The Fight to Save the Redwoods: A History of the Environmental Reform, 1917–1978

2. Citizen Reform: California's State Park System

2 Citizen Reform: California's State Park System IN THE summer of 1919, in response to accelerated western logging and the concern of the Save-the-Redwoods League, Congress passed a resolution directing the secretary of the Interior to investigate the advisability of a redwood national park.' A year later the secretary recommended a park along Del Norte County's lower Klamath River, a broad waterway lined with sweeping green hills.2 But neither the resolution nor the report led to federal financing-nor had anyone, including Stephen Mather, National Park Service director and author of the resolution~ anticipated they would.3 Existing national parks were areas that had never been removed from the public domain. The redwoods of Del Norte and Humboldt counties had passed into private ownership, and there was no federal inclination to purchase them back. The resolution and the report could only express the hope that "public-spirited" individuals might donate the purchase price. Mather's annual report for 1920 also indicated that he expected the league-an organization similar to those he "god-fathered" in Oregon and Washington-to encourage the state of California to protect the trees lining the projected north-south Redwood Highway and rescue high quality groves there. The American motorist could then journey along California's scenic highway north from San Francisco, pause at various state parks, and eventually reach the federal reserve in Del Norte County.4 But Mather's vision was only partially realized, and twenty years later the sweeping Klamath stands were logged. The House resolution of 1919 was significant only as a prelude to the search for alternate sources of funding. The twenty-six men who signed the league's articles of incorporation in 1920 adopted the funding scheme outlined in the director's report. 18 ·_u__Q. R ~ G Q ~ __ ls..rWIIlD~I~·i,ILL CREEK-SMITH RIVER STATE PARK PROJECT IV NO~ ) (JEDEDIAH SMITH REDWOODS STATE PARK) ---~i>-DEL NORTE COAST REDWOODS STATE PARK ounty' PROJECT III ---, . •..1_~ PRAIRIE CREEK REDWOODS STATE PARK ). PROJECT II ( Humboldt '\ .-..1 1 ~ . County , I GO Avenue of the lants yervillJ I BULL CREEK-DYERVILLE STATE PARK I and PROTECTIVE AREAS PROJECT I , (HUMBOLDT REDWOODS STATE PARK) San CARTOGRAPHIC lABORAIORY. UN1V£RSHY Of WISCONSIN - MAOlSON Map 2. The four northern California redwoods state park projects, 1937° Project I, 21,150 acres, value $4,315,000; Project II, 7,750 acres, value $1,078,000; Project III, 2,800 acres, value $448,500; Project IV, 141 acres, value $36,500. 20 THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE REDWOODS In the course of the next decade, the organization remained officially receptive to federal involvement but relied upon state and philanthropic support. The league replaced California's decentralized park administrative system with a bureaucratic structure that had a statewide perspective and a commitment to scientific land management. The league began as a spin-off of national progressivism, but it prospered during the 1920s within the cocoon of a faltering yet persistent progressive faction within the California Republican Party.5 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of America's new financial and industrial barons found a response to social incongruities in Andrew Carnegie's admonition that the rich volunteer their wealth for the public good. Between 1905 and 1915 the YMCA pioneered the high-pressure, professionally directed fund-raising campaign. There followed the successful war-related drives for liberty loans, Belgian relief, and the Red Cross.6 Inspired by these efforts, private, nonprofit, corporate charities proliferated in the 1920s. The income tax law of 1917 encouraged the "business of benevolence" by allowing the deduction of charitable contributions up to 15 percent of taxable income.7 In the absence of congressional appropriations, Mather used his own fortune and the money of rich friends to establish the national parks. His was the achievement "of a wealthy man. The big gesture, the princely gift, that was the rich soil out of which the National Park Service grew."8 In 1918 and 1919 the director brought the same charisma, philanthropy, and influence to the redwoods. He told Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane of the trees' plight; Lane became league president at the organization's first meeting in August, 1919.9 Mather attended that initial gathering in San Francisco.10 Afterward he drove north, where he found that the projected parkway was lined, as Edward Ayer had reported, with burned stumps and denuded...