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Show 486. a means of access when it published information and organized outings. These kinds of decisions should have been based on a hierarchy of uses, since there would eventually have to be "Master Plans" to decide the kinds of trails, paths, roads, and highways which were needed to accommodate recreation. And if it meant anything, this hierarchy of uses would have to be based on a decision about relationships between people and Parks. Muir, for instance, insisted that a landscape architect would be necessary if Yosemite were to be rescued from its downtrodden state; if he could see the necessity for that kind of planning, then he should have been able to appreciate what Olmsted had seen in 1865, that the roads in a Park were an integral part of planning the visitors' recreational experience. It was never a question simply of more or less roads and trails, and where to put them. The further issue was, how would a visitor advance through the hierarchy toward more spiritual recreation? Muir's anticipation of this growing issue, which would explode with the advent of the automobile, was at first casual. Long before accessibility became an integral issue in the debate over damming Hetch Hetchy, long before the critics of Wilderness Areas would complain that nobody went there anyway, Muir realized that it would be difficult to preserve Places that nobody knew. Before the formation of the Sierra Club he had advocated in Kings Canyon a loop-shaped carriage road, an "improvement" of major proportions: |