Those who prevented purchase of Point Reyes and certain other proposed shoreline recreation areas in 1936 only succeeded in leaving the Nation diminished opportunity to accept a lesser program at an enormously increased cost. It is our hope that this Congress will authorize establishment of this and other national seashores this year, so that we may begin to meet the public need in this field and so be better prepared for the future. If we act sensibly and foresightedly now, while the opportunity remains, we shall have preserved for America and for California and for the people of Marin County a priceless heritage to be enjoyed many times over, not only by our generation, but also by those which follow. EXHIBIT B (Mr. Miller filed with the committee a number of communications from Marin County city and county officials and other residents of Marin County protesting the board of supervisors' March 20 resolution printed above at p. 8.) Mr. ERNEST SCHALLINGER, EXHIBIT C HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C., March 23, 1961. Chairman, Citizens Advisory Committee on Development of Marin County, San Rafael, Calif. DEAR MR. SCHALLINGER: Enclosed please find a letter to the board of supervisors of Marin County regarding the acreage limitations on the proposed Point Reyes Park. The board urges a park composed of not more than 20,000 acres. It gives no reason for its action, but it must be presumed that heavy reliance was placed on the report of the citizens advisory committee. The committee apparently agreed that a park of 28,000 acres was appropriate, making its recommendation on the grounds that the remaining acreage of the peninsula would be protected by suitable county zoning. This hope has not been borne out by the facts. Not only have there been no adequate protections for the so-called ranching area, but the standards have even been lowered further. It seems patently absurd to call for the establishment of a park in a setting of building standards which will destroy the park values seeking to be preserved. In light of this development, it would seem appropriate to reopen the report for further consideration. Very sincerely, CLEM MILLER. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C., March 23, 1961. Hon. WILLIAM D. FUSSELMAN, Chairman of the Board, Marin County Board of Supervisors, San Rafael, Calif. DEAR Mr. CHAIRMAN: I have received the resolution of the Board announcing support for a recreation area at Point Reyes, limited to 20,000 acres. I shall certainly take steps to insert it as an exhibit in the proceedings before the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. I would respectfully call the attention of the Board to the report of the "Citizens Advisory Committee," dated March 16, 1960. In the course of this report, there appears the following: "With the proper controls by the county development does not mean deterioration, but proper and good economic use of the land. People have the right to live in a beautiful place; viz., the many handsome communities in the bay area and on the coast of San Francisco. The county can and we believe should, make rigorous effort to govern the development of the area so that it will be in keeping with the natural beauties of the site. The county can discourage massive, crowded, uniform, deadly developments. * "That the Board of Supervisors, through its various county agencies, (should) set up well defined plans and controls for the preservation and proper growth of that portion of the Point Reyes area not absorbed by the proposed seashore area "The need for controls on the development of the area is, nevertheless, an urgent and vital one. Unless there is some planning of a definite and directed type, there is a possibility of exploitation and grievous damage to the area by unhindered and uncontrolled real-estate developments. The need for proper control of growth suggests that the supervisors might well initiate a masterplan for this part of the county. It seems evident that uncontrolled development could despoil the area." It is explicit in the above that the Citizens Advisory Committee foresaw the need to provide for private development which would be in character with the park area. It is implicit in the report that the county would insist on standards that would be appropriate. In spite of this, I understand that there are real-estate developments underway which do not meet such standards; and, in fact, do not meet ordinary standards; and, that further, have been permitted a lowering of standards. If this should be true, it may well be that the Citizens Advisory Committee will wish to reconsider its recommendations of 1960. It does not appear to me that there is any reasonable rationale for the establishment of a park of whatever acreage if the integral environs are covered with substandard construction. In fact, it is because of the inevitability of such a prospect that I firmly sup port as appropriate 53,000 acres to be set as the park boundary. Very sincerely, CLEM MILLER. EXHIBIT D SACRAMENTO, CALIF., March 23, 1961. Hon. CLEM MILLER, Member of Congress, Washington, D.C.: Re hearings March 24 and 28, 1961, on S. 476, H.R. 2775. Hereby reaffirm California Department of Fish and Game support of Point Reyes National Seashore plan as expressed in my testimony April 14, 1960, at Senate Interior Committee hearing at Kentfield, Calif. Further strongly recommend bills be amended to assure that regulation of all noncommercial and commercial activities dependent on State-owned fish and wildlife resources, including fishing and hunting, remain