LAND FOR WILD LIFE AND RECREATION 227 



parks are in the West; all but eight million acres of national 

 forest land are also there. This means that there is a great need 

 for more recreational land in the East. Many of the areas 

 which are unsuitable for national parks or forests must be de' 

 veloped as state, county, or municipal parks. Michigan, Pemv 

 sylvania, and New York have spent a lot of money and effort 

 doing this. Also considerable sub'marginal land retired from cul' 

 tivation has been developed for recreation. However, there are 

 still large sections of America without any available public 

 recreation area to which the people can go. 



Even in the West, particularly in southern California, the 

 available recreation land is too small. It is estimated that the 

 Angeles Forest near Los Angeles has 3,744,418 visitors a year. 

 So far the only solution seems to be to develop lands which, al x 

 though beneath national park standards for beauty, and national 

 forest standards for timber, would be at least usable as recreation 

 grounds. One great advantage of these would be that they 

 would reduce the terrific pressure on the national parks, which 

 are now greatly overcrowded. 



In simple terms, the first problem of parks is that there 

 are not enough parks in the areas of high concentration of 

 population. The second problem is that in many of the parks 

 set aside because of their spectacular beauty there are such 

 crowds of people that the general effect is more that of an 

 amusement park than of one of the great scenic areas of the 

 world. The third problem is money. Even if the national parks 

 were near the great population centers, and if there were enough 

 national parks so that their scenic wonders were not lost in 

 the crowds, they would not meet the recreation needs of the 

 country if the majority of the people could not afford to go 

 to them. 



There are two sides to this money problem. First, there is the 

 problem of cost to the visitor. Forest Service recreation areas 

 are for the most part free. You could camp on the western 



