SCENIC PARKS AND LANDSCAPE VALUES (ILLINOIS)

A "crisis of faith" has arisen between American scenic public park users and administrating agencies regarding preservation and development of these superb native landscapes. Mainly this crisis revolves around the use of scenic parks for publicly supported commercial resorting while original park laws, still in effect, were intended to protect the primeval character of these natural landscapes both for visual appreciation and for a sublime wilderness recreational experience.;The other research approach was to analyze value orientations inherent in park policy and public park place-making. Since these landscapes have been created and developed as scenic parks while in the public domain, valid cultural value orientations towards both preservation and development are interpretable from a complete written public record. A "place" paradigm, based on traditional Sauerian cultural landscape analysis updated with contemporary behavioral, ecological and communication theoretical advances was employed as the conceptual framework. Two advantages of such an "ecobehavioral approach" to scenic landscape analysis are that: (1) human intentionality towards development within American scenic recreational landscapes will be better clarified, and (2) a unifying, integrative approach will advance theory development and close the gap between research and public policy, so badly needed in scenic landscape analysis and assessment.;To address this crisis, two research approaches were undertaken in this historical cultural landscape study of a representative case-study set of Illinois state parks. One was to describe the scenic park as a distinct American public "place-type", partitioned out of the predominantly commercialized, industrialized and urbanized cultural milieu. Basically, the evolution of four scenic state parks (Starved Rock, White Pines, Pere Marquette and Giant City) from 1911 until 1986 has been documented from both written and graphic archival data located mainly in the illinois State Archives and the Illinois Department of Conservation Archives. Systematic description of twenty six landscape parameters at four salient time periods was performed for each park landscape history.