Reservoir-related Recreation Areas
Five National Recreation Areas were added to the System between 1933 and 1964. This new type of federal park area grew out of large scale reclamation projects like Hoover Dam and multi purpose river basin development programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority which began in the 1930s and spread to river valleys in all parts of the country after World War II.
Lake Mead was the first National Recreation Area. The Boulder Canyon Project Act, passed in 1928, authorized the Bureau of Reclamation to construct Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Work began in 1931 and the dam, highest in the Western Hemisphere, was completed in 1935. The next year, under provisions of an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation, the National Park Service assumed responsibility for all recreational activities at Lake Mead.
Coulee Dam National Recreation Area (now called Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area) was established in 1946, under an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation patterned after Lake Mead. Construction of Grand Coulee Dam began in 1933 and the dam went into operation in 1941. It impounds a huge body of water named Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake, 151 miles (243 km) long with 660 miles (1,060 km) of shoreline.
Although Millerton Lake, California, Lake Texoma, Oklahoma-Texas, and the north unit of Flaming Gorge, Utah-Wyoming were administered by the Service for a time, the first was subsequently turned over to the State of California, the second to the Army Corps of Engineers, and the last to the Forest Service.
Three more National Recreation Areas established during the 1950s are still in the National Park System today. Shadow Mountain, adjoining the west entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, embraces the recreational features of Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain Lake, two units of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project. Glen Canyon was established in 1958 to provide for recreational activities on Lake Powell formed behind Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River, one of the highest dams in the world. The Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area, California, was established by Act of Congress in 1962. The National Park Service, however, administers the recreational facilities only at Whiskeytown Reservoir, while the Forest Service takes care of similar, more extensive facilities at Shasta and Trinity.
By 1964, application of the National Recreation Area concept to major impoundments behind Federal dams, whether constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation or the Corps of Engineers, appeared to be well accepted by Congress. Eight more reservations of this type were authorized as additions to the National Park System between 1964 and 1972.
Read more about this topic: History Of The National Park Service, Growth, 1933-1966
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