OREGON'S HIGHWAY PARK SYSTEM: 1921-1989 An Administrative History

IV. Reflections on the Oregon State Parks System

One of the hallmarks of your administration of State Parks over the years has been the annual inspection tour arranged for the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee and other public officials. The tradition is continuing with the new Parks Commission. As you travel throughout Oregon visiting various components of the system that is referred to as "one of the best state park systems in the country," what gives you the greatest sense of achievement on behalf of the organization?

The annual Parks Advisory Committee tour, as we know it today, was inaugurated in 1962, shortly after I came aboard as state recreation director. Hal Schick was superintendent. Glenn Jackson had left the Advisory Committee in 1959 to assume a seat on the Highway Commission, which was a big step for him. Following the death of original Parks Advisory Committee head William Tugman in 1961, Vice Chairman George Henderson acted in the capacity of chairman briefly until Stub Stewart was elected to take over. It was Stub's idea to develop some sort of an outreach program. He wanted to be out talking to people about State Parks, finding ways to aid coordination with the counties. There were two real pay-offs. One was that you had 37 people with a wide variety of backgrounds but a common interest in parks on a bus talking together for two, three or four days. The new people, and I was one of them, were able to make valuable contacts. Nowadays they call it "networking," but in those days it was simply considered getting to know people. The second benefit was that as you traveled around you learned first-hand about local issues all over the state. The pattern we followed was to concentrate thoroughly on one region at a time.

During the initial tour, in 1962, we spent a day in Newport, where we were taken apart by the Chamber of Commerce for competing with private trailer camps in the operation of our campgrounds. We started by saying, "We are here to talk." Even though we got a lot of criticism, it made a difference that we had come to the community and were willing to listen. It made good sense. In eastern Oregon, in southern Oregon, we would open the same way. "We are here to help. What do you think?" People liked that because they didn't get very much of it from organized government at the time. We brought in officials of the U. S. Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation from Portland, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Local officials began to feel better about their relations with government as a result. The matter of public relations always has seemed important to me. How we present ourselves as government representatives does make a difference in the way things work.

The annual tour will be picked up by the Parks Commission. Possibly it will be shaped a little differently. State Parks Commission Chairman Brian Booth wants to involve the media more, as was done in the early years when the tour was an innovation. Now, it's easier to invite the suppliers of outdoor recreation, Portland General Electric Company, the U. S. Forest Service and all the rest. They'll come along. Getting media people to commit the time and join in again may be difficult at first, but we're going to try. The early trips were pretty much male-oriented, with the group convivial but hard working by day and ready to let off steam at night. Then came female appointments to the committee. Lucille Beck, the first woman in what had been an all-male province since 1957, was appointed by Governor Straub in 1976. She surely could not be excluded from the tour, so Stub and the committee toned down the jokes and everyone was comfortable. On the annual inspection tour, the Advisory Committee got a better understanding of the far-flung units, Succor Creek State Recreation Area on the Idaho border, for example, or Farewell Bend State Park, where the route of the Oregon Trail leaves the Snake River basin. Then, as policy matters arose concerning those places, the committee would be well acquainted with what was on the ground.

As I think of what we have encountered on the tour that reflects well on the organization, I think first of the people who made things happen. Tryon Creek State Park is a roaring success. It is a legacy of the Carter administration and the concept of urban national and state parks. The idea of urban parks cut across the traditional view of what a state park ought to be. We had looked at Tryon Creek, on the southern outskirts of the metropolitan area, and our staff reports came back saying, "Ordinary vegetation, ordinary land features, ordinary everything. This is not a priority for the state of Oregon." What you had was two counties and two cities with jurisdiction in one piece of real estate. If anything was to be done, it had to be done above the local level.

There is a wonderful story that Lu Beck tells about Glenn Jackson. We had told the Friends of Tryon Creek that we weren't interested. Lu and Jean Sidall decided that they would speak to the Highway Commission chairman personally about getting some funding support. They got an appointment with Glenn, which usually was easy to do. They laid their pitch before him. All they were after was a little money. He listened and said, "Well, it seems to me you ought to make a state park out of it." It happened that fast. Lu and Jean and the others almost were taken aback. I think they had real misgivings about whether they wanted State Parks in there doing their thing. But the result is working really well. This "Friends" group was the forerunner of a number of citizen groups that were formed to aid specific state parks, groups that may be our salvation in the long run. By the end of the 1990s, we may have as many as 20 or 30 Friends organizations with a combined membership running into thousands, a constituent body that cares enough to go to battle for the parks. I believe this constituent body, along with the new commission and good staff work, will help us find support for the 20-year plan to carry out the State Parks mission. Tryon Creek represents a major breakthrough. That urban state park concept and the development of Friends groups appear to be the keys to a successful program in the future.

