ABSTRACT

lack of a central park bureau or service We turn now to the movement to establish a general office or bureau to manage all the parks, those already established and those that were to follow, in a unified plan. Up to 1916 each park was officially a separate unit, administratively unrelated to the others. Although the parks were under the Secretary of the Interior, who gave some unity to the administration, he had a dozen other jobs and could not give a great deal of time to park management. As J. Horace McFarland, of the American Civic Association, one of the staunchest friends of the parks in the early years, described the situation: "Nowhere in official Washington can an inquirer find an office of the national parks or a single desk devoted solely to their management. By passing around through three Departments, and consulting clerks who have taken on the extra work of doing what they can for the nation's playgrounds, it is possible to come at a little information." 1 Furthermore, some of the national monuments were in the Department of Agriculture, and two were in the War Department along with the military national parks.