64 FOREST OUTINGS 



He did excellent work, but most city parks today must of necessity fail to 

 meet his definition. The city-park movement has had to concentrate on 

 children's playgrounds, on neighborhood parks and playfields of rather 

 ugly facilities, with professional and semiprofessional leadership furnished for 

 playground games. 



This has necessarily changed the character of some of the earlier city parks 

 planned by Olmsted and other pioneer national planners. If Olmsted could 

 see Central Park in New York City now on a hot Sunday, the spectacle of our 

 progress might sadden him. 



You cannot bring the country into the city and keep things countrified. 

 But city people can get out into the country now far more easily with 30 or 90 

 horsepower propelling them at the governed pressure of a restless foot. So 

 now the cities are making parks and human refuges out from town. Robert 

 Moses, of Mayor La Guardia's administration in New York City, fighting to 

 give the people there a little more natural relief, is fighting for something 

 really needed. 



Reconsider this simple statistic: Only about 1 percent of all our vast ocean 

 shore line and Great Lakes shore line is publicly owned. All the rest is hedged 

 with signs, actual or implicit: Keep Out Or Pay. Much the same thing is 

 generally true inland, of all the little lake shores, bayous, fishing streams, 

 and the more accessible pleasure groves surviving. 



Denver, Colo. ; Phoenix, Ariz. ; and Fort Worth, Tex., now manage forest 

 parks for their citizens. Boston, Mass.; Cleveland, Ohio; and 294 other 

 American municipalities even in 1935, at the last general count available, 

 reported 514 parks with 129,941 acres outside their city limits. 



TOWN, COUNTY, AND CITY FORESTS . . . One of the earliest town forests was 

 that of Danville, N. H., set aside in 1760, and managed by the parsonage 

 committee. For a century and a half it has been a successful venture, furnish- 

 ing both forest products and income. Other New England towns had town 

 forests; they are a characteristic feature of public forestry in the Northeast, 

 and the idea has spread somewhat, until now there are some 1,500 com- 

 munity forests throughout the United States. Usually they are small forests 

 set aside to protect town water supplies, provide opportunity for construe- 



