| September 1: US Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, 1938 |
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| Written by Mike Metzgar |
| Tuesday, 01 September 2009 06:50 |
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"When we look up and down the ocean fronts of America, we find that everywhere they are passing behind the fences of private ownership. The people can no longer get to the ocean. When we have reached the point that a nation of 125 million people can no longer set foot upon the thousands of miles of beaches that border the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, except by permission of those who monopolize the ocean front, then I say it is the prerogative and duty of the Federal and State Governments to step in and acquire, not a swimming beach here and there, but solid blocks of ocean front hundreds of miles in length. Call this ocean front a national park, or a national seashore, or a state park or anything you please - I say that the people have a right to a fair share of it." - Harold Ickes, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, 1938 |