State Parks has been campaigning to extend the tax law beyond its five-year expiration date in mid-1990. The group gathered enough signatures to put the question on the November ballot.

When California lawmakers balked this year at approving a $776 million bond issue — the biggest ever for outdoor recreation — a strong network of park supporters took a route similar to Missouri's, joining with the state's big tourist business and going over the legislators' heads by gathering enough petition signatures to put the issue directly before the electorate. In June's primary election, the voters said yes by a large margin.

Not all state park systems have that kind of political clout. Indeed, they differ from one another at least as much as do their financing arrangements. Not surprisingly, Rhode Island, the smallest state, has the smallest amount of park lands, 9,233 acres, according to the latest annual listing by the National Association of State Park Directors. Alaska's state parks cover 3.1 million acres, an area as big as Connecticut. But Minnesota's holdings are the greatest of all (3.4 million acres),

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because it also counts state forests, as do nine other states. New York would be No. 1 if 6.3 million acres that lie within the boundaries of the Adirondack and Catskill parks were counted. Those two parks are excluded from the directors' tabulations because each is controlled by an authority apart from the state park system. The 200,000-acre Baxter State Park in Maine is similarly excluded.

As listed by the association, the 50 systems add up to 13.7 million acres, an area equal in size to West Virginia. Slightly more than half of this acreage consists of true parks, in contrast to forests, recreational areas, historic sites and the like.

These different units only begin to suggest the diversity that is embraced by the term "state park systems." Visitors to the Cleveland Lakefront State Park, in the heart of Ohio's largest city, rarely lose sight of the metropolitan skyline. And yet this sliver of Lake Erie seaside, extending from downtown into the nearby suburbs, attracts more than six million visitors a year.

In contrast to that scene is Chugach State Park, lying cheek by jowl with Anchorage, Alaska. Chugach spreads out over a half-million acres of glacier-strewn wilderness, providing a home for moose herds and rare Dall sheep. In common with the Cleveland park, however, it primarily serves an urban population.

Although every park has its own distinctive story of creation, those that arose in urban settings during the past two decades are likely to owe their existence at least indirectly to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. That presidentially appointed advisory commission, under the chairmanship of Laurance S. Rockefeller, called attention to its 1962 report to the city dweller being least served by public recreational lands.

Congress responded by setting up the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and setting in motion an era of urban park development. Through last year, 77 percent of the obligated money from the fund has gone to locally sponsored projects to provide "close-to-home recreational opportunities," according to the fund's latest annual report, issued by the administering agency, the National Park Service.

At Rockefeller's urging, President Reagan in 1985 named a follow-up advisory group, the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors, and received its report in January 1987. "Increasingly, outdoors recreation occurs close to home, in or near towns and cities where 80 percent of us soon will live," said the commission's chairman, former Tennessee Republican Governor Lamar Alexander. Not only had federal and state parks begun to move "in town," but the report cited the existence of 67,685 municipal parks, 17,000 county-operated recreational areas and 2,780 regional parks.

Nevertheless, much more remained to be done in community after community, the report said. It suggested that the job be accomplished largely by governments at all levels in "partnership" with private-sector organizations, business and industry. Its big proposal was for the creation of a new conservation fund — a true trust fund and thus beyond the reach of congressional cutbacks — capable of yielding $1 billion a year. That proposal drew neither endorsement from the White House nor real interest in a Congress absorbed with huge federal budget deficits. Congress was willing last year to extend the life of the existing Land and Water Conservation Fund into the next century, and to continue feeding it with revenues mainly from offshore petroleum leasing. But the lawmakers offered no hope that big bucks will again be pumped out.

On average, the 50 state park systems last year recovered almost 40 percent of their $854 million operating costs through various fees, licensing and tax revenues, on-site sales and an assortment of other income-producing devices. However, the parks also had capital outlays of $351 million, so this share of income recovery fell below 30 percent of their total expenses. In New Hampshire, income generated at its parks paid for 99 percent of their operating expenses. Two-thirds of that amount came from entrance fees.

