The Park That Makes It's Own Weather: An Administrative History of Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Rothman, Hal

Golden Gate National Recreation Area offers one of the most complicated management challenges in the entire national park system. A compilation of urban green space and rural and wild lands throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, it reflects the growing tensions in the National Park Service about the purpose of a national park designation. Labeled a "national recreation area," the lands included in the park offer scenic vistas, nationally significant cultural resources, and belts of vegetation scattered across the urban landscape. Balancing the competing needs of these lands and their many constituencies is the dominant feature of park management. Since its inception in 1972, management at Golden Gate National Recreation Area has evolved through three stages. Golden Gate National Recreation area was an evolutionary idea, an extension of what national parks meant at the time of its creation. During the park's first decade, the Park Service's management strategy was simply reactive. Managers sought to find their place in the region and they responded to the needs of constituencies. With the implementation first of the General Management Plan in 1980 and the ancillary plans in cultural resources management and natural resources management shortly after, the park was able to develop clear, distinct plans and ambitions. In most circumstances, such goals would have been easy to implement. At this park, the plans showed both the limits of their process and the way in which the planning deflected unwanted park uses. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Park Service sought to implement its plans; it often revised them in response to the specific needs of constituencies and the Bay Area's political situation.

The Park That Makes It's Own Weather: An Administrative History of Golden Gate National Recreation Area

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