Ronald F. Lee and His Papers: The Park Service's Sage of Historic Preservation

NPS Chief Historian Ronald F. Lee. NPS History Collection, HFCA 1607.

A historian joins the Park Service

Ronald ("Ronnie") Freeman Lee was born on September 18, 1905, in Montevideo, Minnesota, to Ernest Powers and Maude Susan (Anthony) Lee, and grew up in Dickinson, North Dakota. He earned a BS in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1927 and an MA in American history from the University of Chicago two years later, taught history at LaSalle Junior College in Illinois from 1929 to 1931, and then became a teaching fellow at Minnesota while working toward a doctorate.

In June 1933 he and several other graduate students were offered jobs with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). He started as a historical foreman at a CCC camp at Shiloh National Military Park, moved to Washington in 1934 to work under Conrad L. Wirth in the CCC State Park Group, and after the Historic Sites Act of 1935 became assistant director of Historic Sites under Chief Historian Verne Chatelain. When Chatelain resigned in 1938, Lee became NPS chief historian, directing the Historic Sites program, helping preserve many historic places, serving as the main liaison to the Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings, and Monuments, and launching the NPS historical handbook and source book series.

War and the National Trust

Lee enlisted in the Army as a private on June 10, 1942, and married Jean Prochaska in Denver that October 24. As a staff sergeant in the Army Air Forces in England, he taught the maintenance and operation of the Norden bombsight and the automatic pilot used on bombing raids, and was honorably discharged on October 1, 1945. The Lees had no children.

From 1947 to 1949 he was instrumental in founding the National Trust for Historic Preservation, serving on its executive committee and for many years as secretary of its board, and helped develop the National Preservation Program, a forerunner of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. His United States Historical and Architectural Monuments (1951) became the official history of federal historic preservation.

Interpretation and landmarks

In 1951 he became assistant director of Research and Interpretation, and in 1953 head of a new Division of Interpretation overseeing publications, museums, education and interpretation across the National Park System. He helped plan many Mission 66 facilities and was instrumental in creating the National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings in 1957, which led to the National Historic Landmarks Program. He also helped establish Hampton National Historic Site, the first park unit recognized for its architecture, and Piscataway National Park, which protects the view from Mount Vernon.

Philadelphia and after

In 1960 Lee became regional director of the Northeast Region in Philadelphia, where he took up the preservation of urban areas, seashores and lakeshores. He belonged to a long list of preservation, conservation, museum and civic organizations, represented the United States on UNESCO's committee of experts on monuments of art and history in 1947, and served as a trustee or officer of groups including the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, the Theodore Roosevelt Association and the American Association of Museums' council. That society awarded him the Cornelius Amory Pugsley Medal in 1952 and the George McAneny Medal in 1961.

Lee retired in 1966 but stayed on as special assistant to NPS Director George B. Hartzog Jr., who called him "the sage of historic preservation." From 1966 to 1971 he chaired a special NPS committee on historic preservation and wrote a column for the American Association for State and Local History's History News. His late works include 1872–2000: Public Use of the National Park System (1968), a definitive history of the Antiquities Act of 1906 (1970), The Family Tree of the National Park System (1972), published a week before his death, and The Origin and Evolution of the National Military Park Idea, published after it in 1973.

The papers

The collection holds Lee's working files from his Park Service career and his work with preservation organizations such as the National Trust, the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society and the National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings: memos and correspondence, guidelines, plans, inventories, brochures and legislation for the Northeast Region and individual parks; his speeches and publications in draft and final form; personal correspondence and personnel records; a few photographs and slides; and clippings and research by others that he used. It is arranged alphabetically by topic. Related collections include the papers of Verne E. Chatelain, Ernest A. Connally and Robert M. Utley, and the NPS Oral History Collection.

Sources

Rewritten from the National Park Service finding aid "Guide to the Ronald F. Lee Papers" (NPS History Collection; the guide is in the public domain), in hubnx's own words. The container list is not reproduced.