Overnight use of campgrounds, cabins and lodges at state parks has increased faster than the overall surge in state park admissions during the past three decades. Overnight visits rose from the 10 million to 15 million range during the mid-1950s to 60 million last year, reflecting a rise in the affluence and outdoor interest of Americans.

With the twin aims of luring more visitors and salvaging a slice of regional culture or history, more and more state parks offer a "theme." At Totem Bight State Historical Park near Ketchikan, on the lower end of the Alaskan Panhandle, the visitor's gaze is removed from majestic mountains and cast upon the totems of a fast-vanishing native Indian culture.

A far different example is the Kentucky Horse Park near Lexington, in the heart of the state's Bluegrass Region. Visitors flock there to see how a working horse farm operates. Beavertail State Park in Rhode Island attracts visitors to programs that focus on shipwrecks and lighthouses. Rock Hound State Park in New Mexico and Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas encourage amateur collectors to search for gems.

At Missouri's Prairie State Park, "we're trying to let people see what their grandfather told them about," says Park Naturalist Larry Larson. What the visitors see at the 2,560-acre park, some 25 miles straight north of Joplin, is a sea of grass and seasonal wildflowers. Bluestem, one of the dozen grasses indigenous to this area, grows higher than a man's head. For centuries it fed the bison, which in turn fed the Osage Indians until they were dispossessed by white settlers in the 19th century. "People come here from all over [the nation]," says Roxie Campbell, a full-time tourist assistant at the park, for a glimpse of their half-forgotten past. Last year's attendance of 22,576 was 70 percent higher than in 1986.

Thin, rocky soil on the Osage plains discouraged farmers from busting the sod, and thus kept this tract available for its present use. Only 300 acres had ever been plowed. Farm livestock graced most of the rest, but with their removal the tall grasses are returning to their pristine state, surviving nicely with a small herd of bison that have been reintroduced to the land. In the 1970s, Missouri park officials saw its potential for a park. The privately funded Nature Conservancy bought up the initial 1,800 acres in 1978 to block land speculators, and then resold the land to the state when it could come up with the money.

Even within a single state, the parks may show great diversity. California's topographical variety is fully represented by its more than 285 state parks. The biggest of these spreads out over 600,000 acres of desert floor, gray buttes and badlands in Southern California, between the San Ysidro Mountains on the west and the Santa Rosas to the north. It is the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park whose harsh landscape belies a fragile ecology.

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In Northern California, 30 miles south of Eureka and 15 miles from the Pacific coast, is Humboldt Redwoods State Park, on whose 50,522 acres are some of the world's biggest stands of old-growth coastal redwood trees. Last year the park recorded 870,000 visits, an unusually large number for its remote location. "When people come to California from out of state, the odds are they'll want to see the redwoods," says Larry Paynter, an information officer in the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

California's leadership in state park development is perhaps rivaled only by New York. The Empire State claims the oldest state park in continuous use (Niagara Reservation) and the biggest park of any kind (Adirondack) in the United States, outside Alaska. Both had their beginnings in the mid-1880s, marking New York's early start toward protecting its natural resources. Later, with the coming of the automobile, the recreational aspects of state parks became more pronounced, and in New York the parks became far more numerous. Their creator, above all others, was Robert Moses.

In the 1920s and through much of the next three decades, acting in several official capacities, Moses laced the state and especially the New York City area with parkways, parks and public beaches. By the end of the 1920s, nearly half of the nation's state parkland was in New York.

The lion's share of this land, of course, lay in the Adirondack Park, an area of northwestern New York the size of next-door Vermont. Forty percent of the land within the park's perimeters is state-owned, and most of it has been declared a "forest preserve," which under terms of the state's constitution must remain "forever wild" — a thought that originated with the 19th-century intent of ensuring an adequate water supply for New York City and the state's network of canals.

The rest of the land is privately held and the home of 125,000 permanent residents who tend to cluster in 105 towns and villages, where unemployment is chronically high. This situation often pits residents against conservationists on questions of commercial development within the park. Attempting to address these disputes, the state legislature in the early 1970s adopted a master plan for land use in the park, but it remains controversial. Currently at issue is whether the state can, or will, buy 100,000 acres put up for sale by the Diamond International Paper Co.

