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Imagine Utah without state parks.
No campgrounds and boat ramps at Jordanelle, Quail Creek, Deer Creek, Bear Lake or Rockport. No management at Goblin Valley, Kodachrome Basin or Dead Horse Point. No history interpretation at Anasazi, Edge of the Cedars or Territorial Statehouse. No access to Antelope Island. No snowmobile trail grooming or off-highway vehicle education program.
Yet, the Division of Parks and Recreation is celebrating only its 50th year in 2007, making it one of the two youngest in the U.S.
It's not that some Utahns did not think the idea of a state parks system deserved a look.
According to the agency, the Legislature floated the idea in 1925 by designating Territorial Statehouse in Fillmore, Vernal Park and the Territorial Prison, now Sugar House Park, as state parks without creating an agency to oversee them or giving them any funding.
Things looked especially bleak in 1951 when governor J. Bracken Lee declared, "I don't think the state should launch itself on a program of establishing parks throughout the state. There simply is not enough money for that sort of thing."
And, in some ways, the lack of priority given to state parks over the years has reflected that fiscally conservative bent. It is nothing short of amazing that the state system of 43 parks, recreation areas and museums covering more than 95,000 acres of land and including 1 million surface acres of water, all managed by 80 full-time workers, works as well as it does today.
State Park history shows the Utah Road Commission was given the authority to designate state park sites in 1953 but most of these consisted of interpretive signs at pullouts. In 1956, the Sons of the Utah Pioneers hired a retired state road worker to do a survey of sites for possible parks.
That person recommended Dead Horse Point, the Goosenecks of the San Juan, the Needles area of what would become Canyonlands National Park, and Flaming Gorge Reservoir, which was then under construction and would become a U.S. Forest Service-administered national recreation area.
Establishing a state parks system became an election issue in 1956 when Republican George Dewey Clyde defeated Lee, who ran as an independent, and Democrat L.C. Romney. Clyde supported the idea of state parks and, in 1957, Washington County state senator Orval Hafen sponsored a bill to establish a state agency. It passed, creating a state park commission with a budget of $25,000 for a director.
Territorial Statehouse in Fillmore and This Is the Place Monument were designated in 1957, followed by Camp Floyd in 1958. The Utah Fieldhouse of Natural History in Vernal, Hyrum - the first reservoir-oriented boating park - and Dead Horse Point came aboard in 1959.
Still, many remember these state parks as rather crude. I visited Goblin Valley in the 1970s, for example, when motorcycles ran rampant and facilities consisted of little more than a few outhouses.
In recent years, the Legislature has wisely matched federal Bureau of Reclamation dollars with state money to turn Wasatch Front boating parks such as Jordanelle, Rockport, Deer Creek, East Canyon and Willard Bay into wonderful, modern destinations.
It's hard to believe that all of this has been accomplished in such a short time, adding immeasurably to our quality of life and economy.
TOM WHARTON can be contacted at wharton@sltrib.com" Target="_BLANK">wharton@sltrib.com. His phone number is 801-257-8909. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib.com" Target="_BLANK">livingeditor@sltrib.com.