Credit for saving the beaches may be claimed by many. When it comes to that, I am one of a "cast of thousands," but I take satisfaction in having been a party to the effort nonetheless. The matter is not entirely resolved to this day, in my view, because too much depends on judicial interpretation. Securing the beaches for the public was important. The Willamette River Greenway project was another major achievement of the organization. I spent a lot of time on it. The job is not done, and I hope to see it completed. It has been gratifying to round out the basic parks system with historic buildings and places such as the Old Yaquina Bay Lighthouse, Fort Stevens and the Wolf Creek Tavern.

I feel good about the transfer of Painted Hills-John Day Fossil Beds State Park to the National Park Service. In the late 1960s, Grant County citizens led by Gordon Glass were doing what everybody is doing now, which is looking at tourism as a means of economic development. As the inventory of tourism assets progressed, it occurred to Gordon the geologic formations protected as State Park areas were an outstanding attraction. He found a federal geologist who was equally excited about them. The two came to us and said, "Let's do something magnificent with the Painted Hills and Fossil Beds in the John Day River country because people come from miles around to see these scenic formations and it will help local business." I could see right away that here was an opportunity to upgrade the presentation of those features. Because they are of national significance scientifically, maybe we could get the National Park Service to take them on. For a variety of reasons, we were not doing a very good job with the areas as a state park. We protected the holdings, but we didn't tell visitors much about them. We didn't interpret the park. I thought the Feds could invest more money, do a better job and attract enough people to help the economy. And, that is exactly what happened. The National Park Service wasn't accustomed to negotiating with us on land transactions. We made life a little difficult for them because we were making stipulations and they were astounded that the state of Oregon, a lesser jurisdiction, would conceive of the Park Service managing the property in any way that was not appropriate. For once, the roles were reversed.

The day we dedicated Tryon Creek State Park in 1975, I had arranged to have United States Congressman Al Ullman, who was a major player in the transfer of the Fossil Beds, meet with us at the Lewis and Clark College Law School. There, Governor Straub, Glenn Jackson and Al Ullman got together and signed the deeds transferring the Fossil Beds to federal ownership as a National Monument. After the business was completed, we turned to bicycles we had brought in for the occasion with the idea that some might like to ride the bicycle path from the Law School down to the new visitor center at Tryon Creek. I had thought the governor might get a kick out of it. I said, "Would anybody like to do this?" Who should jump forward the fastest but Glenn Jackson. I thought, "Oh, no! I am going to kill Glenn." He had not been on a bicycle for a long time, much less a new-fangled multi-speed. Even so, nobody could get past him. Governor Straub was close behind, but Glenn got to the "finish line" first.

The Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area resulted in another of our land transactions with the federal government, in this case the United States Forest Service. Years ago, all the sand dunes that once were part of Umpqua Lighthouse State Park on the central Oregon coast had been deeded to the state by the federal government. Some of the deeds were signed by President Roosevelt in the Depression era. We were asked by the Forest Service if we would relinquish the dunes area in exchange for a number of different Forest Service holdings. Ray Wilson, our lands supervisor, ended with additions to the Parks land bank all over Oregon for a massive pile of sand that the federal government had given to us in the first place. We thought we had cut a pretty good deal there.

Governor Tom McCall appointed me to the Oregon Dunes Advisory Council when the National Recreation Area was created in 1972. I enjoyed the experience very much. The supervisor of the Siuslaw National Forest at the time was Dale Robertson, the current Chief of the U. S. Forest Service. He was great to work with. I served with a variety of people on what was a kind of planning commission. We were the people that the local citizens could complain to about the issues, and we would try to mediate. The Oregon Dunes Advisory Council served a useful purpose even though it was later discontinued. We put together the Dunes management plan that is being updated now.

