Why Do We Have Parks?
 
We are blessed to live in an unbelievably beautiful area.  The north Oregon Coast has unsurpassed ocean shoreline, nine rivers often abundant with salmon, steelhead, and trout, five estuaries, and large tracts of rainforests.  Green pastures provide  the basis for our dairy industry. Our major industries depend upon thriving timberland, pastures, and our bays, rivers, and ocean. 
            Our biggest industry, tourism, wouldn’t exist without the natural resources we locals often take for granted. 
            Indeed, our county has more cows than people, and certainly the ratio of trees to people is enormous.  I’m not sure if anyone has even dared to calculate that number. 
            In the midst of this seventy mile long coastline and vast coastal forests, we have created parklands. 
            Oregon started its state park system in 1921. In 1923, Governor Oswald West set aside the ocean beaches as public land, under the guise of being a “state highway”, and numerous state parks have since been created. The first surveyed plat of Tillamook included a park, and the expansion and development of public park land and the management of our forests, estuaries, and marine environments evoke major political conversations and consume a large portion of our tax monies. 
            The first county park land was dedicated in the early 1900s.  Today, discussion of the best use of park land and the management of public parks continues at all levels of county and local government.     Our county parks attracts thousands of visitors every year, welcoming campers, boaters, fishermen, hunters, and hikers. 
Parks are increasingly popular. In 2015, the 100th anniversary of our national park system, over 307 million people visited our national parks. 
            With all this natural beauty around us, why do we need parks?
            Biologically, we are simply wired for it, for surrounding ourselves in nature.
            Nature “employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body,gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system.”  --- Fredrick Law Olmstead (1865).
            Olmstead is famed for planning New York City’s Central Park, as well as developing the first forest management plan for Portland’s Forest Park, the largest urban park in the United States. 
            Recent research affirms the age-old idea that being in nature is healthy, reduces stress, and reacquaints us with our intuitive, creative selves.  “Shinrin yoku”, the trendy Japanese idea of “forest bathing” is found in most cultures, with support of its physical and mental health benefits found in numerous studies.  The works of Edward Abbey, O. Edward Wilson, Florence Williams (The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative), and others affirm this intuitive concept.
            We have answered the question of why we have parks.  We love them, and we find them increasingly valuable as cities become more congested, and we increasingly yearn for experiencing nature. 
                                    --Neal Lemery  5/1/2017
           
           

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