"THE SHOW WINDOWS OF A STATE": A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CLASSIFICATION OF MICHIGAN, INDIANA, AND OHIO STATE PARKS Brittany N. Bayless A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2006 Committee: Dr. Edmund Danziger, Jr., Advisor Dr. Walter Grunden © 2006 Brittany N. Bayless All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Dr. Edmund Danziger, Jr., Advisor State parks constitute a valuable portion of the United States’ national, regional, state, local, and private lands devoted to the conservation and preservation of nature and American culture. State parks also represent state values through their display of special natural, cultural, and historic characteristics. Thus, it is important to consider how citizens and policy makers value their natural areas at the state level. This study maintains that there are fifty different state park systems in the United States. Each system and park represents different ideals and attitudes toward the use of natural resources and unique wilderness areas. These sentiments convey state and public values of recreational areas. This thesis examines how the creation and organization of Maumee Bay State Park in Ohio, Indiana Dunes State Park, and William C. Sterling State Park in Michigan reflect different state and public sentiments toward the use of natural resources and wilderness areas. This study argues that each state government’s priorities, as transmitted through their representative Departments of Natural Resources (DNRs), shaped the histories of specific state parks. State DNRs hold notions of what a state park should be, how it should be administered, and what its obligations are to the public. These beliefs differ from state to state and are apparent in levels of park development such as landscape alteration, facility construction, and a range of recreational opportunities. To measure differences prevalent in these state parks, this study uses a developmental continuum to iv classify each of the three parks. This scale not only gauges state views of nature, but land use priorities conveyed by different DNR mission statements and goals. Ultimately, state parks can be classified under one of three levels of development established by this study’s state park development continuum. This classification presents the field of environmental history, which has been dominated by literature on national parks, with new, original work on state parks. v I dedicate this project to my family and friends. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Professor Edmund Danziger, who showed great confidence in this project and who offered friendly guidance as it was being written and revised. From him I have learned to "live life without fear, confront all obstacles and know that I can overcome them." My family, friends and colleagues have also provided inspiration and generous encouragement. To all I am thankful--I could not have done this without you! This project may not have become a reality without the help of Jim Brower, Dana Bollin, Jim Longnecker, and Todd Webb. I would also like to thank the staff at the Indiana Historical Society, Ohio Historical Society, Michigan State Archives, Monroe County Historical Commission, and Bowling Green State University Center for Archival Collections. Lastly, I would like to thank Tom Anderson and the Save the Dunes Council. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………… 1 CHAPTER I: W.C. STERLING STATE PARK, MICHIGAN: FROM PRIMITIVE ROOTS TO A MODERN EXISTENCE……………………………………….......... 11 Part I: MDNR………………………………………………………………... 17 Part II: Sterling State Park…………………………………………………… 22 CHAPTER II: INDIANA DUNES STATE PARK: THE HAPPY MEDIUM?…….. 44 Part I: IDNR…………………………………………………………………. 49 Part II: Indiana Dunes State Park……………………………………………. 54 CHAPTER III: MAUMEE BAY STATE PARK, OHIO: “NATURE’S RESORT”... 76 Part I: ODNR………………………………………………………………… 84 Part II: Maumee Bay State Park……………………………………………... 89 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………. 109 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………. 118 viii TABLE OF FIGURES FIGURE 1: MAP OF MONROE, MICHIGAN……………………………………... 11 FIGURE 2: STERLING STATE PARK MAP………………………………………. 23 FIGURE 3: AERIAL PHOTO OF STERLING STATE PARK…………………….. 36 FIGURE 4: MAP OF GARY, INDIANA……………………………………………. 44 FIGURE 5: INDIANA DUNES STATE PARK MAP………………………………. 55 FIGURE 6: AERIAL PHOTO OF INDIANA DUNES STATE PARK PAVILION... 60 FIGURE 7: PROPOSAL MAP FOR INDIANA DUNES NATIONAL LAKESHORE………………………………………………………………………… 64 FIGURE 8: MAP OF INDIANA DUNES STATE PARK AND NATIONAL LAKESHORE………………………………………………………………………… 67 FIGURE 9: MAP OF TOLEDO, OHIO……………………………………………… 76 FIGURE 10: MAP DEPICTING THE GREAT BLACK SWAMP…………………. 80 FIGURE 11: MAP OF MAUMEE BAY STATE PARK……………………………. 