under jurisdiction of State of California laws and regulations subject to such consideration of special provisions recommended by the National Park Service for public convenience, safety. Strongly urge section 6 be amended to maintain commercial fishing operations and properties for perpetuation of this enterprise; Drakes Bay should be dedicated to continuation of oyster culture and clam fishing. In section 7(b) it would be desirable to change: "(B) the Secretary is authorized ***" to "the Secretary is directed * * *" to avoid expansion of confused existing overlapping and duplicating angling and hunting regulations in national parks in California. W. T. SHANNON, Director, California Department of Fish and Game. Mr. RUTHERFORD. Dr. Gustafson, I am going to thank you for your consideration in yielding your time for these Members of Congress to make their statements. Now will you proceed with your statement ? FURTHER STATEMENT OF JOEL GUSTAFSON, POINT REYES Mr. GUSTAFSON. Yes, sir. Officially my position is associate director of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and I would like to submit two bits of evidence to refute what Mr. McCarthy just said about the use of our area. These are two attendance charts which I would hand over to you for the record, showing that the San Francisco Bay area is a tremendous tourist area. One of those charts is a summer attendance chart and the other is a winter attendance chart. This is based on an attendance in the academy of over 22 million people. You will note in the summer 6 percent of those are foreign and 6 percent are San Franciscan. In the winter, as I recall it, 14 percent is San Franciscan and 10 percent is foreign. This is an area of tremendous use by a lot of people who are not Californians. Secondly, in preparation for a membership campaign-and this is not a plug, but it is an explanation which I think is a very good one to erase a misconception-I took membership lists of five scientific groups to which I belong, and typed these names on cards and alphabetized them. I had 1,600 cards. The reason why I did that was to eliminate duplication. Of the five groups, with a total of 1,600 names, there were only 26 duplicate names. Normally when we say we had 500 members of this group, and 700 of this group, and 200 of this group, there is always a reservation in our own mind that maybe a third or a fourth, or in some cases a fifth, of these people are duplicates. Apparently this is not so. I should like to submit for the record a list of organizations which I will not take the time to read now, but submit later if I may, which includes visitors to the Mayor of San Francisco on Monday, at which time he gave a very strong statement in support of the obtaining of the Point Reyes Peninsula. (The list follows:) Representatives of the following organizations formed a delegation that visited Mayor George C. Christopher on March 22, 1961, supporting the need of the Point Reyes Peninsula for the recreational needs of the San Francisco Bay area: INDIVIDUALS ATTENDING Dr. Joel Gustafson, Point Reyes National Seashore Foundation. Robert Miller, California Academy of Sciences. Mrs. Norman Livermore, Marin Conservation League. George Collins, Conservation Associates. John Hirten, San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association. Jay Darwin, Trustees for Conservation. Mrs. Eric Reynolds, National Audubon Society. William Drake, Nature Conservancy. Mrs. Edgar Wayburn, Sierra Club. Hilary Crawford, Sr., Federation of Outdoor Clubs. Dr. Francis Felice, Izaac Walton League. Clarence Rust, Tamalpais Conservation Club. Mrs. Dwight Gladstone, San Francisco Garden Club. Douglas Baylis, Society of American Landscape Architects. Theodore Osmundson, Society of American Landscape Architects. Mrs. Ralph Reynolds, Society of American Landscape Architects. Ronald Dye, Boy Scouts of America. Roy Sorensen, YMCA. Mrs. Morse Erskine, Citizens for Regional Recreation and Parks in the Bay Area. Mrs. Joseph Locatelli, Campfire Girls of San Francisco. Mrs. Frank Adams, Piedmont Garden Club. Luella Sawyer, Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs. Mr. GUSTAFSON. Again, of the groups which represent conservation, nature, science, and planning groups, I belong to only five of them. Í am a joiner of scientific groups. So I would like to offer the evidence here that memberships in these kinds of interesting organizations are not great duplications of the same individuals. Now, I would like to make a few observations in regard to the testimony that was given previously by the dairy people. In California we currently have a great oversupply of milk. This is no reason to get rid of the dairymen, but on the peninsula there is quite a bit of land that is being used for range cattle, and steers and beef cattle. Also there is another statement that is not quite complete on their part. There are 28 or 29 ranches on the peninsula; 15 of these, over half, are operated by tenants. The impression that they intended to leave was that they are all owned and operated by the individuals themselves. This is not so. In Marin County, where we have over 370 ranches, about one-third of them are tenant operated. Again I would like to point out that the word "tenant" does not have a low connotation in California as it may in other areas. As far as the obtaining of this territory is concerned, Secretary Udall expressed the opinion that because of the low development, outside of agricultural development, this would be one of the most easily administered acquisitions that he knew of. There are