California's great forward thrust in the park movement grew out of efforts to save its gigantic and sometimes ancient redwood trees. The protectionist impulse surfaced in California as early as 1864. That year state authorities assumed jurisdiction over much of the spectacular Yosemite Valley and nearby groves of aged sequoia trees, partially halting commercial exploitation. That is generally considered the first state park — coming eight years ahead of the first national park, at Yellowstone. The site was turned over to the federal government in 1906 amid charges of state mismanagement, and today forms the heart of Yosemite National Park.

Stephen T. Mather, upon becoming the first director of the National Park Service in 1916, set out to forge an

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already emergent California preservationist movement into a well-organized Save-the-Redwoods League. The league claimed such illustrious leaders as the naturalist John Muir, who had been the principal founder of the Sierra Club in 1892, and they had far-reaching aims. The league is credited with bringing the California State Park Commission into existence in 1927. The commission promptly hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., son of the famous 19th-century landscape architect, to plan "an ultimate, comprehensive state park system."

The difference between a national and state park may not be readily apparent at times, but Mather believed there should be a great distinction. For that reason, he encouraged the development of state parks — for sites that lacked the significance or grandeur of national parks. Robert Shankland said in his biography, Steve Mother of the National Parks, that the new director was besieged by members of Congress pressing for national parks he did not want. "It was primarily for relief that, in 1920, Mather decided to set in motion a state park movement," Shankland wrote.

The next year Mather convened a Conference on State Parks in Des Moines, Iowa, attended by about 400 conservationists. That conference spawned others on an annual basis, giving the state park directors their first organization. From that meeting came the slogan "A State Park Every Hundred Miles." In that era of bad roads, 100 miles might be a full day's travel for the campsite-bound motorist.

The existence of parks in several states can be attributed to the single-mindedness of a few insistent people. The early development of Indiana's state park system is credited almost solely to Richard Lieber, who helped organize the 1921 conference and for 12 years was chairman of the resulting organization.

In Oregon, protected timber along the roadsides is a legacy of Samuel Boardman, who became the state's "park engineer" in 1929. Beginning in 1905, Maine legislators repeatedly rebuffed Percival Baxter, their colleague and later their governor, who wanted the state to buy and protect Mount Katahdin, once an Indian worship site and the focus of Henry Thoreau's 19th-century journey into the Maine woods. The sight of Katahdin moved Thoreau to write, "Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful." Baxter obviously shared Thoreau's sentiments. In 1930, he started buying the land himself and giving it to the state. At the time of his death in 1969, Baxter State Park encompassed 200,000 acres; it marks the northern end of the Appalachian Trail to Georgia.

Such actions characterized park advances in that era. Despite Mather's good will, federal resources for building state parks remained scant until the New Deal creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933. Young men made jobless by the Depression would sign up for six-month hitches in the CCC and go off to work camps, where they would receive room, board and a monthly stipend, and be outfitted with surplus military uniforms. At the peak of the corps' activity, the men in 561 of its camps were assigned to building or improving national, state and local parks. They built trails, fire roads, campsites, cabins, rustic lodges, storage buildings and even scenic motorways to make the new parks more accessible.

Much of their work remains visible today. Virginia, for instance, had but one state park in 1933. Seven more were added, largely through the work of the CCC, by the time the corps folded its tents for good in 1942. Other states have Virginia-like stories to tell — and the tellers often betray a yearning for an organization like the CCC. A dozen states have organized year-round conservation corps employing young men and women.

California, whose organization is the oldest and largest, also actively recruits volunteers for park duty. Its volunteer association has more than 15,000 people who give some portion of their time to tasks ranging from docent duty at historic sites to grounds-cleaning assistance.

Reprinted with permission, © 1988, GOVERNING magazine. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hoyt Gimlin is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer. This story originally appeared in the September 1988 issue of GOVERNING magazine.

Park authorities show a willingness, if not always an eagerness, to make these new accommodations. For in the words of William C. Walters, who heads the directors' association, financially he and his colleagues "are playing a catch-up game — and we've not caught up yet."

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