| DESERT PEAKS SECTION
NEWSLETTER #43 ANGELES CHAPTER - SIERRA CLUB |
October 1955 |
Dear Desert Peakers:
Last month we told you about the DPS social evening and dinner planned for Saturday evening, November 19, at Highland Park Playground Clubhouse. Reservations have been coming in and this is just a reminder that now is the time to send in YOUR reservation, if you have not done so already. Reservations, at $2.00 per person, must be in by November 13. Come and enjoy an informal evening with your Sierra Club friends. You'll have a chance to visit, enjoy a delicious catered dinner and a varied program of color slides and music. Refer to page 30 of your new Chapter schedule booklet for further details.
CONSERVATION FOR DESERT PEAKS, by Dan L. Thrapp
Joe Momyer, writing in Palm and Pine, starts off with an observation that certainly has occurred to all of us:
"Nothing brings home more clearly the impact of Southern California's rapidly growing population than to revisit a familiar area after an absence of several years."
We could probably go him one better and point out that often an absence from breakfast to lunch is sufficient. When we moved to our present home there were open fields all around; now there is nothing but tracts. We think it's a pity, but people looking for a home think it's fine.
This remarkable expansion hints at the pressures that are every year closing in upon our desert playgrounds. You have only to drive to Vegas to see it - new developments everywhere en route.
It all makes even more significant our moves to protect what desert reserves we have, jealously guard them, and seek the creation of more at every opportunity. There is one place where we may look not in vain.
The Army and other services are not going to require indefinitely the vast areas they have withdrawn. I don't know - and I doubt whether you do - how long they are going to be needed, but the day will come when even the Armed Forces will concede that such huge holdings are no longer required.
It would be a healthy project for the Sierra Club, and specifically the Desert Peaks Section, to work out plans for that day.
What is needed is a charting system showing the extent of these areas, describing them with an eye toward their future recreational potential, and outlining desirable dispositions of them - i.e., how they could best be reserved for permanent recreational use.
FUTURE STATE PARKS
A communication from Harry C. James, President of the Desert Protective Council, states that the Council is "recommending to the State Park Commission consideration of the following sites for inclusion in the Five Year Master Plan now being revised by the Commission:
| 1. | The Alabama Hills - Inyo County. |
| 2. | Sandhills of Imperial County (the famous sand dunes near Yuma). |
| 3. | Red Rock Canyon - Kern County. |
| 4. | Bodie and Aurora in Mono County - the old historic mining towns. |