only, approximately, 60 owners. Most of this is in dairy and beef use. I have a list of 21 obvious benefits to a recreational area, which I assume are of common knowledge to all of us, based on the variety of habitats listed previously in the 53,000 acres of this peninsula. I would like to quote a statement from the chief of the Division of State Parks of the State of California. I will paraphrase the first two paragraphs. He is taking the 1,200 miles of our coastline of California and dividing it by the present population of 15 million, or closer to 16 million now. When you do that you find the amount of our coastline, which is two-thirds of the Pacific coastline of the United States, divided by the population in California, is 4 inches. That is a pretty small share for public ownership of our coastline. When you look at that coastline, and most of it is pretty rugged, and you add up the beaches now in State or public ownership which includes city, county, and State-that comes down to one-fourth of an inch per person in the State of California. This does not leave much room for the tourists when they come. Now a short paragraph that I would like to read from his state ment: In fact, our total State park area within the entire State of California is used up by California residents now at the rate of 175 people per acre-that is, standing on every single acre of redwood, desert, and everything else we have. So we are pushed not only for actual shoreline, but the need is also for area. Of course, the 50,000 acres of this proposal sounds good to me. I am perfectly happy for 20,000 of it to be looked at instead of walked over because, according to this same survey, the greatest recreational pursuit in the State of California and in all other surveys that have been made of National and State parks-that is in an interpolation on my part the greatest recreational pursuit is recreational sightseeing. This does not mean that it has to be developed, parked on, or walked on, or camped on. He is referring to the 20,000 acres that will be in ranching area. That is the end of the quotation. I would like to emphasize there that regarding beaches in California we have to take what is avail able. If we have only a fourth of an inch per person, anything we can get is good. Many of you, I suppose, have limited your swimming at beaches to the southerly shores along the eastern coast. The Pacific Ocean, let me assure you, is very cold. Many of our beaches and, in fact, most of them in northern California, are pretty dangerous beaches where they are exposed to the tide and undertow, and consequently in most cases people who go to the beaches play on them. Only a few hardy individuals swim at them. Most of our bathing suits remain dry all summer long. However, in a small beach just to the south of this proposed area, last year over 500,000 people cavorted on a narrow strip of beach. The water offshore is very dangerous and, consequently, only good swimmers go into it. As to the weather, many people live in the central part of California because it is cool. I have been out on the peninsula when it has been very foggy, but on most occasions it is warm under that fog. Let me also assure you that you can get a terrific sunburn when it is foggy. The sun comes through. If we compare the foggy weather of the Point Reyes Peninsula, which makes for part of the beauty of the area-if we compare it to the Olympic Rain Forest which is a very popular park, there the camping areas have shelters over them because it rains so often, but it is still a national park area and in great use and demand. Compared to the Olympic Rain Forest the Point Reves Peninsula is a hot desert. We feel that the strongest argument for the necessity of including all of the Point Reyes Peninsula in the park proposal is best brought out by what is happening there now. One individual, an owner, cannot prophesy what is going to happen to him tomorrow. There may be sickness, or accident, or a whole host of things that may occur. Maybe he decides to move to some other area. In any case, there is no guarantee at all that these ranches will stay in ranching use. Consequently, in order to control the planning and development of the peninsula as a whole, these areas must be obtained. As evidence of the trend in our area, I am ashamed to say that the present county government is quite willing to respond to the pressures of subdividers and subdivision requests. In view of the above situation I would like to have a pair of articles offered here which have appeared in one of our local papers severely criticizing the developers and our board of supervisors for the low standards which they are upholding in our county building ordinances, and for granting variances. For example, the Drakes Beach Estates, which is the biggest, most active, and most popular one now being developed, has in it a clause that the houses must have a minimum square footage of 650 square feet. That is a pretty small house to be called Drakes Beach Estates. It is really more the size of a beach cabin. As another evidence of the necessity for Government control of these lands, I would cite the Church of the Golden Rule, which is a landholder to the south half of this projected park. They have told us time and time again that they were permanent; they were not going to move, ever. They thought then that they should be excepted in the planning and layout of the lines of the park. Mr. Saylor, we have been working very hard trying to get arrangements made by which lands will be obtained privately and exchanged. There are |