Verne E. Chatelain, the Park Service’s First Chief Historian, and His Papers

In 1931, a Nebraska history professor named Verne E. Chatelain saw an advertisement in the Omaha World Herald for a new job: historian for the National Park Service. He applied, and was interviewed by NPS Director Horace M. Albright at the train station in Omaha while Albright was passing through on a trip west. The interview clearly went well. On September 15, 1931, Chatelain became the Park Service’s first chief historian.

Chief Historian Verne E. Chatelain. NPS History Collection, HFCA 1607.

From Nebraska to France and back

Verne Elmo Chatelain was born on July 22, 1895, in Waco, Nebraska. He graduated from Peru Normal School in 1914 and Peru State College in 1917. Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1918, he trained at Fort Dodge and served in France with the 88th Division on the Alsace front. A week after coming home he married his college sweetheart, Celia A. Group, on June 7, 1919, in Omaha; they had two children.

He taught and served as a superintendent of schools in Nebraska and, after the war, in Montana. In 1925 he returned to Peru to head the college’s Department of History and Social Science, while also serving as assistant superintendent of the Minnesota Historical Society. He earned an MA in history from the University of Chicago, a PhD from the University of Minnesota, and a law degree from Creighton College in Omaha, and was a member of the Nebraska bar.

Building the Park Service’s history program

Chatelain was hired to run the historical program in the NPS’s new Branch of Research and Education. He supervised its first two field historians, Floyd Flickinger and Elbert Cox, stationed at Colonial National Monument in Virginia. He believed strongly in interpreting history for the public, and pushed for brochures that were both interesting and informative as visitors’ first introduction to a site. He worked throughout to win academic respect for the research, education and interpretation his branch did, and he assessed the historical potential of proposed new parks.

His work, backed by Albright, helped create the new Branch of Historic Sites and Buildings in 1935, better equipped to lead interpretation and education at historical and archeological areas. Chatelain served as its Acting Assistant Director until he resigned in September 1936. Near the end of his NPS years he advised the city of Monterey, California, on developing its historic areas.

A long second career

Afterward he worked as a research consultant for Remington Rand, designing a new museum storage case and working with several museums, and for the Carnegie Institution. In 1945 he joined the history faculty of the University of Maryland, where he taught until retiring in 1965, with a stint in the history department of the Army Education Center in Germany in 1949–1950. In retirement he lectured often on Maryland in the Civil War, belonged to many historical associations, and wrote books and articles on historical interpretation and conservation. He died in Maryland on October 19, 1991, aged 96.

The papers

The Verne E. Chatelain Papers (HFCA 1645, Series XIV.E) are part of the NPS History Collection at Harpers Ferry Center, donated by his grandson Ken Wilhem.

They are his working files from the NPS Historical Division: correspondence and memos with parks, with Horace Albright and with historical societies; reports, plans, abstracts and brochures; handwritten notes on possible park sites, staffing and reviews of historical material; the final plan for the Monterey historic site development; and correspondence from his work after the Park Service. His photographs and scrapbooks have not yet been processed and are not described in the guide.

Sources

Based on "Guide to the Verne E. Chatelain Papers," NPS History Collection, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The guide names his employer “Remington and Rand”; the company was Remington Rand.