Recreation ground

“ Half a day a week, together with the evenings of the long summer days, would suffice where the means of recreation are near at hand. Even the smallest factory villages could afford a little pleasure ground of their own, a public garden with a free gymnasium, a footrace track, ball ground, a tennis-hall or nine-pin-alley, for the winter season, a free bath, and a few zoölogical attractions. ”

“ In short, local parks are recreation grounds in which beauty of vegetation and often of small scale naturalistic scenery is the first consideration, but which, nevertheless, admits of a large amount of the formal and semiformal work of the gardener and the architect and has often much provision for games and amusements. Drives are often inadvisedly introduced into such parks. ”

“ Magnificent canyons, splendid forests, the homes of great Americans-these are among the places preserved in Federal, State and local park systems. Recreation areas make everything from scuba diving to spelunking to plain old picnicking available to millions. ”

“ We should not overlook the value of the forest reservations as great national parks for recreation and sport, where those so inclined can go and get in touch with nature at her best; where the streams abound in trout, and wild animals are not confined behind iron bars; where there are no signs, 'Keep off the grass,' and, best of all, where one can build himself anew from wholesome mountain air and water, vigorous exercise and plain food. ”

“ Play grounds are primarily selected and improved for particular forms of recreation and only such beauty and ornamentation is allowable as will not unduly interfere with their usefulness for their intended purpose. ”

“ Here’s a thing to go fishing after that there’s real recreation in, full-size man’s recreation, and not the Persian-palace recreation of an Adirondack camp, with ice and servants and electric push-buttons. ”

“ These places should be developed as parks and their resources used exclusively for recreation purposes. Thus used, they would help all interests and reach all people. South America, Switzerland, Canada, and other countries are making intensified and splendid use of their parks by reserving that wild scenic beauty which appeals to all the world.
Parks are dedicated to the highest uses. They are worthy of our greatest attentions. It is of utmost importance that the management of Forest Reserves and the National Parks be separate. ”

“ Recreation in parks tends to prevent wasted life by preventing disease and wrong-doing. The conservation of scenery, the use of scenic places for public recreation parks, is conservation in the highest sense, for parks make the best economic use of the territory and they also pay large dividends in humanity. ”

“ To such a class, the benefits of a Park, possessing such facilities for recreation and improvement as the Sea-side Park will present, will be incalculable, in fostering the health, promoting the happiness, and elevating the taste of all who can avail themselves of its beneficial influences. ”

“ No other country boasts more extraordinary or more diverse options for recreation. Our Nation's federally managed lands account for nearly one in every three acres and, together with our Nation's waters, provide visitors with almost 2 billion opportunities for recreation annually. Eight of ten Americans participate at least monthly in outdoor recreation, and we may choose to challenge ourselves through demanding activities like mountain climbing or river rafting. ”

“ High above the clouds on Beartooth Plateau.
RECREATIONAL USE AND VALUES
No single activity of the forest has grown so rapidly in recent years as recreation. The forest is ideally adapted to recreational use because of the rough, majestic, and undeveloped character of its wilderness where most travel must be done with a horse and pack outfit. It is truly a forest with a “back country.” ”

“ Old Indian trails follow all the rivers and creeks throughout the park, and though these will be more or less obliterated and blocked with fallen timber, a competent guide can always be relied upon to take you to any corner of the park, and when you have found a good camping ground, with feed for the horses, a sparkling stream at your feet, and a circle of noble peaks smiling down upon you, you will, if you are the right sort, thank your stars that railways and hotels and roads lie far away in another world beyond the mountains. ”

“ Here and there important parts of the public lands in the National or State forests, for instance, are cut off from easy use by private inholdings. But the main amenity that is usually hard to reach is water, which happens also to be the major magnet for outdoor recreation of many kinds. ”

“ In the midst of his park, his farms, his woods, and plantations. Now every one knows the healthful and perpetual recreation to be found in any one of these places; the intense delight which many of our country gentlemen take in them, and the beauty and pre-eminence of our English parks, farms, and woods, in consequence. We shall speak more particularly of them presently; but it must not here be forgotten what a boundless field of enjoyment, and increase of wealth, science has of late years opened to the amateur farmer, and to the country gentlemen in general. ”

“ But the automobilists argue that a wilderness domain precludes the huge majority of recreation-seekers from deriving any amusement whatever from it. This is almost as irrational as contending that because more people enjoy bathing than art exhibits therefore we should change our picture galleries into swimming pools. ”

“ Livelier recreation, during the hours of completest ease, consisted mostly, as the period drew itself out, of those courses, along the lake and along the hills, which offer to student-life in whatever phase, throughout that blest country, the most romantic of all forms of "a little change" ”

“ We hear a good deal in these days about the need of recreation, and not a word more than is true, but let us remember that the best recreation may consist in a simple change of work. Behold the arduous toil of the city lawyer, or banker, as on a holiday tour he climbs a peak of the Alps or the Adirondacks, or wades the chilly streams of Scotland or Canada a salmon rod in his hands. ”

“ Here, at once, although much ameliorated to the wants of the modern farmer, the undulating nature of the ground, the richness of the turf, and scattered stately trees still lingering about to attest its olden beauty and importance, we recognize unerringly the well known characteristics of an antient park, but apparently not of large size. ”

“ Every one of these parks, great and small, is a garden filled knee-deep with fresh, lovely flowers of every hue, the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings. ”

“ Today, the splendor of the great outdoors continues to inspire our citizens, and a love of outdoor recreation remains a fundamental part of the American character. By observing Great Outdoors Month, we celebrate our commitment to appreciating and protecting our natural wealth. ”

