EDITORIAL: Making Idaho Parks and Rec Go Away is a Mistake
In 1961, Wall Street mogul Averell Harriman – owner of Union Pacific Railroad, founder of the Sun Valley Resort, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and Great Britain, and one of the architects of the postwar world – did the people of Idaho a big favor.
My family will give you our 11,000-acre ranch on Henrys Fork, Harriman told then – Gov. Robert Smylie – if you establish a professional parks department to manage it.
That took some doing. But after two tries, Smylie, in 1965, finally got the Idaho Legislature to sign on. So the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation was born.
Forty-five years later, the agency is about to die.
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