High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Recreational Demonstration Area program (also known as the Recreation Demonstration Area program) was a National Park Service program during the 1930s and early 1940s that built forty-six public parks in twenty-four states on 397,000 acres (1,606.6 km2), chiefly near urban areas in the United States. The NPS used labor from a variety of Great Depression federal relief programs, chiefly the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration, to build Recreational Demonstration Areas. By the end of World War II, the Recreational Demonstration Areas had all either become National Park Service units or been given to their states for use as state parks.