The gates to Red Rock State Park opened for business as usual Saturday, Feb. 21, in spite of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.
During late January, exactly eight days after taking office, Brewer called a special budget session designed to tear asunder what former Gov. Bruce Babbitt took more than a decade to accomplish.
Although all but Jerome State Historic Park are currently open, every other state park in the Verde Valley is at risk of being closed.
Plundering revenues from the Arizona State Parks, Brewer and the state legislature cut $34.6 million from that agency’s 2009 budget, leaving employees, contractors, and more than 2 million fee-paying annual visitors unsure of the future.
In “Gateways to the Southwest,” author Jay M. Price describes the fancy dancing required of Babbitt to change what he considered an embarrassing absence of state parks during his 1978 to 1987 tenure.
Born to a prosperous ranching family, Babbitt grew up in Flagstaff.
According to Price, Babbitt’s father helped found the Arizona Wildlife Federation and the Arizona Game Protective Association, taking his son hiking and exploring local ruins, two activities that influenced the governor-to-be in his choice of education and all he was to do while in office.
“Arizona State Parks and its many activities became a natural outlet for Babbitt’s interests,” Price wrote. “Here was an agency that dealt with the environment, with historical issues and with archaeology all at once.”
What the youngest governor of Arizona inherited from his predecessors was among the smallest state park systems in the U.S.; only the diminutive state of Delaware had fewer parks and only Rhode Island had less park acreage.
Appointing people with expertise in parks and outdoor recreation was Babbitt’s first step toward change, followed by the creation of task forces and advisory groups.
His success at enlarging the system was due to the employment of what Price described as a “wide array of techniques, from partnerships with federal agencies to creative institutions for fundraising.”
Among the directors on his board were old-time Arizonans who understood the range of emotions inherent in changing land use.
Duane Miller, formerly a rancher and now head of Miller Bros. Construction in Sedona, was on the board for 25 years, influential in brokering arrangements for Dead Horse Ranch State Park and working on the deal that would create Slide Rock State Park.
To create Red Rock State Park, Babbitt needed every ounce of imagination that he and his board could muster.
Price recounts a day in 1980 when Babbitt and his buddies were hiking along Oak Creek, passing one “No Trespassing” sign after another.
When they got to an orchard that formerly belonged to Helen Frye, they were unceremoniously tossed off the property by followers of the Eckankar sect, formerly friends who had assumed control of Frye’s ranch.
Price quoted Babbitt as saying “that moment marked a new beginning for the Arizona state parks system,” the beginning of a six-year campaign of expansion.
Ten years, millions of dollars and two land trades later, Frye’s former home became a park.
Making the former Pendley property into Slide Rock State Park wasn’t much easier, requiring Babbitt to create the Arizona Parklands Foundation along with passing a seemingly unrelated bill allowing interstate banking.
That bill was used to leverage loans by the banks in order to purchase the property.
Using a conservative estimate, over 7 million people have visited those two parks since the gates were first opened, many of them staying in the Verde Valley for more than one day, spending money on hotels, restaurants, gifts and tours.
Not everyone would stop coming to the Verde Valley absent its parks, but to the extent that visitors come and enjoy the experience they have here, learning to cherish each park for its individual contribution to Western culture and its stewardship, it seems myopic to even think of shuttering their gates.
