The changing economy and society in the post-World-War Two era afforded greater mobility and wealth for many Americans, who yearned to seek a closer connection to nature. The increased desire for greater recreational opportunities nationwide to satisfy an increased constituency for leisure spurred the beginnings of a national outdoor recreation movement embedded in new environmental values. The elevation of aesthetic values to the forefront of the outdoor recreation and open space movement produced a new public-rights consciousness to land governance that began to act as a counterweight to the private property rights sentiment which had long dominated land policy. Although outdoor recreation provision had long been considered confusing and uncoordinated, the politics driven by the demand for outdoor recreation during the New Frontier and the Great Society bolstered the case for federalism as a tool that would streamline outdoor recreation expansion and land acquisition policy in the decades to come. Early federal outdoor recreation policy encompassed an element known as "creative federalism," where the simultaneous strengthening of the federal system was made possible through grants-in-aid programs and incentives to state and local governments acting as intermediaries to achieve socially desirable outcomes. The evolution of this conception of federalism are best seen through the lens of the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, created in 1965 and how it has affected open space acquisition at all levels of government. Since 1980, the diversion of LWCF money for purposes unrelated to recreation and changes in the administration and apportionment of the Fund has threatened to taint the purity of the outdoor recreation concept, undermine the principle of federalism, and diminish its attached importance to social, cultural and environmental goals.