NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Park and Recreation Structures

WE ARE PRONE to assume that all forms of day use recreation in parks are readily classifiable as "active" or "cultural." In point of fact "Active and Cultural Recreational Facilities" was the tentative title of the discussion here being launched until picnicking, probably the most popular recreational pursuit in parks, was put under the microscope.

Memory, observation, research—all seemed to substantiate a feeling that picnicking, while certainly recreation, is actually a brief life cycle, intemperately active at the start and tapering off rapidly to a state of comparative inaction, not to say torpor, and hardly fittingly classifiable at any stage as cultural in any sense. As between promoting a campaign to overhaul the institution of picnicking as it exists and a tactical retreat to "Recreational and Cultural Facilities" as a more apt title, the positive promise of the latter seemed to "have the edge." So picnicking can remain for the present just recreational, neither active nor inactive by fiat, its state of culture not a matter of public concern. Let us get the discussion of picnic facilities, as a disturbing borderline case, behind us before indulging our taste for dissecting recreational facilities which can be neatly tagged "active" or "cultural."

CHARACTERISTIC OF NATURAL VALUES in park picnic areas generally is a congenital tendency to quick decay, eternally threatening to infect the natural fabric of entire park areas. Careful diagnosis and heroic remedies are very much in order. Notwithstanding constant vigilance, human use "like a worm i' the bud" feeds on the damask cheek of Nature, in which figure our prayers should probably be for a potent insecticide to retard, if it may not altogether exclude, the processes of deterioration.

That the natural values present and potential in a park are best preserved and fostered by confining the wear and tear of human use to well-defined concentration points has become almost axiomatic in sound park planning thought of today. The exact degree of concentration of facilities conducive to a supportable concentration of use is by no means so generally understood. In certain areas the theory has been so reservedly applied that the damaging effect of human activities continues to spread out over a disproportionate share of the park. In others, with equally destructive results, it has been too literally embraced.

It is hardly possible to devise for existing areas a universal formula for determining whether closer concentration of picnic facilities or retreat from overconcentration is in the direction of the double objective sought—improving the immediate environment of the picnickers and preserving in proper maximum the natural aspect of the less modified surrounding area. Although a divining rod be lacking, the remedy for a particular area should be perfectly obvious to anyone who will (1) closely and dispassionately observe it suffering average attendance, (2) coordinate his observations, and then (3) follow through to a rational conclusion, when, it is devoutly to be wished, he will do something about it.

Because the happy mean between an overcrowded picnic area and an overextended one is so very difficult to formulate and because when it is missed the horns of the dilemma offer a repellant scar or a menacing infection, something more promising and positive in the way of a solution invites study.

The most reasoned suggestion yet advanced is for rotating the use of picnic areas. In place of the usual complement of facilities for serving adequately the needs of a given patronage it has been proposed to double the number of facilities in some feasible arrangement of lay-out which will permit roughly half of the area to be withdrawn from intensive use in alternate years. Perennial regeneration of the values that make a picnic area attractive should result from such a development. The processes of renewal might not be entirely automatic but should hardly require any great burden of management.

A stand-by area with its duplicating facilities may appear at first thought to add to initial development cost. Actually it merely anticipates by a few years, and only in part, the greater outlay forced when year-in and year-out concentrated use has made a shambles of a picnic area. Over the years, recurrent seeking of greener pastures for the continuously used picnic area will lead to deterioration needlessly extended and to the multiplied costs of progressive removals. It can be claimed with reason that the stand-by area in the long run is as economical of cost and space as it is conservational of attractive natural surroundings.

The cost of providing a stand-by picnic area can be greatly reduced by a Siamese plan arrangement which will avoid the need of duplicating some of the picnic facilities, especially the more expensive ones. If toilets, shelters, and kitchens are placed on the boundary between the biennially alternative picnic areas, a great saving in cost is effected without any great sacrifice of convenience in their use, regardless of which picnic ground is active.

Especially recommended for these dual lay-outs are heavy wooden picnic tables movable only by exertion of just that degree of effort which forestalls the public and causes satisfaction among the maintenance crew that table movings thank heaven!—are a twelvemonth apart. If tables are of a type incapable of being moved by the park crew to an alternate location, it will be difficult to keep the public out of the portion of the area being rested. Stone tables have this defect. Mobility in the degree recommended will not only save the resting area from a bootleg use, so to say, but will limit the first cost of tables to those actually needed for normal use. Where the recommendation for alternating picnic sites as above-outlined can be practicably followed to the letter, the overburden of cost can be held to the duplication of drinking fountains, refuse pits, and fireplaces. Even the cost of duplicating fireplaces may be evaded where the use of one or another of the metal or concrete fireplaces of movable type, hereinafter illustrated, is looked on with favor.