90 FIGURE 12: PHOTO OF MAUMEE BAY STATE PARK AMPHITHEATRE…… 97 1 INTRODUCTION So, McClintock suggests, you should go to the park in the right state of mind, to look, to feel, to put yourself in nature’s hands. Leave your philosophies behind, make your mind a blank sheet; nature will write upon it…Leave sports behind, for a while. Be alone a little. Don’t talk much. You can talk later, after you have come back from a stroll. Always walk, where you can. And slowly. Get into the silent places and sit on a fallen log. Listen to the birds. Look at the wide landscape and then shift your view to the small things—organic, inorganic. Don’t compare what you are seeking with something somewhere else. Nature never repeats, parrotlike. Don’t look, in Nebraska, for what that state does not possess. Each spot of earth has its own special beauty. You may think the flat plain, or the desert, lacking in thrill. You will find yourself mistaken, if you remain awhile and give yourself up to what is here. 1 Freeman Tilden Envision a stretch of rolling sand dunes, miniature mountains of fine beige grains that have been shaped by thousands of years of ravaging wind and water. Lining the tops of these hills are beach grasses, and resting between are intermittent forest and marsh communities. Now look beyond the dunes to the beach. On the shore, out of reach of charging waves, lie driftwood, seaweed, and an assortment of shells and smooth stones. Then, after taking in the more immediate scenery, turn around and take in its surrounding landscape. The dunes turn into forests, but its stretch, unlike the clear blue water’s, is cut off. Roads carve the once-dominating woods and smoke stacks protrude from cleared areas. Even more apparent is the place where seemingly-unaltered forest communities and dunes end, and industry begins. What is keeping industry and civilization from extending their reach into the dunes and onto the beach? A simple fence marking the Indiana Dunes State Park’s property line.2 1 Freeman Tilden, The State Parks: Their Meaning in American Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1962), 37-38. 2 The significance of property, the power of ownership, is represented by the fence’s presence. Unlike the fences European settlers constructed to keep wilderness out, today’s conservationists construct fences to do the 2 Industry and conservation exist with competing interests because of conflicting views of how natural resources and wilderness areas should be used. During European settlement of North America in the seventeenth century, most believed that land untouched by human development was land wasted. Fortunately, later individuals like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau exalted the “romantic” or aesthetic and spiritual value of the natural world. As a result, the similarly-minded naturalist John Muir called for wilderness preservation during the late 1800s, initiating the United States’ first national movement for natural protection. This primary movement included the famous debate over whether to dam Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park as a solution to San Francisco’s chronic water shortage. Formation of two groups resulted: the wilderness preservationists, led by Muir, and the utilitarian-conservationists. To Muir’s dismay, the valley was dammed as Gifford Pinchot, whom Theodore Roosevelt appointed as his first Director of the United States Forest Service, endorsed a system of conservation also known as utilitarianism. This model was based on English writer Jeremy Bentham’s phrase, “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Twentieth century Progressives viewed “unregulated destruction of the nation’s forests and waterways an enormous waste,” and believed that “scientific management was the answer.” Therefore, Roosevelt endorsed federal regulation to manage the nation’s remaining wilderness lands with a business-like efficiency that facilitated opposite: keep development at bay. In his book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, environmental historian William Cronon uncovers how Euro-American settlement and eventual dominance, as a shift from Indian control, affected the ecological and human communities of New England. His main purpose is to show the cultural and ecological consequences of what he calls the “frontier process.” As part of this, Cronon describes Euro-American construction of fences as the replacement for ecological habitats and forests. Settlers viewed the boundary markers as a sign of “progress,” and symbol of the New World’s transformation into and reproduction of the Old World. Cronon contends that because settlers took initiative in prescribing specific purposes for plots of land and separated crops from animals and local natives,