“ Investments in outdoor vacations give large returns; from an outing one returns with life lengthened, in livelier spirits, more efficient, with new ideas and a broader outlook, and more hopeful and kind. Hence parks and outdoor recreation places are mighty factors for the general welfare; they assist in making better men and women. A park offers the first aid and often [Pg 331] the only cure for the sick and the overworked. Looking upon our sublime scenes arouses a love for our native land and promotes a fellow feeling. Nature is more democratic even than death ”

“ Not only do the Parks contain some of the world's sublimest and most beautiful scenes, but [xiii] each Park is a wild-life reservation, a place where guns are forbidden. Thus protected, these wildernesses will remain forever wild, forever mysterious and primeval, holding for the visitor the spell of the outdoors, exciting the spirit of exploration. Within them will survive that poetic million-year-old highway, the trail. Among their pathless scenes wild life will be perpetuated. ”

“ National parks are a testament to the natural wonders of our mountains, valleys, rivers, and streams. They remind us to take a break from the busy pace of modern society to experience the simpler pleasures of life and provide unique opportunities for personal recreation. ”

“ Development of the Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area, designated by Congress in 1965, should be accelerated.
3. Other National Forest lands in the Basin should also be adapted to a variety of compatible recreational uses, and their beauty and natural functioning protected by watershed management and the improvement of wildlife habitat, at an accelerated pace for early results. ”

“ The National Parks are set apart primarily in order to preserve to the people for all time the opportunity of a peculiar kind of enjoyment and recreation, not measurable in economic terms and to be obtained only from the remarkable scenery which they contain—scenery of these primeval types which are in most parts of the world rapidly vanishing for all eternity before the increased thoroughness of the economic use of land. ”

“ Create and develop natural reserves and parks and recreation areas and classify and protect landscapes and sites so as to ensure the conservation of nature and the preservation of cultural assets of historical or artistic interest ”

“ The more open portions are like spacious parks, carpeted with small shrubs, or only with the fallen needles sprinkled here and there with flowers. In some places, where the ground is level or slopes gently, the trees are assembled in groves, and the flowers and underbrush in trim beds and thickets as in landscape gardens or the lovingly planted grounds of homes; or they are drawn up in orderly rows around meadows and lakes and along the brows of cañons. ”

“ It has provided immediately adjacent to this area a splendid park, containing playing fields, boating lake, pavilions, and many acres of beautifully-planted pleasure ground; and, immediately on the other side of this belt of park, a large area has been laid out, upon which are to be built the necessary homes for those who will be employed in connection with those docks and industries. ”

“ The park is a great wood on a hill, embedded among meadows and harvests. You walk in long solitary alleys, under colonnades of superb oaks, while to the left the lofty stems of the copses mount in close ranks upon the back of the hill. ”

“ There is another and a very different class of men, whose recreation is their garden. An individual of this class, resides some short distance from town—say in the Hampstead-road, or the Kilburn-road, or any other road where the houses are small and neat, and have little slips of back garden. ”

“ How can boys and girls help keep the grass, the paths, the flower-beds, the trees and the buildings beautiful? Where does the money come from to pay the caretakers of the park?
Some people visit the park only in spring, summer or autumn. We all love the park in those seasons. Many do not know how beautiful the bare trees look in winter with their gray or brown branches. There is no more exquisite sight in the world than to see these trees coated with glistening ice out to the tiniest twig, or to see them ridged with pearly white snow. It is a merry sight to see the jolly coasters and skaters. ”

“ The idea of a forest park, intact and inviolable, calls to mind our national parks of the West, which were actually established by Congress for that very purpose. Possessing, as they do, wonders of nature and exceptional scenery, these parks have been thought worthy of preservation solely for their own sakes. ”

“ We need a public park, where the children can go to fly their kites, look at the gold fishes, listen to the music, smell of the flowers, laugh, play and sing, and be out of the dust and danger of the crowded thoroughfare. ”

“ The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. ”

“ Cities are purchasing large parks where the beauties of nature are merely accentuated, not [Pg 10] marred. States and the nation are setting aside big tracts of wilderness where rock and rill, waterfall and cañon, mountain and marsh, shell-strewn beach and starry-blossomed brae, flowerful islets and wondrous wooded hills welcome the populace, soothe tired nerves and mend the mind and the morals. ”

“ Then when he can find a camping ground combining all the blessings of grass, good water and beautiful groves, all that the traveler on the plains holds essential to human comfort, he will truly appreciate a scene of this kind, but to the dwellers in cities, who know nothing of the beauties of nature in Nature's temple, the vast wilderness, no description would give a life-like picture of such a scene. ”

“ Outdoor recreation is an ideal way to exercise and enjoy memorable experiences with family and friends, and all across our country are scenic places that sports and nature enthusiasts can explore and help keep beautiful. ”

“ The great prairies, looped together or apart, formed natural parks, interspersed throughout their length and breadth with quiet lakes and still-running streams, the whole fringed about with slumbering forests filled to the edge with every kind of foliage that could attract the eye or engage the mind. This grouping of forest and lawn, separate yet forever together, blending and scintillating in the sweet air, filled the heart of the traveler with the peace and restfulness that only the quiet of the country can afford. ”

“ Americans can go fishing in Eleven Mile State Park in Colorado, camp on the bluffs of Perrot State Park in Wisconsin, and bike along the Sable River in Ludington State Park in Michigan. These lands and waters are also home to cultural and historic sites that inspire our love of country and serve as important touchstones for who we are as Americans.
Whether your great outdoors means a community park, a state reservoir, a national forest, or a backyard campout, we must cherish our outdoor spaces and work to preserve them for generations. ”