Hence it appears that the proposition of the stand-by picnic area may not, after all, be so much a matter of cost as one of whether the acreage and topography of the park—and the scope of the park planner's understanding are receptive to it.

THERE IS ANOTHER IMPORTANT ADVANTAGE of the stand-by picnic area. Holiday crowds heavily overtax facilities that are quite sufficient for a normal patronage. These overloads tend to influence the park authority to provide picnic tables and fireplaces out of all proportion to normal needs. Such a solution is not ingenious. But by having "up its sleeve", so to speak, a stand-by area in process of regeneration, the park is prepared to absorb the shock of a peak load. So long as peak load is not interpreted to include all weekends but is confined to holidays and similarly infrequent special events, the opening up of the alternative picnic area for such occasions should not unwarrantably retard the recuperative process. If the recommended withdrawal of picnic tables from the resting area has been practiced, there can be a reserve supply of light folding tables temporarily placed in the "out of-season" area for the holiday crowds.

Another planning procedure in the direction of preventing devastating wear and tear in a picnic area is the substitution of several minor shelters or kitchen shelters for a single large building. The latter, as the hub of all picnicking activity, tends to acquire a threadbareness in its immediate environs that can spread rapidly along the many paths that converge on it. On the other hand, a small concession building, if necessary in the scheme of things, and several minor scattered supplementing picnic shelters or kitchen shelters can often so distribute destructive wear that the recuperative powers inherent in Nature are enabled to keep abreast of the wearing-out process.

Similarly the site destructiveness of the drinking fountain will not so rapidly outstrip natural regenerative processes if, instead of one such facility, heavily taxed by use, several of very simple type are judiciously scattered through the large picnic area.

Some measure of privacy is certainly sought by many picnic parties and should in reasonable degree be vouchsafed to those groups desiring it. If the area dedicated to picnicking is devoid of, or but sparsely provided with, low growth contributory to reasonable suggestion of seclusion, then wider separation of table and fireplace facilities is almost an alternative requirement. Natural environment, in terms of low-growing vegetation and shrubs, thus proves its worth in terms of practical economy. It is something to be carefully preserved for the very check it provides against a sprawling expansion of the acreage given over to picnicking.

Among the facilities needed in picnic areas are two items which, in heavily used areas, provoke divergent theories in justification of approach. These are table and bench combinations and fireplaces. For picnic areas of moderate size in little modified settings, there is probably negligible opinion deprecatory of the appropriateness and appeal of the sturdy handcrafted picnic table. So also of the naturalistic rock fireplace skillfully insinuated into its setting with a sculptor's finesse. Yet in respect to parks to which picnickers swarm like locusts demanding weekly, or even daily, use of hundreds upon hundreds of tables and fireplaces (the many picnic areas of the Cook County Forest Preserve come to mind as examples of this heavy use), one may well wonder if endless repetition of the overconsciously primitive, painstakingly mannered facility could not become more than slightly nauseating.

For quantity consumption is there not perhaps greater logic and appropriateness, and even real art, in an out-and-out product of quantity production? The sheet steel "cheese box" fireplace devised for the picnic groves massed in the Chicago metropolitan district is exactly that. In addition, it is economical in materials, conserving of space and fuel, intensely practical and efficient, and if these attributes are not truly those of a facility in the real meaning of the term, then it has been misapplied.

We find the picnic table, handcrafted from heavily scaled native materials, an ingratiating thing where distributed by the dozen or even by the score through scenic areas, but in settings scenically substandard and commonplace, to the number of hundreds in supply of use-demand, is it not possible that it is malapropos? There are many to hold that it is, and that only tables produced by assembly line methods truly tune in on the wave length of our times.

AMONG THE MORE ACTIVE recreational offerings in parks, most indulged in is hiking, an unsuitable term, but one which, like the word rustic, must serve us until something more appropriate appears. The sport becomes a recreational feature immediately the park is born. It can be enjoyed (never more completely by some) before any development and construction are brought to the refinement of foot trails. These have a way of developing without the benefit of conscious planning, and there are those who will say that the trail which just grows, marking a line of least resistance to some point of vantage or of interest, is not always improved by conscious efforts. The potential weakness of the unplanned trail is the tendency to become needlessly wide with unrequired forks and bypasses. There generally comes a time in the developing use of the trail which has "laid itself out" when conscious and careful planning must rescue it, and there is always danger of the step being too long deferred.