Another gratifying episode was the Deschutes River purchase. We had a park holding at the mouth of the Deschutes for years, and we looked seriously at buying frontage up-river on both sides. The river corridor lands were owned by a family-held corporation in San Francisco, the Eastern Oregon Land Company. The owners had been planning to build a dam for a hydroelectric power project down the line, but, finally, they wanted to sell. Conservationists went to Governor Vic Atiyeh and asked for help. The governor said, "Do what you can to tie this thing up and save it." Ray Wilson and I went out to raise money. We had to negotiate a price with the agent in Portland, and it was almost impossible. We tried everything, including bringing the head of the Trust for Public Lands up from San Francisco and holding meetings at Portland International Airport trying to buy an option and the necessary time to raise funds for the entire purchase. The owners were about to sell the land to a sports fishing club. Oregonians like their streams public. They don't want them tied up for exclusive use by a few. That was what prompted the local residents to appeal to the governor to secure the Deschutes. Our plan was to raise about half a million dollars to get an option on the property so that it could be taken off the market. Then we planned to go to the legislature and the private sector for the backing to acquire it. The bottom line is that we were successful. Ray and I hauled around his map. We'd roll it out, and people would say, "I'll put in $50,000." A number of public-spirited Oregonians, including Stub Stewart and Frank Gilchrist of our own Parks Advisory Committee, supported the effort with no-interest loans and gifts.

We got as low as we could on the asking price, which was something like $1,000,500 for 15 miles of the Deschutes River. At the same time, the Oregon Wildlife Heritage Foundation was cranking up for the public fund-raising effort which turned out to be magnificent. It involved thousands of people. A great many people have a certificate on their wall attesting that they gave something. The foundation took this on to protect fishing on the Deschutes.

After the major Deschutes corridor purchase was completed, Stub arranged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to charter a train for an inspection excursion as part of the 1983 Parks Advisory Committee tour. We all met at Bingen and boarded the train. At the end was one of those fancy observation cars where the donors and dignitaries got comfortably settled for the trip up the Deschutes River Canyon. The railroad company had slicked up the hillside and put gravel down at a certain scenic spot where we climbed off and broke out the champagne. The governor waved his hand, we raised a toast and then chugged up to the mouth of the White River where the Oregon Wildlife Heritage Foundation put on a salmon barbecue at Tygh Valley State Wayside. The Deschutes River campaign was a very rewarding experience.

In the State Capitol, in the hallways leading to the legislative chambers, you will find portraits of recent Oregon governors. Tom McCall is portrayed standing on the beach with a surveyor's transit that refers to the significance of establishing the boundary of the regulated zone. It was his role in connection with saving the beaches for which Governor McCall wanted to be remembered. The next portrait is that of Bob Straub. Governor Straub is pictured against the backdrop of the Willamette Greenway, and we are reminded of his role in defining and promoting the Willamette River Greenway concept. You move on down, and here is Vic Atiyeh. Where is he standing? The Deschutes River. If you were to talk to Vic Atiyeh about his eight years as governor and ask him to name outstanding events and achievements, the Deschutes corridor purchase would be high on the list. Each of these portraits in the statehouse holds special meaning for our agency. It pleases me to see them every time.

Another memorable project for us involved Shore Acres State Park on the coast, south of Coos Bay. In the 1970s, I looked at the once outstanding formal garden of the Louis Simpson estate known as "Shore Acres" and said to myself, "We ought to do this one right." Joe Paiva, a landscape architect who now heads the Parks planning and development units, coordinated the restoration project. The estate house was no longer standing, the grounds were badly overgrown and the garden survived only in outline. We decided to pour a lot of money into bringing it back, and I'm glad we did. Over a number of years, Joe and the field crew made of it a real show place, absolutely first rate. Shore Acres today is one of the leading attractions of the parks system.

