This blog is meant to continue the dialogue started in Portland. It is the mission of the NPS to interpret the nation's past and the work of the Second Century Commission and the Ken Burns series reflect on the role of the national parks in this mission. The workshop is an opportunity to bring environmental history into this discussion and is a step toward forming a national panel of environmental historians to analyze the national parks and the role of our scholarship in public interpretation.
"National Park Service took a long time to recognize women’s contributions": Ken Burns’s special on our parks was great, but there remains an untold story behind it all.
By Polly Welts Kaufman
October 24, 2009
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Polly Welts Kaufman of Harpswell teaches history at the University of Southern Maine and is the author of “National Parks and the Woman’s Voice.”
HARPSWELL -- For more than twelve hours this fall, thousands of Americans watched Ken Burns’s National Parks: America’s Best Idea. They were treated to spectacular photography that showed the parks at their best. They were introduced to some of the great men behind the park idea: John Muir, Stephen Mather, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, and Harold Ickes, to name a few. Viewers met such gifted men as naturalist George Menendez Wright who died too soon, Yosemite artist Chiura Obata who later was removed to the Topaz Internment Camp, and to the African American Buffalo soldiers, who protected Yosemite and Sequoia national parks before the Park Service provided adequate staffing.
But where were the women who played and play significant roles in founding, supporting, and staffing national parks? Except for a brief mention of Virginia McClurg who “saved” Mesa Verde but did not want it to become a federal park, Burns doesn’t tell their stories. When he does present a woman, it is almost always when she is connected to a man. By the way, one of the reasons Virginia McClurg wanted to keep Mesa Verde out of federal hands, was that she was afraid the site’s artifacts would be shipped to Washington, as in fact they were.
At first organized women were in a supportive role. Burns shows John Muir talking to a group of about two dozen women but neglects to explain who they were. They were members of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs who rallied their national organization to lobby Congress in person and by mail to save Hetch Hetchy. They later moved on to campaign for the establishment of a National Park Service. Santa Barbara socialite turned desert plant preservationist Minerva Hamilton Hoyt practically single handedly founded Joshua Tree National Monument, now a national park. Rosalie Edge, a scourge in the side of the National Audubon Society, carried on successful campaigns to establish King Canyon National Park and save the forests from being logged at Olympic National Park. The Womens’ Relief Corps, a DAR auxiliary, cared for Andersonville before it became part of the National Park system where in 1865 Clara Barton directed the work of identifying and marking the graves of the 13,000 Union prisoners who died there.
The list goes on and includes Everglades catalyst Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, who is briefly mentioned in the film; Colorado’s Florissant Fossil Beds, saved by naturalists Estella Leopold and Bettie Willard; and the League of Women Voters who worked to establish Cuyahoga Valley National Park after their river caught on fire. Other park service units that owe their beginnings to women agitators include Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Santa Monica Mountains NRA, San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, and, of course, Women’s Rights NHP. There are even more, including the important role of Alaskan women who supported the drive to save wild Alaska for the park system, including Celia Hunter who accepted the presidency of the Wilderness Society (the first and only woman to date) so she could be in Washington to help coordinate what became a successful effort.
But of all the important stories about women and national parks, one of the most significant ones is what happened to the first women rangers at Yellowstone. For a long time sportswomen had proved both their prowess and scientific knowledge, often in places that were or became national parks. Botanist and plant explorer Jeanne Carr was John Muir’s mentor, carrying her own tent and provisions as she climbed heights to find specimens. Army officers wives at Yellowstone took long excursions on horseback. In 1913, Dora Keen made the first ascent of Mount Blackburn, now in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Women in the Sierra Club, the Mountaineers, and the Appalachian Mountain Club were not new to outdoor feats or to botanizing.
It seemed perfectly logical that some of these women would qualify to become Park Service rangers. During World War I, both Yosemite and Mount Rainier hired women rangers to fill in for the absent men. When he was superintendent at Yellowstone, Horace Albright discovered geologist Isabel Basset giving a lecture on the park’s features for a private tour group. He was so impressed that he hired her for the next season. Albright and some superintendents at Rocky Mountain, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite national parks began to hire women as ranger naturalists.
But it did not last. In 1926 when the inspector general for the Department of the Interior, J.F. Gartland, visited Yellowstone, he was shocked to find five women rangers. Two served on entrance gates, one alternating with her husband, another patrolled campgrounds in full uniform on horseback, and two others served as ranger naturalists. After Gartland returned to Washington, he continued to express his disapproval of women in ranger positions. In correspondence that still survives in the Yellowstone archives, Albright offered Gartland reasons why women were qualified and should serve. It was to no avail. Except for a few special cases, it was not long before women lost the opportunity to become rangers in national parks. Several of them still served by marrying rangers. They soon received a title. Frank Pinkley, who supervised the southwestern monuments each in charge of a male custodian, called their wives “honorary custodians without pay.”
It was not until the early 1960s that women’s talents as rangers were rediscovered. It seems that men found It demeaning to serve as ranger guides in historic houses and some superintendents suggested that women could do the job. The Park Service began to hire women for the positions, but at first having them wear distinctive female uniforms. Yellowstone now has a woman superintendent. A third of the rangers are now women and one quarter of the superintendents. What is more two women have served as directors of the Park Service. Maybe Ken Burns can do a sequel. He will find many more great stories and present a more accurate picture of who has been and is responsible for our national parks.
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