A BRIEF HISTORY 67 



All sorts of reasons seem to have entered: The commissioners' head- 

 aches; the zeal of that prophet of Nature, John Muir; and the thought that 

 since all America was apparently out to see this lovely piece of primitive 

 country, and stomp all over it, the whole country, not just California, 

 ought to take over recreational administration of the area, and foot the bill. 



Conflicts in jurisdiction also entered; and the net of it was that in 1905 

 California re-ceded its State rights as to the Yosemite Valley natural at- 

 tractions to the care and management of the Federal Government. Mean- 

 while the original pattern of State parks to preserve historic places was 

 gradually being extended. Mackinac Island and Fort Mackinac (formerly 

 Fort Michilimackinac) were set aside in 1885. In 1889 Massachusetts set 

 aside seven different properties. As early as 1867 New York State moved 

 to recapture into public ownership and prevent further defacerrient of the 

 lands adjoining its supreme natural wonder, Niagara Falls. This was 

 finally accomplished in 1887. The Niagara State Reservation was New 

 York's first State park. Also, as early as 1873, New York pioneered in the 

 practice of holding tax-reverted lands for forest and parks. Of the some 

 1,600,000 acres of land included in State parks in the United States in 1938, 

 New York had about 189,000 acres. These figures do not include lands in 

 State forests. In point of vitality, effectiveness, and self-sufficiency, the 

 State-park movement in New York has been exceptionally successful. 



Younger States also have developed effective programs. To the west 

 it is mainly an intelligent effort to fit State parks and forests into inclusive 

 principles of democratic use. The California State-park program is a con- 

 spicuous attempt to fit a State-park system into the whole set-up of public 

 forests and parks of all kinds, and to make the State parks not only a worthy 

 system in themselves, but also a working part of the whole system of public 

 recreational lands. 



Most of the other States now have State parks or State forests. They are 

 of varying types, managed by differing kinds of State agencies. The em- 

 phasis in most States is toward furnishing reasonably but not closely ac- 

 cessible opportunities — for city people in particular — to enjoy forest or 

 beach recreation. But a thinning down of natural qualities by progressive 

 dilution with mass amusements is nearly everywhere discernible. 



