State Park Pass - America's Best idea For Dog Lovers - Paperback

by Doug Gelbert (Author)

National parks are America's best idea - state parks are a dog's best idea. National

parks may have been called "America's best idea," but for dog lovers, they often

feel like the nation's biggest tease - epic trails and grand vistas, yet dogs are rests-

ricted to paved pull-outs and campgrounds in all but a handful of parks. Enter

state parks: America's second best idea, and arguably the best idea of all for those

who hike with four paws in tow. With hundreds of hidden waterfalls, forest loops,

seaside trails, and historic landscapes that welcome dogs as fellow adventurers,

state parks offer an affordable, wide-open alternative to crowded national parks.

That's the promise of the State Park Pass-a roadmap to the trails, cabins, and

quirky treasures where America's natural wonders aren't just admired from the

parking lot, but experienced side-by-side with your best friend.

State parks are America's democratic idea - affordable, welcoming, and

dog-friendly. They preserve local pride and natural beauty while inviting everyday

use, from a Saturday morning hike to a week-long family vacation. The National

Park Service, created in 1916, saw its role as protecting landscapes and sites of

national wonder. In the early days few qualified; even today there are only some

five dozen. Over the years another 400 or so national monuments, historic sites

and seashores have been placed with the park service.

Today there are thousands of state parks across 18 million acres - a patchwork

quilt of lakes, beaches, forests, and historic sites with roughly one billion visits an-

nually - far surpassing the attendance at national parks. It all began with Niagara

Falls in 1885. America's greatest natural attraction of the 19th century was be-

coming tawdry with sideshow attractions and industrial development so New York

created the Niagara Falls State Reservation, the nation's first true state park.

By the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s there were still relatively few

state parks. Many states had no state park system at all and the parks that did exist

were largely undeveloped. Franklin Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation

Corps (CCC) to put young men to work and between 1933 and 1942 more than

700 parks were constructed in 40 states. Since the federal government was footing

the bill, these new natural playgrounds could easily have been absorbed into the

National Park Service system. But the NPS wanted no part of running these "pic-

nic parks." Washington's logic was: wonder and grandeur belong in the national

system; recreation belongs to the states.

And America's dogs have been wagging their tails ever since.

Pick a state. Now go build your next doggie dream vacation around state parks.