A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 467 



$62,500,000. This is what people probably would pay for the priv- 

 ilege of using the forest if the price were asked. The incidental fact 

 that people have to pay for admission to the movies and do not 

 usually have to pay for admission to the forest does not mean that 

 the outdoor recreation is any less valuable. 



(2) No inclusive figures are available for the amount of money 

 invested in forest recreation. The special Senate Committee on the 

 Conservation of Wild-Life Resources 1 estimates that "the invest- 

 ments which the Federal and various State Governments have made 

 for the purpose of preserving or increasing wild life comes to a total 

 of $507,134,935." The total amount of money so far spent in the 

 purchase of State parks and forests used primarily for recreation 

 amounts to nearly $50,000,000. The annual expenditures by States 

 for forest recreational developments, including chiefly the mainte- 

 nance of parks and reservations, amounted in 1929 to $4,612,711. 



In New England alone, it is estimated, $550,000,000 is invested in 

 recreational property. 2 Of all New England's recreational appeals, 

 the dominant ones are natural surroundings among which lakes and 

 mountains rank first. 3 Consequently a very considerable proportion 

 of the $550,000,000 recreational investment may be attributed to 

 forest recreation. 



In Wisconsin 4 "it has been estimated that the investment in a 

 resort area 40 miles square in the highland lake district is almost 

 $40,000,000." 



In view of the $40,000,000 estimated to have been expended on 

 the area 40 miles square in Wisconsin, it is interesting to speculate 

 what amounts may have been invested in such extensive, popular, 

 and much-developed forest playgrounds as California, Colorado, or 

 the Adirondacks. 



(3) Private recreational investments in many regions bear an 

 especially important relationship to the rural tax problem. It has 

 been found, for instance, that recreational lands contain 37 percent 

 of the tax base in Oneida County, Wis., and 63 percent of the tax 

 base in Vilas County, Wis. In these counties "even on the acre 

 basis, recreational land is usually assessed for more than farm land 

 or merchantable timber." 5 



It is impossible even to estimate how much taxable wealth results 

 from forest recreation in the entire United States. A material frac- 

 tion of the billion dollars of taxes paid in 1931 on motor vehicles and 

 gasoline must be prorated to forest recreation. In addition there are 

 the taxes on forest hotels, resorts, residences, and services; on scenic 

 railroads, trolley lines, and tramways; on camping clothing and other 

 equipment; and on the manufacture and sale of arms and ammunition. 

 The sum of ah 1 these taxes certainly involves a huge total. 



Of course much of this tax bill would be collected even if there 

 were no forest recreation. If people could not go to the forest, a good 

 many of them would take their vacation tours somewhere else. Sim- 

 ilarly, if the people who now have woodland summer homes were 

 obliged to give them up, a goodly percentage would be content with 



1 Wild Life Conservation, Senate Report No. 1329, 71st Cong., 3d sess., 1931. 



2 New England Council News Letter, Nov. 19, 1931. 



3 "New England's Recreational Appeals," Laurence W. Chidester, 1930. 



4 Forest Land Use in Wisconsin, committee on land use and forestry, Madison, AVis., 1932. 



5 "Recreation as a Land Use," George S. Wehrwein and Kenneth H. Parsons, Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, Madison, Wis., 1932. 



