Introduction

Since the 1950s, Americans have been migrating from urban areas of the United States to its rapidly growing suburbs. In our quest for the American dream, we flocked to places like Tysons Corner, Virginia; the San Fernando Valley, California; Aurora, Colorado; and Federal Way, Washington.

Today, these suburbs reveal the downside of 40 years of poorly managed growth: Communities that once promised refuge from the ills of the city have been transformed into congested towns with clogged highways, burgeoning crime rates, and mile after mile of look-alike shopping malls, franchise architecture, and soulless housing tracts.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Americans are once again on the move, this time in a migration that pushes growth even farther into the countryside. Increasing numbers of people are fleeing the suburbs and choosing to live in the small towns and open spaces surrounding America's magnificent national and state parks, wildlife refuges, forests, historic sites, wilderness areas, and other public lands.

Gateway communities—the towns and cities that border these public lands—are the destinations of choice for much of the country's migrating populace. With their scenic beauty and high quality of life, gateway communities have become a magnet for millions of Americans looking to escape the congestion, banality, and faster tempo of life in the suburbs and cities.

Estes Park, Colorado, gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, and St. George, Utah, gateway to Zion National Park, have become havens for retirees looking for a picturesque place to spend their golden years. During the 1980s, the population of Estes Park grew by more than 35 percent; St. George's population doubled.

People who want to live close to recreational opportunities are inundating Maryville, Tennessee, and other communities adjoining Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "East Tennessee has just exploded," says Randy Brown, a Maryville resident, "and the people moving here all want to live near the park."

Thousands of discontented city dwellers from the East and West Coasts are selling their homes and using the profits to relocate to gateway communities with lower costs of living. Termed equity exiles, many of these urban refugees are facing the same congestion and problems they thought they were leaving behind. Traverse City, Michigan; Prescott, Arizona; and Durango, Colorado, are just a few of the gateway communities that are now struggling to cope with growth-related problems. Whatever the reasons behind it, this new wave of migration shows no signs of abating. If current demographic trends continue, gateway communities will experience astronomical growth rates for at least the next 20 years.

Americans have always wanted to spend their leisure time removed from the pressures of their daily lives. Today, they have the financial resources to do so. Sociologists attribute a rising demand for second homes and resort vacations in pristine and scenic areas to the aging of the baby-boom generation. Over the next decade, there will be a 50 percent increase in the number of Americans in the 45–54 age bracket, a group with a significant amount of disposable income and leisure time.

What's more, according to a recent study by economists at Cornell University, baby boomers stand to inherit some $10.4 trillion in stock market gains and real estate assets salted away by their parents. Armed with this inheritance, boomers are expected to double the demand for recreational homes and resort lodging in gateway communities.

Changes Ahead

Unlike many U.S. cities and suburbs, gateway communities offer what an increasing number of Americans value: a clean environment, safe streets, and a friendly, small-town atmosphere. But just as in the suburbs, unplanned growth and rapid development in gateway communities can create the same social and scenic ills from which many Americans are now fleeing. Worse, rising real estate values and higher property taxes brought on by an increased demand for housing can force lifelong residents from the communities they call home. Skyrocketing property values can quickly translate into housing shortages for longtime residents.

In Bozeman, Montana, for example, a gateway to Yellowstone National Park, the demand for housing and real estate has dramatically affected property values. In 1981, the average cost of a suburban acre near Bozeman was $600; in 1994, that same acre brought as much as $10,000.

In Tremont, Maine, surging demand for land and housing has displaced families who have lived for generations on Mount Desert Island, the gateway to Acadia National Park. "Places that were going for $10,000 ten years ago are going for $80,000 to $90,000 today," says George Lawson, a retired fisherman. "There's no way that young people can stay in the town." The Maine State Housing Authority estimates that the number of Maine families able to afford an average home in the state fell from 81 percent in 1970 to 35 percent in 1990.

Residents of tourism-dependent resort communities are perhaps the hardest hit by rapid growth. In Vail, Colorado, three of every four dwellings are second homes occupied only a few months or weeks a year. Only 9 of Vail's 48 police and firefighters can afford to live in town.

The wave of migration to gateway communities also portends major changes for natural ecosystems and historically significant landscapes and towns. According to a recent report on resource problems facing the National Wildlife Refuge System, more than half the country's refuges, and the wildlife that depend on them, face threats to their health.

In Florida, widespread development of private lands bordering the National Key Deer Refuge has pushed the refuge's namesake, the endangered dwarf Key deer, to the brink of extinction. The Key deer is threatened not only by habitat loss but also by homeowners who feed the deer, drawing the animals to roadsides and residential areas, where every year vehicles kill as much as one-fifth of the Key deer population.

In Jackson Hole, Wyoming, residential subdivisions adjacent to the National Elk Refuge have diminished the wintering grounds of a herd of nearly 10,000 elk. "Sixty head of elk used to winter right where that house is," says refuge manager Mike Hedrick, pointing to a new housing tract on his border. The elk that winter on the refuge are the same animals that summer in the high country of nearby Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, a prime attraction for the more than three million visitors a year.

A 1994 survey of national park superintendents revealed similar problems—85 percent of America's national parks are experiencing threats from outside their boundaries. Civil War battlefields are particularly vulnerable. A blue-ribbon congressional panel commissioned in 1991 to survey the condition of Civil War battle sites found that one-fifth of the nation's 400 most significant battlefields have been lost to...