Of course it is obvious that many items necessarily or desirably incidental or auxiliary to a trail by no means just grow. Eventually there must be drains and gutters built at locations vulnerable to erosion. Seats, sometimes roofed, and small shelters are welcome for the rest and protection from sun and storm they afford. Guard rails will make for safety at stretches where steep slope or narrowness of trail is a hazard. A prospect point will suggest the betterment of view to derive from an overlook structure rising above the natural elevation.

Overnight cabins, of which the Adirondack shelter is the prototype, are a needed refuge along cross country routes like the Appalachian Trail, which invite weekend or longer hikes, or where the going is difficult. They are especially needed at strategic intervals along trails where winter journeys on skis and snowshoes are offered and high altitudes induce sudden and heavy snowfalls. Under such conditions it is desirable to provide some means for closing the open front of the typical trail shelter.

IN MANY NATURAL PARKS, particularly those close to great centers of population, and in most recreational reserves, active recreation beyond picnicking and hiking means largely water recreation. Where rivers have limited recreational value, due to flood tendency, pollution, or other influences, and where natural lakes are few or nonexistent, the urge to create water area for swimming and boating is a natural and understandable one. The appropriateness of an artificial lake depends entirely on whether the chief potential of an area is the preservation of natural beauty, historical values, or scientific interest, or is the development of recreational facilities. Whether it will flood a disproportionate amount of the area at the expense of the claims of land recreational activities, or can be effected only by a dam which produces an ineradicable scar, or will be a muddy torrent for the rainy season and lapse into a stagnant, mosquito-breeding puddle for the remainder of the year all these are considerations to be solemnly weighed.

"The lusty mania for building artificial lakes in natural surroundings" has been noted as threatening, and warning has been flown against "rash and ill-considered action" in the widespread creation of lakes that are invading misfits.

The artificial lake can add nothing of scenic value where scenic values exist. Rarely has it been imposed without diminishing the natural values originally present. Its benefits are chiefly recreational. It has no place where the preservation of scenic, scientific, or historical values is the theme.

However, with some groups, charged with the development of park and recreation systems, the impounding of a considerable body of water by the construction of a large dam is apparently, and regardless of other considerations, the "be-all and the end-all" of park planning. There is a confused scrambling of preservation principles and recreation objectives.

The current pointing with pride to acres and acres of exotic water surface, which have sacrificed certain values in reaching for others, smacks of the same pathetic provincialism which led the last generation to boast of the tallest bank building in the south-central section of the State, and the generation before that to glory in its red plush Grand Opera House. The latter has long since become a market or a burlesque house. The bank is in the hands of a receiver. May some equally appalling fate lie in store for the ill-conceived artificial lake intruded to a marring of scenic beauty or a modification of a setting of historic or scientific interest!

In point of fact there have been brought into being some publicly owned areas so flooded that it would seem perfectly reasonable to enlarge the nomenclature of parks and recreation to include "public lake" along with "park", "historic site", "recreational reserve", and the other familiarly known designations.

Due to the perversities of topography, the shoreline of a made lake will almost never exactly coincide with the boundary lines of the publicly owned tract, and there will always be some elevated stretches here and there which will not submerge. This wastage is a thorn in the side of the advocates of bigger and better lakes, and distresses them greatly. They get what consolation they can from the fact that these remnants are as small as may be, and strive mightily not to be overconscious of them. Eventually this ragged fringe is taken over by old-fashioned folk who are apathetic to any need for a complete rearrangement of the continental and marine surfaces of the planet. These reactionaries get a simple satisfaction from sprawling in the shade of a remaining cottonwood or picnicking among the few sycamores not sacrificed in clearing the lake site.

If the only defect of the artificial lake is having appropriated a disproportionate share of the area for itself, this, fortunately, is often possible of correction. The acreage can perhaps be added to in the future so that there evolves finally a well-rounded plan, giving proper space for land recreation activities.