Acquisition and restoration of the quintessential southern Oregon "stagecoach" inn, the Wolf Creek Tavern, is a source of pride too. Wolf Creek in rural Josephine County had become partly a counterculture community in the 1970s. There was a group of well educated, smart young people living at the 100-year-old inn after its recent sale, and it was their aim to restore it and continue its operation as a hostel with a well-patronized tap room. They had the best intentions and were highly motivated, but because of the contrast in lifestyles locally, the concern we had was, "Would the loggers burn the place down some night after having a beer too many and going after the hippies?" We were afraid we might lose a rare gem. As it turned out, a lot of discretionary federal money was being pumped into Oregon in support of economic development by the Carter administration during the recession. We developed a funding proposal of close to $1 million to acquire and restore the Wolf Creek Tavern as a concession operation and historical wayside. The proposal had to compete against bridges and roads in the budget process. Janet McLennan, the governor's assistant for Natural Resources, encouraged Governor Straub to approve the project, and we were able to buy the place and complete the restoration. It is a quality product. The place is ideally situated just off the interstate freeway and is a popular restaurant and stopping place. David Powers of the history unit managed that project very ably with the help of a select group of consultants. As a self-sustaining addition to the parks system, it has worked exceedingly well.

The Frenchglen Hotel Wayside in the Steens Mountain country of Harney County was to have been a similar type of project. The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge had inherited the remote lodging place from the Bureau of Land Management, and it didn't fit in with the refuge plans. A caretaker lived in it and ran it. If the operator liked you, he'd let you in and serve you dinner or whatever. When the operator died, the Fish and Wildlife Service took the opportunity to dispose of the place. They ran it past us, and we said "Why would anybody want to take on a maintenance liability like the Frenchglen Hotel?" But Oregon Historical Society Executive Director Tom Vaughan went to Glenn Jackson to urge our involvement there. The hotel was a colorful part of eastern Oregon history. Of course, we ended in buying the hotel from the Feds, and it turned out to be a darn smart move. It works perfectly as a staging point for visitors to the wildlife refuge and the Steens Mountain range land administered by the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM is proceeding with proposed wilderness area designations for the Steens area and much of the Owyhee country as well. Had the Feds not laid a claim to the Owyhee country, I would have walked in and tried to "do" a major desert park there somewhat along the lines of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California. We don't have one of those. But when the BLM completes its wilderness areas in southeastern Oregon, that need will be fulfilled. My dream of coordinated recreational and interpretive development for that area includes the wildlife refuge, Steens Mountain, Frenchglen, the colorful story of Pete French and the Round Barn, geological features such as Jordan Craters, and the great Alvord Desert. All of those things, to me, make up a wonderful opportunity. The BLM will make the most of it, I'm sure.

I have no personal favorite among the state parks. It is like choosing among your children. You cannot possibly do it. You love them all. They each have endearing traits and individual personalities. The coast is so spectacular, but it doesn't draw me like eastern Oregon does. The high desert country, to me, is fascinating. If I had a free minute and you turned me loose, that probably is where I would head. I have had a long-standing love affair with rivers. They are so much fun. Here you are, sitting in a noiseless raft, floating along with the current and, most likely, spectacular landscape is going by. Eagles, birds and deer, too. You can stop to camp in the wilderness. Sitting around the fire, swapping tales and enjoying good fellowship in such a setting, to me, is the ideal outdoor recreation activity. If you like to fish, there is fishing. If you like to watch birds, there are birds. Everything is there. In some ways, all of Oregon is a park. Sam Boardman staked it all out and he said, "North to south, east to west, when you have it all secured, just put out the picnic tables you're open for business." It is an easy place to "do" parks. The Good Lord has it already set up. You only have to tinker with it a bit, as little as possible if you're smart. People write us letters all the time telling us what wonderful parks we have, and we have the temerity to take the credit for it.

"What is a state park?" That, it seems to me, is one of the most important questions for the future of our organization. The new Parks Commission will be dealing with it, and it will have to be answered. There are various ways to approach a definition. Silver Falls is the traditional kind of a state park. It is a large area, well over 8,000 acres. You can't build a decent trail system in a hundred-acre park. You need room. A state park ought to have some significant natural or cultural feature that is an attraction unto itself and will make people want to be there. Probably, it is not a minor parcel beside the road with a restroom and a drinking fountain.

In 1988, I traveled throughout the system with the 2010 Committee, the citizen advisers who were concerned with planning our future into the next century. I expected the committee to discuss a state parks system of the future which would be considerably scaled down from the one we have today, a lean and efficient system trimmed of old roadside holdings and lesser parks and organized around a few big destination places. They didn't even want to talk about that method of economizing. To my great surprise, they concluded this diverse system that we have is wonderful. When we stopped at places in the "postage stamp" category, I thought they would say, "Please get rid of this." But, "No, no," they said. "The range, the diversity of the system serves the people well and makes it special. Leave it alone. Don't start breaking it up." I was astonished.

