Ellwood B. Chapman
- Cornelius Amory Pugsley Bronze Medal Award, 1948
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- Ellwood B. Chapman (1871-1955) received the Pugsley Bronze Medal in 1948 "for his devotion to conservation movements in Pennsylvania, particularly those relating to the parks and forest reserves." In 1930, he was an organizer of the Pennsylvania Parks Association and was its president from 1930 until he resigned in 1954. Chapman became a director of the Philadelphia Housing Association in 1925 and served as a vice president from 1931 until 1954, when he was named an honorary director. Chapman was vice president of Stephen F. Whitman & Son, Inc., confectioners, and had been with the concern for nearly 25 years when he retired. A former president of the Association Retail Confectioners of the United States, he had been president of the Chestnut Street Association in Philadelphia from its founding in 1912 until 1936. The Chestnut Street Association was founded "as a voluntary organization to help promote and protect the retail community of the street."
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- One of his major activities was the preservation of the natural beauty of the Pennsylvania landscape and the creation of adequate recreational parks within the state. In addition to his work with the Parks Association, Chapman was a director of the National Conference on State Parks. He was a council member of the American Forestry Association and headed the committee on parks of the Regional Planning Federation.
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- In 1930, Chapman authored An Outline of a Balanced State Park System for Fifteen Million People which was commissioned by the Pennsylvania Parks Association. It was the first statewide plan for state parks in Pennsylvania and noted that Pennsylvania was deficient in quantity and distribution of state-owned park acreage in relation to existing and probable future population.
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- The report also pointed out that Pennsylvania had only 12,854 acres of state and county parks to serve 9,631,000 people which amounted to merely 1.3 acres per thousand population. The primary recommendation of the plan suggested a balanced system of state parks covering the Commonwealth on the basis of ten acres of park land per one thousand people for existing and future population. The balanced system was to be based on a 30-mile radius surrounding the major centers of population. On this basis, Pennsylvania should have had 96,000 acres in 1930 with a projected need of 104,000 acres in 1950. The Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton-Wilkes Barre metropolitan areas were particularly deficient in an adequate number of acres of state and county park lands. The report further recommended that the Commonwealth prepare a comprehensive statewide park program based on the population needs showing the actual quantity of area needed and the general locations in which it was needed. It was pointed out that the deficiency of parks existed in the presence of one of the most generous supplies of scenic and unique sites in the country.
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- Sources:
William C. Forrey (1984) History of Pennsylvania's State Parks. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Bureau of State Parks.