The ultimate idiocy, of course, is reached in impounding a lake so extensive that lands privately owned beyond the boundaries of the public holding are generously presented with a shore frontage. Uncontrolled frontage on a recreation lake is a constant threat against the high standards we would insure for park and recreation areas. It is a potential for all the subversive manifestations of shoddy, commercial amusement enterprise—dance halls, concessions, and the like which, even in remote contact, cannot but affect unfavorably the natural park values and the recreation ideals we would preserve.

AFTER BATHING AND BOATING there are other sports and active recreational pursuits which, if not so widely demanded, are yet attracting constantly increasing popular participation.

Winter sports, as a group, are prominent among these and embrace many activities. Few are actually dependent on construction for their existence as recreational offerings in a park, yet all are greatly promoted and more widely enjoyed by reason of the availability of certain accessory structures. Thus, while perhaps only tobogganing and bobsledding may be said really to require construction (in the form of tracks when a suitable hillside is lacking or when maximum safety and satisfaction are sought), outdoor winter pursuits generally will make auxiliary use of heated shelters, concessions, and such other facilities as are basic to a recreational program at other seasons of the year. The range of cross country skiing and snowshoeing is obviously widened by the availability of shelter cabins at strategic locations on an overland trail, but these again usually meet a dual or multiple need not confined to the winter sports program alone.

Horseback riding is currently enjoying an increasing popularity in some localities, hardly second to the great interest in winter sports prevailing in New England and in some areas of the West. It has long been a popular pursuit in the larger national parks, ranging from a form of exercise of a few hours' duration to extended trips of several days into remote and often otherwise inaccessible areas. More recent has been its introduction into parks smaller in area and nearer to population centers. Structures directly facilitating riding embrace stables and corrals, and where horse trails are extensive and the country rugged and little developed, trail shelters and overnight accommodations for riders, and trail shelters and corrals for the riding and pack animals are not unusual.

THE POTENTIALITIES FOR CULTURAL RECREATION in natural parks were only realized long after facilities for active recreation had won place there. In spite of this comparatively short span of recognition and development, the propriety of facilities for cultural pursuits in such publicly owned areas is now almost universally admitted.

During recent years there has been a healthy overhauling of old theories that too long governed museum interpretation of outdoor life, and history as well. Emerges the modern viewpoint that it is more civilized and more illuminating to view Nature and its phenomena in situ, and the automobile has made this possible, sooner or later, for everyone.

There are those who claim that the trend reversal that is sending the interpretation of Nature from city museums to the outdoors results from the constant threat of dust explosions in many metropolitan museums. This is a moot point among authorities, but it deserves passing mention if any inquiry into cause is pressed.

The Great Enlightenment has had its depressing effect on the bid price for museum specimens of geological fragments, dinosaur tracks in concrete, and Cardiff giants. Quite possibly it may have made some contribution to the appalling mortality among examples of that once far-flung and glamorous institution—the small town zoo. But there are gains to balance these tragic losses, and parks of natural and scientific interest are the beneficiaries.

Structures functioning to interpret the natural, scientific, and historic phases of parks are today many and diverse, and have greatly widened the field of usefulness and appeal of the public preserve. Parks which have added the interpretation of cultural interests to the provision of active recreation will be found to attract many visitors who might never be lured by a foot trail, bridle path, or diving board, or even Nature itself—uninterpreted.

Facilitating media for projecting the story of Nature, in terms of the natural sciences dealing with earth, sky, elements, phenomena, flora, and fauna, and the story of man, by the exposition of events, preservation of survivals, and reconstruction of memorabilia, in record of his progress, may be said to fall within two groups.

One group depends upon the eye for reception. It embraces markers, shrines, and museums, a series in ascending scale, each springing from and elaborating the simpler facility next preceding it. Historical preservations and reconstructions and so-called exhibits-in-place belong to this group.

The other group functions rather through the ear. It is a shorter series, embracing the campfire circle and outdoor theater, or amphitheater. Here again there are stages of elaboration, as the outdoor theater develops out of the campfire circle. It is altogether possible that the community building, particularly as it functions in many national parks, is the ultimate of this series, for it brings under roof some of the activities of the campfire circle and outdoor theater. Inasmuch as its offerings are usually not limited to lectures and exhibitions, but include a variety of entertainments such as concerts and dancing, its purpose is perhaps more social than cultural. Herein it is chosen to consider it among the complement of facilities identified with the overnight use of a park or recreation area.

Picnic Shelter, Dr. Edmund A. Babler Memorial Park, St. Louis, Missouri