The Trail Companion

      ...continued.

      The mainstreaming of the movement began to be reflected in institutional structures. The 1906 Antiquities Act, which gave the President the power to declare national monuments, provided conservationists with a powerful tool - if they could get the right ear. Early instances of projects that did were Muir Woods, previously mentioned, and Pinnacles National Monument, both in 1908. The National Park Service Organic Act of 1916 created a professional, system-wide administration for the national parks then existing and later created, and specified they be run "in such manner and by such means as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." Sierra Club member Stephan Mather became the park service's first director.
      Shortly afterwards a state park movement arose out of what was initially another local preservation effort. In 1917 prominent conservationists connected with the University of California began a drive to preserve the redwoods along the northern coast, where destructive logging was widespread and protection nonexistent. They organized the Save-the-Redwoods League in 1918 with the goal of rescuing representative areas of old-growth forest and cooperating with state and federal authorities in establishing redwood parks. Its campaign galvanized efforts to create a true state park system in the 1920s.

The Establishment of the State Park System

The Sierra Club advocated establishment of a state park commission and a statewide survey of lands suitable for parks as early as 1924. A state park bill was actually passed by the legislature in 1925 but was pocket-vetoed by the governor. Finally, in 1927, three measures were enacted. The first created a Division of Parks in the Department of Natural Resources and a State Park Commission to administer, protect and develop the system. Seven state parks were already in existence by this time, Mount Diablo State Park (1921) being the most recent created in the Bay Area. The second funded the statewide survey advocated by the Sierra Club, and the third put a state park bond issue before the electorate to be voted on in the November 1928 election. Additional laws enacted in the same session of the legislature authorized formation of local park, recreation and parkway districts and acquired Mount Tamalpais in Marin County for a state park (the project of another local movement, this one the Tamalpais Conservation Club).
      Landscape architect and city planner Frederick Law Olmsted, son and namesake of the initial planner of New York's Central Park, San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, directed the California State Park Survey or Olmsted Plan. Completed late in 1928, it recommended over 150 areas for state acquisition throughout California. Those in the Bay Area included the headwaters of Harrington Creek in San Mateo County, additions to the existing Mount Diablo State Park in Contra Costa County, Mount Saint Helena in Napa County, Petrified Forest in Sonoma County, the Sonoma coastline from Bodega Bay to the Russian River, and a number of historical sites. Considered but not included were the broad, undeveloped hill regions surrounding the bayside cities that would soon be the object of other plans. The Olmsted Plan was assured of becoming more than just a plan by the state electorate's passage of the state park bonds by a 3-1 vote.
      Over the next few years the State Park Commission did much to realize the plan. Parks established by the commission include Mount Tamalpais State Park north and west of Muir Woods in 1930, the expanded Mount Diablo State Park, designated a unit of the new state park system in 1931, Sonoma Coast State Park, established and built up through various purchases from 1931-35, Kruse Rhododendron Reserve north of Fort Ross in 1933, and the Armstrong Grove in 1934. The state's purchase of this park from Sonoma County, which converted it from a county park to a state park and incidentally fulfilled James B. Armstrong's original intent for the property, established a precedent for later state acquisitions of county parks.

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