After legislation establishing Iowa’s state parks was passed in 1917, conservationists like Louis Pammel found themselves confronted with a new challenge: the task of constructing the parks. Creating parks where people could experience nature- and not preserves where they would be excluded from it-meant balancing conservation with human enjoyment, a goal that Pammel rightly recognized as problematic when he asked, “How can we best treat the park so as to avoid the unnecessary tramping of thousands of visitors? How can the trails be constructed so that this wild life will be conserved?”