With the passage of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968, many more beautiful free-flowing streams came under the protection of the National Park Service, building on an idea born here and on the foresight of a generation that preserved the Current, the Jacks Fork, the Eleven Point, the Buffalo, the St Croix, and many other rivers across America. During the 1950s and 1960s, rivers across America were being dammed for hydroelectric power and flood control, and if the Current River had met that fate, this place would have been under dozens of feet of water and its springs submerged beneath a reservoir. Because concerned citizens in the Ozarks and beyond took action, Congress received a bill in 1964 to stop such damming by creating the nation's first river-based national park, the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, and one of its stated purposes was the preservation of portions of the Current River and the Jacks Fork Rivers as free-flowing streams.