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Mission 66 Development at Rocky Mountain National Park

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Mission 66 Development at Rocky Mountain National Park THE MISSION 66 PROGRAM AT ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK: 1947-1973 Project H12000040001/J1526085488 Funded by the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Colorado State University Maren Thompson Bzdek, M.A., Research Associate Janet Ore, Ph.D., Associate Professor 2010 Contents Mission 66 and the National Park Service ..................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Mission 66 at Rocky Mountain National Park ................................................................................................................................................................ 6 Mission 66 Property Types ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 27 Potential Mission 66 Districts ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 32 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 40 The United States Congress established Rocky Mountain National funding and related development activity at Rocky were the Civilian Park in north-central Colorado in 1915 to protect a biologically Conservation Corps (CCC) era (1932-1941) and the Mission 66 era diverse and scenic portion of the Front Range of the Southern (1950-1973). Rockies. More than half of the 415-square-mile park is above tree line in the alpine tundra—the remainder is in the subalpine forest, This report provides a general history of Mission 66 development in montane forest, and grassland zones. The Continental Divide divides Rocky Mountain National Park and includes a survey of the extant the park into two distinct climates; the west side receives more resources from this period. The report only briefly mentions the rainfall than the east, is more heavily forested, and has a lower related Mission 66 program at the Shadow Mountain National average altitude. A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Rocky contains Recreation Area. The NPS managed this 29-square-mile parcel at the spectacular glacial topography and mountain meadows. The park southwest corner of the park from 1952 to 1979, when Congress also includes the remnants of a rich human history, from 10,000- transferred it to the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Arapaho year-old archaeological sites to mining, ranching, and homesteading National Recreation Area.1 The information in this report establishes structures from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. a context for management of the park’s structures built between Like many national parks, Rocky’s built environment reveals 1950 and 1973—a period that transformed Rocky Mountain decades of shifting National Park Service (NPS) policy that includes National Park for visitors and staff alike. significant examples of both building removal and construction. In nearly a century of management, the NPS has reshaped Rocky’s In addition to the Rocky Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies landscape to provide controlled public access to its fragile Unit (RM-CESU), many individuals and institutions contributed to ecosystems. Preservation and use of the park’s cultural and natural the successful completion of this report. At Rocky, Cheri Yost, Tim resources historically reflects changing public expectations about Burchett, Karen Waddell, Sybil Barnes, and Joe Arnold provided unspoiled wilderness. In addition to obliterating old roads, stumps, helpful advice and access to research materials. Staff at the Denver miles of fencing, corrals, mine sites, and borrow pits, the NPS has Service Center’s Technical Information Center, the Rocky Mountain razed or moved more than 600 buildings within the park boundaries Region of the National Archives and Records Administration, and as it transferred private tracts of land to federal ownership. At the the Estes Park Library facilitated additional research. Finally, a group same time, the agency has constructed, upgraded, and replaced of graduate and undergraduate students from Colorado State visitor and staff facilities, campgrounds, roads, and trails to facilitate University conducted surveys and produced papers that informed and control activities and access within the park. These ongoing activities are a necessity of park management but are subject to 1 Public Law 95-450, October 11, 1978, created the Indian Peaks Wilderness and budgetary constraints. The most significant periods of adequate the Arapaho National Recreation Area. 2 this larger report. Those students are Larry Beidle, Jason Biggins, numbers to escalate to two million annually by 1966.2 With the Brannon Epling, Josh Haney, Michelle Hansen, Alexandra introduction of Mission 66, Wirth and his colleagues built on the Hernandez, Rachel Kline, Cori Knudten, Becca McCarty, Cashel momentum of public concern about the state of the parks, McGloin, Catherine Moore, Blake Stewart, Alexandra Wallace, Josh highlighted by the influential essayist Bernard DeVoto and others.3 Weinberg, and Tyler Welch. “Channeling use” for “visitor enjoyment” was the guiding precept for redevelopment plans that re-conceptualized how the parks 4 Mission 66 and the National Park Service functioned as public places. Wirth argued that developing new visitor accommodation areas permitted restoration of scenic lands Launched with Congressional funding in 1956, Mission 66 was a formerly obscured by lodges and cabins that had obstructed use service-wide effort to update the national parks in anticipation of and marred scenery for years. To absorb larger number of the fiftieth anniversary of the Park Service in 1966. Conrad Wirth, automobile tourists, the plans redirected public use of the parks to director of the NPS from 1951 to 1964, conceived the centralized areas. Wirth and his colleagues perceived auto travel comprehensive plan for funding and convinced President through the parks in private vehicles as an inherently democratic Eisenhower and Congress to support it. A landscape architect, Wirth solution for efficient “day use” visitation that removed the existing was a New Deal veteran who had managed the National Park monopoly of concessioner-run public transportation services.5 After Service’s CCC program for the state parks in the 1930s. This a lengthy planning process with public participation, each park experience fostered his belief that modern planning and technology superintendent worked with his staff to outline a full list of needs could solve preservation issues resulting from intensive public use that would clear maintenance and infrastructure backlogs and of the parks. When he took charge of the NPS, Wirth inherited an accommodate growing visitor numbers. Categories for agency suffering from lack of funding and inadequate facilities due to World War II shortages. At the same time, visitation had grown 2 “Yearly Visitation to Rocky Mountain National Park, 1915 to 2008,” RMNP rapidly. In the postwar economic recovery, automobile ownership records, received from park ranger Cheri Yost, January 5, 2010; U.S. Department of per family climbed to 80 percent by 1960. Increased mobility, the Interior, National Park Service, “Master Plan Narrative—Mission 66 for Rocky expanded affluence and greater leisure time continued to fuel Mountain National Park, Volumes 1&3” (National Park Service, 1961), 2. 3 visitation in the national parks. At Rocky Mountain National Park, Bernard DeVoto, “Let’s Close the National Parks,” Harper’s Magazine, October 1953, 49-52. yearly visitation jumped from 339,928 in 1945 to 808,115 in 1946 4 Ethan Carr et al, “The Mission 66 Era of National Park Development, 1945-1972,” and passed the one-million mark in 1948. Visitation continued to Draft Multiple Property Documentation Form (Oakland, CA: National Park Service, mount—it grew by 29 percent between FY 1962 and FY 1963, from January 2006), 17. 5 Conrad L. Wirth, “Mission 66 in the Headlines,” in National Parks Magazine, v.32, 1.3 million to 1.7 million visitors. Rocky’s managers expected visitor no. 132, Jan-Mar 1958, 8-9, 36-38; Carr et al, “The Mission 66 Era,” 14-18. 3 improvement included roads, trails, campgrounds and related Service Rustic (1916-1942) structures, which the public had come to facilities, visitor centers, recreational sites, signage, litter control, identify with national park settings.7 Wirth and his colleagues restoration of historic structures, archaeological studies, housing, argued that the contemporary, strictly functional buildings would and utilities. The design concept for visitor centers shifted from distract less from the natural landscape and allowed the Park small museum buildings to multi-functional interpretive facilities Service to meet the needs and lifestyles of modern visitors while that also provided exhibits, rest areas, services, and in some cases better protecting natural resources.8 Although often met with administrative offices.6 At Rocky, plans included road critical reaction, the Park Service Modern aesthetic was less an issue improvements, several new visitor centers, picnic areas, upgrades than the extent of expanded access to wild areas that the post-war to campgrounds, administrative
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