The experience convinced me there aren't many people who advocate consolidation other than a few of us bureaucrats here in Salem. Deputy Director Larry Jacobson and I and our assistants in the central office seemingly are the only ones who anguish over this issue. Most people appear to like what is in place very much, but it is a system that was designed for and paid for by the road user. I would have to say, "Okay. The past is the past. Let's talk about what kind of system we want in the future." My own dream of the future is a system of regional parks around the Willamette Valley that is tied in with the greenway. Most of the major natural areas of the state have been "protected" to one degree or another. There just aren't many Silver Creek Canyons or coastal headlands like Cape Lookout to be saved anymore. The 2010 Plan, the strategic 20-year plan presented by the 2010 Citizen Advisory Committee, was developed from consensus-gathering throughout the Parks organization. It directs us to the cultural side, to finding the best features and places to tell the story of Oregon, its natural and cultural history.

The new parks coming on line, such as Fort Yamhill, are exciting to me. We have given thought to linear parks for some time. Until recently, we have had little luck with the "rails-to-trails" concept for reasons discussed earlier. It appears Banks-Vernonia State Park, a 20-mile hiking and cycling corridor along an abandoned railroad right-of-way in a forested and farming section of northwestern Oregon, is going to be the exception. It is going to succeed. We have looked at linear river parks as well, where you take a canyon like the Deschutes and put it under a single coordinated management program. I think the concept is a good one, but it's difficult to bring off because of all the jurisdictions that have to be party to it. On the other hand, the days of doing things in the outdoor recreation business by yourself are long gone, perhaps by as much as a decade. Very few significant developments will occur anymore without a whole host of people being a party to them. The uncomplicated, single-agency projects aren't going to happen easily in Oregon unless the economic picture changes a lot. That is probably for the best.

Along the coast, I foresee continued in-building as the population becomes more concentrated there. It still will be a wonderful place. I am reminded of a piece of property for which we had been negotiating recently on the south coast at the Oregon-California line. We had looked at it many times and turned it down because, "Why would we want a beach access right at the California line?" Well, 10 or 20 years ago you could understand that. There were bigger fish to fry. But we began to look at it again, seriously, and concluded we ought to try to acquire it. "Here is a great opportunity to do something creative," we thought. Possibly we could get the Oregon and California tourism units together and erect a joint welcome center with beach access and other modest facilities. We got rather excited about it.

The parcel had been owned by a group of Oregon investors for the last 20 years. Now they had it for sale. Coastal property values are so extreme, it can be worth the risk of fighting the ocean to own a piece of land on the beachfront. The realtors said they had five offers at $300,000. So we put in an offer of $300,000 contingent on budget approval in the next biennium. They came back and said, "Would you believe this? We've got someone who will give us $470,000 for this. Will you match that plus make the $20,000 earnest payment which you may lose if you don't come up with the match?" I went to Lynn Newbry, the vice chairman of the Parks Commission, and said, "Would you check with the owners for us?" He did, and he found it was true. Subject to approvals under current land-use regulations, that stunning cash offer was coming from a person in Singapore. We lost it! We couldn't move fast enough. It will be a challenging property to develop in any case. It was described by one realtor as a one-building site. It encompasses a little over 30 acres, but it probably could accommodate one house. Now, if the prospective buyer in Singapore intends only to build a house at that place, that is one thing, but if he wants to develop with the object of making money, it's going to be tough.

The point is, that kind of thing will happen increasingly on the coast. They aren't making beachfront anymore. The prices are going to go up. If we wish to save Fishing Rock and the other undeveloped coastal properties that come up intermittently, we may have to shed our conservative mentality and pay whatever it takes because we'll not have many other chances. We haven't thought in those terms for a long time. By the same token, we have to remember that the problems of supply and demand in outdoor recreation are not resolved simply by acquiring more property. In thinking of the future, we will be trying to strike a balance, developing facilities for the fast-growing population of park-users, but also, I hope, living up to our responsibility to preserve Oregon's outstanding natural scenery, a public trust that goes back to our roots as an organization.