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chapter 5 Through Depression and War (1930–1945) steve mather and the seattle and tacoma businessmen who backed the Rainier National Park Company in the 1920s shared similar visions for Mount Rainier National Park.They expected the park to attract visitors from across the nation,to function as a national park in that sense. The park’s popularity exceeded their expectations, but the throngs of easterners, midwesterners, and southerners failed to materialize. Instead, the swelling numbers of people who came to Mount Rainier in the 1920s largely hailed from the surrounding region. Most came on weekends to use the park as a city playground. The Great Depression etched this pattern more deeply into the character of the park. Although hard times depressed tourism as people spent less money on nonessentials, the Depression also had an opposite eªect as widespread unemployment and underemployment gave people more leisure time.During the hardest years, Americans purchased fewer automobiles and less gasoline and deferred recreational travel. But by 1934 they were buying these commodities as avidly as they had in the previous decade. The national trends were reflected in the annual visitation numbers for Mount Rainier, which fell by more than a third from 1931 to 1933, recovered in 1934 and 1935, and grew by leaps and bounds from 1935 to 1941. Indeed, by 1940 the park was accommodating more than 90 twice the numbers seen in any one year during the 1920s, and, as in the 1920s, these visitors were predominantly local.1 The Depression influenced visitors’ lodging preferences at Rainier more than it aªected total park patronage.The rnpc’s occupancy rates dropped sharply during the years 1931 to 1933 and remained depressed throughout the era, while campground use increased.This too reflected national trends. As automobile historian Warren James Belasco has written ,“Tourists economized on operating expenses,mainly room and board, in order to keep cars running.Expenditures for hotels,restaurants,vacation clothing, and travel supplies fell from $872 million in 1929 to $444 million in 1933.”2 Belasco documents the growth of the autocamp and motel industry at the expense of hotels during the 1930s.The rise of the motel in American life changed visitor demand at Rainier.Tourists who could ill-aªord a room in the Paradise Inn wanted to stay in small“housekeeping cabins,”not the tent cabins of yesteryear.The rnpc built hundreds of housekeeping cabins at Paradise and Sunrise to meet the new demand. While the Depression no doubt reinforced the developing pattern of predominantly local or regional use of Mount Rainier National Park, both the Depression and World War II set the stage for a burst of federal activity and national use of the park that neither Mather nor Seattle and Tacoma investors could have anticipated. Beginning in 1933, the nps became deeply involved with various federal relief programs.Civilian Conservation Corps (ccc) camps were built at eight locations within the park, and at diªerent times the Civil Works Administration (cwa) and Works Progress Administration (wpa), each had two camps and a multitude of projects in the park,while the Public Works Administration (pwa) oversaw an extended program of road and bridge construction involving still more work crews and camps. During World War II, the park accommodated the military in various ways. As federal activity in the park increased,Seattle’s andTacoma’s capital investment in the park diminished. After the war, businessmen in both cities would push for development no less aggressively than they had in the Mather era, but they would find new political forums for their demands. For these reasons ,the Depression and World War II were watershed events in Mount Rainier National Park’s evolution in the twentieth century. through depression and war 91 SE (2024-04-25 07:28 GMT) The Rainier visitor in the 1930s had greater options for exploring the park than earlier travelers had. More often than not the visitor arrived in a private auto.While a majority still made Paradise their destination, a growing number opted to visit the new Sunrise development on the east side of the park. With the completion of a state highway over Chinook Pass in 1931, eastern Washington residents acquired direct access to Rainier and joined the throngs of weekend recreationists coming from Seattle andTacoma.Still others made their way to the less-traveled northwest and southeast corners of the park via improved roads to Mowich Lake and Ohanapecosh, respectively.3 At Paradise, the...

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