Bureau of Outdoor Recreation

The Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (BOR) was an agency of the United States Department of the Interior with the mission of planning outdoor recreation opportunities for the Interior Department and assisting private, local, and state organizations with their recreation planning. BOR was founded by Secretarial Order in April 1962, and formally established with the passage of the National Outdoor Recreation Act (Public Law 88-29) in May 1963. The functions of Nationwide Planning and Cooperative Services were transferred from the National Park Service to BOR after its establishment. The Bureau was absorbed into a new agency, the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, in 1977.

In 1956, Mission 66 was established to help accommodate users during a period of increasing usage of recreation sites. After the Great Depression, many parks became more accessible as bad roads were replaced by the US highway system, which in turn was more usable because of the increasing availability of automobiles. A series of tests performed for Mission 66 indicated several opportunities for preservation of parks, parkways, and seashores. In 1958, Congress created the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC) to determine recreation needs, inventory recreation resources, and to recommend policies and programs to "...ensure that the needs of the present and future are adequately and efficiently met." ORRRC released its report in 1962, recommending the establishment of the BOR to help bring structure to outdoor recreation programs.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) was created in 1965 by the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act (LWCFA.The ORRRC recommended this act to help the states in meeting the rising demand for outdoor recreation. This act allowed the fund that the LWCF earned to be distributed back into the recreation agencies to help the development of the program by the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. This act provided a very broad authority from the U.S. Congress to charge entrance fees and use fees for recreation. Also this act required that states submit State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plans (SCORPS) to the BOR before they could get LWCF grants.

In the mid-1970's, the BOR was tasked with surveying various river systems in the state of Alaska, for potential nomination into the National Wild and Scenic Rivers program. The BOR provided oversight to teams that traveled to many river systems across the state, for the purpose of assessing the recreational value of these river systems. Each of these teams took detailed notes of their experiences on the river, noting wildlife observed, fishing opportunities, river mileage, gradient, terrain and vegetation, river hazards and other issues of interest to recreational boaters. In cases where multiple trips were taken to the same river, multiple sets of notes were taken. These notes were compiled into the Alaska River Logs, which are presently hosted on the Alaska Outdoors Supersite. The Alaska River Logs were subsequently compiled into a book, "The Alaska Paddling Guide", co-authored by Jack Mosby and David Dapkus, two BOR employees who were involved in the project. Eventually the following 25 rivers were selected for the National Wild and Scenic program:

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