Natt N. Dodge: The Desert Naturalist Who Photographed Mount Rainier's Glaciers

Natt N. Dodge spent most of a 30-year National Park Service career in the parks and monuments of the Southwest. His photographs and films filled NPS programs, pamphlets and exhibits for decades, often without credit, and his natural history books tie his name to the desert. So it can be a surprise that some of the most striking pictures in his personal collection show glaciers, crevasses and climbers on Mount Rainier.

Paradise ice cave, Mount Rainier National Park, about 1932–1935. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

Honey, and a suggestion for Commander Byrd

• Born August 23, 1900, in South Chatham, Massachusetts; grew up in Connecticut and Colorado.
• Army private in World War I, October–December 1918.
• Colorado Agricultural College, where he edited the yearbook and debated. On June 15, 1924, two days after graduating, he married Mildred "Hap" Johnson, whom he'd met at Boulder Prep School; they had three children, Nattalie, Griffin and Judith.
• In Seattle he sold honey and beekeeping supplies, began writing around 1926 for Bees and Honey — which called him an "excellent amateur photographer" — and freelanced for Sunset, Desert Magazine and others.
• As foreman for the Pacific Slope Honey Company, he suggested that the American Honey Institute supply honey to Commander Richard E. Byrd's first South Pole expedition. With New Zealand beekeepers, five hundred pounds of honey went south — "a use for honey never before available."

Three summers on Mount Rainier

When his company failed in the Depression, Frank Brockman took him on as a seasonal ranger-naturalist at Mount Rainier for the summers of 1932, 1933 and 1934. An experienced climber and winter sportsman, Dodge photographed glaciers, crevasses, summit parties, ski events, hikes and wildlife, tried night photography, and wrote poems and nature notes for the park newsletter.

Dodge's caption: "When the lower side of a crevasse slides away, the towering ice wall it leaves behind is called a Bergschrund." About 1932–1935. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

Crevasses in Nisqually Glacier, August 23, 1933. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

Climbers on the summit of Mount Rainier, with Mount St. Helens in the distance. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

Crossing a crevasse. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

Into the Southwest

In 1933, Dodge sat the junior naturalist civil service exam with thousands of others; by Hap's account 900 passed, and his score was the 15th highest. With two small children he declined a post at Mount McKinley (now Denali) and instead joined Grand Canyon as a ranger in 1935, working the South Rim and then the North Rim, where Hap taught their daughter in a kitchen tent. There he wrote booklets on the canyon's trees and its reptiles and amphibians, and in 1937 Life magazine ran two of his photos of hummingbirds on their nest.

On September 13, 1937, he became junior park naturalist for the Southwestern National Monuments (SWNM), headquartered at Coolidge, Arizona. The monthly report welcomed an "accomplished photographer" whose work would "deal principally with the biological aspects" of the education program. He did a bit of everything: exhibits, publicity, specimens, photographs, reports, guiding, bird banding, the library and talks — and posted so many "Game Reserve" signs at Saguaro that a ranger joked a hunter could only get in on purpose.

A climbing party on Mount Rainier. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

The films

A Coolidge merchant once refused Dodge credit, sure he was just another government hanger-on at "that old mud house" — unaware that Casa Grande was headquarters for 27 national monuments. That spurred Dodge to film the monuments with his own movie camera. His reel on the national parks and monuments of the Southwest grew popular around Coolidge, Phoenix, Tucson and beyond, and became four films — for Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico — plus 45-minute films on park wildlife and wildflowers, and others on the desert and Native Americans. Decades later he admitted they had worn out and looked amateurish, but counted the goodwill they won for a little-known Park Service as his greatest contribution.

Filming a crevasse crossing; the badge on the man's shirt suggests a ranger or licensed guide. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

Regional naturalist

• Late 1941: sent to Carlsbad Caverns to look into complaints that cave tours were more policing than interpreting; his recommendation of a naturalist post started the park's interpretive program.
• 1942–1943: the SWNM office moved to Santa Fe; with his supervisor Dale King away at war, Dodge became acting SWNM naturalist and then acting regional naturalist, also running the regional library — with his mother, a retired school librarian, volunteering 8-hour days, six days a week, three months each winter.
• Summer 1945: acting NPS chief naturalist.
• 1946–1963: regional naturalist, until he retired.

Contemplating a crevasse. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

Books and legacy

Dodge wrote or co-wrote more than a dozen books, many illustrated with his own photographs — among them Poisonous Dwellers of the Desert (1949), Flowers of the Southwest Desert (1954), Golden Guides to the American Southwest (1955) and the Pacific Northwest (1959) with Herbert S. Zim, and 100 Desert Wildflowers in Natural Color (1963). His description of Guadalupe Mountains was printed in the Congressional Record in 1967.

He died in Santa Fe on December 12, 1982. In 2023 the NPS History Collection named him an NPS Eminent Photographer, and Colorado State University offers a scholarship in his name for students of biology, zoology or botany interested in conservation.

Climbers at Nisqually Glacier. NPS History Collection photo by Natt N. Dodge

Sources

Based on "50 Nifty Finds #28: Shuttering in the Cold," NPS History Collection, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Dodge's and his wife's oral-history recollections are paraphrased; quotations are from 1926–1937 publications and NPS reports.