478 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



away from roadsides and main trails and boat lanes are undesirable 

 because they give the recreationalist an unnecessary impression of 

 the very regimentation and artificiality which he is seeking to avoid. 



RESIDENCE AREAS 



"Residence areas" provide space for private homes, hotels and 

 resorts, group camps, sanitoria, and stores and services of one sort 

 or another. They are in most cases privately owned, though the 

 national forests in 1931 furnished summer-home sites for some 

 493,235 special-use permittees and their guests. The rent which the 

 Government got from the summer-home sites in that year amounted 

 to more than $150,000. For the acreage involved this was the best 

 paying activity which the Forest Service undertook. Many of the 

 better-run private residence areas have been sources of great profit 

 to their owners.. There is here no conflict with commodity exploitation 

 because the returns from recreation are so much greater than they 

 could be from any other source. 



About one-quarter acre is the minimum desirable area for a single 

 forest residence. One acre would probably not be an unreasonable 

 average, for both public and private land. Of course a few immense 

 private estates run into thousands of acres, but only a small fraction 

 of each of these tracts could fairly be considered a residence area. 

 A store or service station generally necessitates a little less acreage 

 than a private home, while a hotel or a group camp requires consider- 

 ably more. 



OUTING AREAS 



While for many people the automobile tour in itself supplies every 

 want, increasing numbers of people desire more intimate contact with 

 the woods. Their first trip may be confined to the highway, but 

 soon a curiosity as to what lies beyond the roadside fringe is aroused, 

 and they return to find out. Once the joys of intimate contact with 

 the forest are discovered, the idea of taking a vacation exclusively 

 on the highway seems almost as preposterous as it would seem to 

 have moving sidewalks established in picture gaUeries so that one 

 might enjoy the paintings without stopping. 



These people may be interested only in an afternoon's walk or an 

 all-day hike or at most in an overnight trip. They do not require 

 the large expanse of a wilderness and may not have ready access to 

 any superlative or primeval areas. Consequently, yet another type 

 of recreational area is needed. This type of area will be referred 

 to as an " outing area." 



For this use any tract of forest on which one can get away from the 

 sounds of the highway and which has not been severely injured 

 scenically will be acceptable. The outing areas will thus be inter- 

 mediate between primeval areas and commercially operated timber 

 tracts. In most cases it will be perfectly possible to combine sus- 

 tained-yield forestry with the recreational use of outing areas. While 

 even the best silviculture generally injures the aesthetic value of a 

 forest for many years, there are high recreational values on most 

 well-managed timber areas at least during the second half of the 

 rotation. Obviously, recreational use and timber operation can never 

 be combined unless there is assurance of sustained yield. In view 

 of the almost uniform failure of private owners to practice sustained- 



