NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Park and Recreation Structures

IN ITS SIMPLEST and, theoretically, its most desirable expression, the park entranceway is merely a trail or a roadway taking off from a highway and leading into an area dedicated to public use and enjoyment. But it is not long permitted to retain so simple a form. Immediately demands for traffic safety, through elimination of the hazards of steep grades, sharp turns, and obstructions to vision, assert themselves, and the simple unobtrusive entranceway is doomed.

To increase the safety factor for automobiles leaving or entering the main traffic flow at the entrance take-off, the highway is first widened, then the entrance road, and the intersection is transformed by sweeping curves. Tree and plant growth, and perhaps a hillside, which interfere with 60-mile-speed vision, are eliminated. There must be a striving to overcome the traveling public's quick conclusion that here is a new speedway, or the gateway to some optimistic suburban subdivision. All, doubtless, necessary and inevitable "improvement", but the unself-conscious park entranceway, bleeding from the many wounds, expires.

It will be gloriously reborn, having sacrificed only its naive innocence for a myriad of more worldly values. Prompt to admit that the entranceway is more sinned against than sinning, we can but hope that, when forced to take measures in its own defense, it will not too brazenly flaunt artificiality and sophistication.

A mere sign generally proves insufficient. Pylons are resorted to in the hope of standing off the onrush of trucks and speeders. Gates are proposed, but more often than not these succeed rather in bespeaking the modern "burial park" than the kind of park it is hoped to typify. There results confusion worse confounded; solution seems beyond reach. Is it then any wonder that flanking walls, gate lodges, towers, lights, and arches are introduced as appendages where they seem to give promise of proclaiming beyond doubt just what the entrance does or, failing this, does not serve? The temptation is hardly resistible, and the complex, almost institutional, rendering evolves.

Once fully aware of the factors that deny to the park planner a simplicity of entranceway, while concurrently hampering the success of the complicated alternative, it is well to take stock of just what, in spite of all unfavorable limitations, a park entrance can be and convey.

It should at once invite and deter, encouraging use while discouraging abuse of the park by the public. It should be all things to all men, tempting the devotees of Nature and of the past, while warding off and detouring that bloc of the public primarily bent on a greater gasoline consumption—a kind of semaphore simultaneously reading "stop" and "go", yet somehow avoiding all accidents to traffic and to temperament. Surely no easy accomplishment, perhaps unattainable!

The simple appeal and mystery of the rural lane denied us, we can seek to beckon by means of an approach road of inviting width. But the speeder bent on getting nowhere in particular with all possible haste must somehow be urged diplomatically in another direction. An island dividing the in-and-out traffic will promote safety and restrain recklessness without suggestion of inhospitality. If an entrance fee is to be collected, an island kiosk is a very practical station point for collecting admissions and for the attendant duties of checking and providing information. From a kiosk so located, a guard can conveniently give information to departing patrons without undue interruption to the business of admissions. By recalling the familiar tollbridge entrance, it serves to suggest to the entrant that a fee is to be collected, and saves time that with any other arrangement might be consumed in query and explanation. The checking station, lodge, or sentry box to one side of the roadway is sometimes preferred, especially when the traffic flow is not heavy.

When a ranger or other employe is required to be on duty at an entrance during the hours a park is open to the public, suitable shelter must be provided for him. Often it is necessary to provide heat and toilet facilities in the attendant's room of the checking station or gate lodge. Some of the national parks and the State parks of Indiana have checking stations notable for their attractive character and practical completeness. When any portion of the using public is transported to the park by common carrier, a sheltered waiting space, as an adjunct of the entranceway, has a real function. There are shown on the pages which follow some successful examples of the several possible arrangements mentioned herein.

For convenience of administration and limiting roadways the ideal park plan would have but one entrance. It follows that where affecting conditions of terrain, population centers, and other factors dictate more than one entrance, the fewer of these, the better. Particularly where an entrance fee is an accepted principle is the limiting of entrance points desirable and highly so for the economy it effects. The accessories necessary to any entranceway staffed with an attendant call for greater initial investment than the simple untended entrance, and the employe himself is a continuing operating charge.

For a proper control, entranceways to many parks must serve as barriers during certain hours. Gates become a practical necessity, but any pretentiousness of these is apt to suggest an institution. Probably the low gate, related in appearance to the familiar log barrier of the parking area and pivoting at one end for operation, is the happiest solution. It serves adequately as barrier and does not obscure, complicate, or presume to compete with the landscape beyond. Among examples of this type, the gate of the checking station at Turner Falls, Oklahoma, is of exceptional merit. A chain barrier is an even simpler solution, but should always be equipped with a conspicuous sign or be made otherwise readily visible under automobile headlights.

Overhead construction, utilizing arch or lintel, perhaps overdone in an earlier era, seems not to find wide current favor. Doubtless the changed attitude of mind results from a worthy desire to avoid any feeling of confinement, or any subconscious recall of the triumphal arch and staff creations long associated with street parades and carnivals.

In rare instances, as in the case of a small park not heavily used and requiring a very limited staff, a custodian's dwelling or lodge must necessarily be located so that it is almost a part of the entranceway. The connotation of gate lodge guarding a country estate is then to be avoided. Generally speaking, however, this location for the caretaker's residence is unfortunate for it unfairly places that official and his family in a situation of being on call for 24 hours a day.

The speed and conditions of present day traffic, in which the car is quicker than the eye, dictate that the public be given timely warning and vision of its approach to the park entranceway. In order that brakes may be applied effectively at prevalent, popular speeds, a considerable stretch of highway border is affected. While conservation of all possible forest cover may be the primary and praiseworthy objective of the natural park enthusiast, it is urged that it yield precedence outside the entrance gate to the demands for safety. The practical advantages to be derived from the placement of any entrance features well back from the main highway and from the maintenance of suitably cleared sight lines must be acknowledged by all as paramount.

The park entranceway may meet all the requirements of function and many of the standards of beauty and yet fall far short of its potentialities. As the outpost of a reserved area offering certain distinctive recreational opportunities to the public, it can with subtlety and grace project the promise and lure of the region and its offered recreation to the very public highway. The truly successful entranceway will be contrived to be the simple essence of the characteristics of the park to no resultant interference with the basic and material functions of ingress, egress, and barrier.

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