State Parks and Development of the Raleigh
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“GREEN MEANS GREEN, NOT ASPHALT-GRAY”: STATE PARKS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE RALEIGH METROPOLITAN AREA, 1936-2016 By GREGORY L. POWELL Bachelor of Arts in History Virginia Polytechnic Institute Blacksburg, Virginia 2002 Master of Arts in History Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, Arizona 2007 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May, 2017 “GREEN MEANS GREEN, NOT ASPHALT-GRAY”: STATE PARKS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE RALEIGH METROPOLITAN AREA, 1936-2016 Dissertation Approved: Dr. William S. Bryans ________________________________________________ Dissertation Adviser Dr. Michael F. Logan ________________________________________________ Dr. John Kinder ________________________________________________ Dr. Tom Wikle ________________________________________________ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I was fortunate to receive much valuable assistance throughout the process of researching, writing, and editing this dissertation and would like to extend my appreciation to the following people. My family has been unbelievably patient over the years and I want to thank my wife, Heather, and parents, Arthur and Joy, for their unwavering support. I would also like to thank my children, Vincent and Rosalee, for providing the inspiration for the final push, though they may not understand that yet. The research benefitted from the knowledge and suggestions of archivists, librarians, and staff of several institutions. The folks at the Louis Round Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, particularly those working in the Southern Historical Collection and North Carolina Collection, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, and the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, and the North Carolina State Archives deserve praise for their professionalism assistance. I also greatly appreciate the time and advice of my advisory committee, Dr. William Bryans, Dr. Michael Logan, Dr. John Kinder, and Dr. Tom Wikle. They displayed great patience and flexibility, which allowed me to complete this project even as I moved several states away and acquired a family. Their suggestions greatly improved the final product. iii Acknowledgements reflect the views of the author and are not endorsed by committee members or Oklahoma State University Name: GREGORY L. POWELL Date of Degree: MAY, 2017 Title of Study: “GREEN MEANS GREEN, NOT ASPHALT GRAY”: STATE PARKS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE RALEIGH METROPOLITAN AREA, 1936-2016 Major Field: HISTORY Abstract: State parks are a ubiquitous presence on the American landscape with thousands of units in all fifty states that attract far more visitors than the U.S. National Park System. While the sheer diversity and number of state parks can be daunting, their pervasiveness also positions state parks as valuable sources of gauging economic, social, cultural, environmental, and historic development of given locales. This study examines the establishment and development of four units of the North Carolina state parks system located near the state capital of Raleigh and a large, forest tract owned by Duke University often mistaken for a state park by area resident to examine cultural changes that occurred in the region accompanied by rapid urbanization from the 1960s to the present. This urbanization was characterized by the arrival of large numbers of individuals from outside the region who represented the shift from a rural, agricultural region to a densely populated area with large numbers of highly educated, white collar workers in technology industries associated with area research universities. In this context, the development of recreational opportunities in the form of state parks, which dates to the 1930s, illustrated this rapid expansion of the Raleigh metropolitan area in terms of motivations for their establishment and influences upon their development that involved local, state, regional, and national trends and politics. This included processes such as New Deal-era efforts to utilize denuded farm land for recreation, centrality of recreation to post-World War Two urbanization and suburbanization, 1950s- and 1960s-era desegregation efforts, efforts to procure drinking water and implement flood control measures, and the emergence of the “modern” environmental movement. These processes and events, and the interactions of individual residents, politicians, grassroots organizations, university officials, and municipal bodies illustrate the role of politics and ideology upon environmental perspectives, which may be observed in the presence and development of the region’s state parks. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 I. DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTH CAROLINA STATE PARKS SYSTEM..………………………..12 II. URBANIZATION AND WILLIAM B. UMSTEAD STATE PARK………………………................46 III. ENO RIVER STATE PARK AND CIVIC ENVIRONMENTALISM……………………………………81 IV. RESERVOIRS OF CHANGE: JORDAN LAKE AND FALLS LAKE RECREATION AREAS….112 V. DUKE FOREST………………………………………………………………………………………………………148 VI. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………………………………185 VII. REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………………………………194 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. NORTH CAROLINA STATE PARK SYSTEM……………………………………………..………………15 2. WILLIAM B. UMSTEAD STATE PARK........……..……………………………………….…………….50 3. PHYSICAL REGIONS OF NORTH CAROLINA………..….……………………………….…………….54 4. RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK..………………………………..……………………………………………..64 5. PROPOSED EAST COAST GREENWAY…………………………………………………………………..78 6. ENO RIVER STATE PARK.………………………………………………………………………………………85 7. JORDAN LAKE STATE RECREATION AREA.……………………………………………………………118 8. FALLS LAKE STATE RECREATION AREA………………………………………………………………..119 9. MAP OF RALEIGH AND SURROUNDING AREAS……………………………………………………120 10. DUKE FOREST……………………………………………………………………………………………………153 vi INTRODUCTION In 2004, Ney C. Landrum released a broad overview of the development of state parks in the United States, The State Park Movement in America: A Critical Review . In it, he observed that widespread establishment of state parks in the United States was largely a twentieth- century phenomenon. While he acknowledged sporadic nineteenth-century actions tied to contemporary historic preservation efforts and the late century onset of the conservation and preservation movements – such as creation of Niagara Falls State Reservation in 1885 by the State of New York (today, the self-proclaimed “Oldest State Park in America”), the establishment of Itasca State Park in Minnesota in 1891, and the cooperative efforts of the States of New York and New Jersey to preserve the Hudson River Palisades capped by formation of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission in 1900 – Landrum viewed the formation of the National Conference on State Parks (NCSP) in 1921 as the precursor for a broad movement. 1 Landrum and other historians, including Freeman Tilden and Rebecca Conard, observed that the NCSP provided little more than a forum for debating the purpose of state parks during the 1920s, be it tourism, scientific research, or social improvement. Despite this, these historians argued the NCSP contributed to the growing recognition of the role of outdoor 1 Ney C. Landrum, The State Park Movement in America: A Critical Review (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 1-79. 1 recreation in the United States and set the stage for an explosion of state parks a decade later under the auspices of the New Deal. 2 Since the 1920s, state parks have materialized as a ubiquitous feature on the American landscape, with over 7000 units in all fifty states dedicated to the preservation of natural and historic resources and the provision of recreational opportunities. Recent estimates place annual visitation to state park units at over 720 million, compared to the roughly 296 million annual visits received by the 407 units of the more celebrated U.S. National Park System. 3 Unlike the national parks, however, state parks are not regulated by a federal bureaucratic entity such as the National Park Service, which was established by Congress in 1917.4 Rather, they are developed at the discretion of individual states. Historians have noted this arrangement makes analysis of state parks challenging as there are fifty discrete systems, each influenced by localized conditions and actors. 5 While these complexities are daunting in terms of national or regional analysis, Dan K. Utley has observed that due to their pervasiveness and variety state parks can act as “prisms” that reflect economic, cultural, social and environmental perspectives of a given locale over time. 6 2 Landrum, The State Park Movement ; Freeman Tilden, The State Parks: Their Meaning In American Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962); Rebecca Conard, “The National Conference on State Parks: Reflections on Organizational Genealogy”, George Wright Forum 14, no. 4 (1997), 27-42. 3 “America’s State Parks,” accessed June 1, 2015, http://www.americasstateparks.org/About. 4 This was preceded by passage of the Antiquities Act of 1906, which granted the President of the United States the authority to establish national monuments on federal lands via proclamation. The National Park Service is among various agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and United States Forest Service, that currently manages national monuments. 5 This difficulty is reflected in the relatively small number of works that even attempt to analyze state parks