California State Parks System

In 1928 Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., led a team of landscape architects and scores of volunteers to develop a comprehensive list of sites that could be added to the California State Park System. Covering 1,000 miles of coastline and thousands of acres of forests, deserts, mountains, lakes, and other areas, the plan ultimately resulted in the addition of more than 120 parks to the system.

History

When California’s Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove were set aside by the United States Congress in 1864 as the nation’s first state-owned parkland, Governor Frederick Low appointed Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., to create a resource inventory, statement of purpose, and recommendations for park management. Although Olmsted, Sr.’s, report was not heeded—the budget it called for deemed too costly—it established a philosophy and approach for state park design and governance that was continued by his son, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., six decades later. In the 1920s, the Save the Redwoods League, of which Olmsted, Jr., was a member, led a coalition to campaign for the establishment of a state park system in California. In 1927, a landmark in public lands legislation was passed directing the Department of Natural Resources, through the recently created State Park Commission, to conduct a survey of suitable lands for inclusion in a "comprehensive, well balanced state park system." Olmsted, Jr., was hired to direct the project, with a mandate to submit the survey results as a report to the secretary of state by December 31, 1928.

Emerald Bay State Park, California, 2015 © California State Parks, Brian Baer.

For this monumental task, the state appropriated a mere $15,000. Olmsted was assisted by a small staff of landscape architects who, he wrote, “worked at rates of pay much below their normal professional compensation,” and scores of advisers in the field who worked “without compensation.” The assembled team conducted public meetings and site visits, and gathered data. Scenic, natural, cultural, historic, and recreation values were considered, as well as current management practices and challenges and the ability to acquire sites.

The result was a pragmatic report identifying more than 120 properties (winnowed down from more than 325 candidate sites) that could be acquired for the future park system.

Olmsted began his report with these words:

“The scope of the Survey as authorized by the legislature is very broad … The brief time allotted for making the Survey and the limits of the appropriation available … when compared to the vast extent of the State, the richness and variety of its scenic and recreational resources, the diversity of means employed in utilizing them, and the difficulties of transportation in many areas, made it obvious from the beginning that the study and presentation of so large a scope of facts must be in many respects more superficial, hurried and tentative than I could wish …”

Cover of Olmsted report (left); page from Olmsted report (right)

Olmsted’s report divided the proposed parks into the following categories: Sea Coast Projects; Redwood and Woodland Projects; Lake and River Projects; Mountains, Buttes, etc.; Desert Projects; and Projects of Historical and of Scientific Interest. Within each were recommendations for specific sites and notes about their characteristics and significance. While the report explicitly noted that public education and conservation were its chief priorities, Olmsted and the Parks Commission also promoted the higher values a park system can serve, describing a practical way for Californians to realize the "joy of living,” which included “automobile pleasure trips,” termed one of the “major sports” of California.

Redwood Highway before 1918

A state bond act, which overwhelmingly passed the California legislature, established six million dollars to purchase the recommended lands. Within this remarkable appropriation of state funds for parks was a caveat that another six million dollars’ worth would need to be acquired, as private gifts of money or donations of land, thus realizing a twelve-million-dollar yield for what became one of the largest systems of state parks in the nation. By 1934, the state had acquired and designated the first 49 parks of the system.

Scenic Resources of California State Park Survey by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., 1928. Image courtesy of California State Parks.

Following World War II, park visitation increased rapidly, and California Governor Earl Warren signed an omnibus bill to fund the acquisition of new parks and expansion of existing parks. Olmsted, Jr., was asked to advise on the establishment of new parks and parkways, particularly in the underserved valley, desert, and mountain regions of the state’s interior. His second report, published in 1950, served as the guiding document for park acquisition until the late twentieth century.

Yucca Trees near Hesperis, 1929. Photo courtesy of Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.

The California State Parks System, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2014, now includes 280 parks totaling 1.3 million acres. The more than 68 million people who visit these parks each year continue to benefit from the vision established by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and his son.