National Park in the San Francisco area. A number of county and state parks 

 were created in the 1930s and 1940s largely through the efforts of local 

 conservationists. The political climate of the late 1950s included a push for 

 increasing park lands near major cities; Point Reyes National Seashore, 

 authorized in 1962, laid the groundwork for the establishment of Golden Gate 

 National Recreation Area ten years later. GGNRA enveloped a mix of urban, 

 military, recreational and agricultural lands, including much of the western San 

 Francisco waterfront and open space of southern Marin County. 



2. National Park Service Acquisition, 1963-88 



President John F. Kennedy signed Public Law 87-657 (S.476) on 

 September 13, 1962, authorizing Point Reyes National Seashore. After a 

 number of initial land purchases, including the massive Bear Valley Ranch, the 

 authorizing acquisition funds had been spent. With park-designated lands 

 slated for development and increasing public activism to "Save Our Seashore," 

 as well as landowner complaints about paying higher taxes, the authorizing act 

 was amended in 1969 to raise the acquisition ceiling to $57.7 million. Most of 

 the park land purchases occurred during the early 1970s. The U. S. 

 Department of the Interior officially established Point Reyes National Seashore 

 on September 16, 1972, after sufficient land had been purchased to make the 

 area efficiently administrable to carry out the purposes of the Authorizing Act 

 of 1962 and its revision of 1969. 108 



Public sentiment fueled by the "Save Our Seashore" movement brought a 

 push for additional park lands close to San Francisco. As the idea progressed of 

 an urban park that also stretched north into rural lands of the Olema Valley, 

 some landowners became alarmed. Rancher Boyd Stewart, a supporter of the 

 park idea, recalled: 



Developers got very interested in the land when they 

 started talking about the park .... There was a lot 

 of interest shown in all of the ranches in the Olema 



'""Statement for Management Point Reyes National Seashore (revised May, 1990; National 

 Park Service: 1990), p. 45. 



65 



