The Sequoia Cone: The Park Service's Unofficial Emblem, 1920–1940

From the NPS History Collection's "Nifty Finds" series.

Even while the 1916 eagle emblem stayed on buttons and badges, by 1920 the National Park Service had taken up another symbol: the sequoia cone. It appeared on uniforms, signs and printed materials through the 1920s and 1930s — yet not everyone thought one tree from one region could stand for the whole park system. By 1940 most of its uses as an emblem had ended. It still survives on the ranger's uniform, linking today's rangers to those of a century ago.

On the signs

At an informal meeting of superintendents and engineers on November 18, 1919, it was agreed that park road signs — apart from danger and mileage signs — should carry the Service's and the park's names, and, where practical, "the design or symbol of the Service which Mr. Punchard has prepared."

That was landscape engineer Charles "Punch" Punchard Jr. A private landscape architect, he became landscape architect for the District of Columbia's Office of Public Buildings and Grounds in June 1917, then, as his health failed, moved west for drier air, arriving at Yellowstone on August 1, 1918. He spent the next year inspecting western parks, and in 1919 was given the final word on landscape matters — from cutting vines to the design of buildings. He died in Denver on November 12, 1920, aged only 35.

The 1919 notes don't describe his design, but the 1923 National Park Conference did: it kept the Service's colors, green and white, reversed to white letters on green, and "again adopted" the "pine cone" as the emblem for large general signs, with "The" replacing "US" — and Superintendent Horace Albright suggested a stencil to save money, apparently replacing the 1919 plan to press it into metal. Since two different cones in under four years seems unlikely, the "pine cone" was almost certainly Punchard's sequoia cone.

NPS "Scenic View" sign, about 1923–1940, with the sequoia cone emblem. NPS History Collection, HFCA 653.

The NPS History Collection holds three sequoia-cone signs, little documented:

• a boundary sign reading "The National Park Service" across the cone, suggesting about 1924 — though not in the reversed colors, and no white-on-green sign has been found, so that recommendation may never have taken hold; the switch from "US National Park Service" seems to have been short-lived, and no copy of the 1926 sign manual survives;
• a large diamond "Be Careful with Fire" sign, green cone with white "US National Park Service" on a white sign — fitting no known pattern, datable only to the 1920s–1930s;
• the "Scenic View" diamond, matching a 1932 contract for porcelain enamel signs with a "milk white background with leaf green letters, border, insignia, and symbols" and a solid green back. Photographs show such signs were common from at least 1931 to 1936.

A national park boundary sign, about 1924, with "The National Park Service" on the cone. NPS History Collection, HFCA 397.

Sequoia cones in opposite color schemes, from NPS road signs. NPS History Collection, HFCA 653 and HFCA 396.

By the mid-1930s the cone was mostly on road and directional signs — stop signs, speed signs, winter-sports arrows. Mount Rainier is the only park known to have used it on an entrance sign. On October 9, 1937, Director Arno B. Cammerer named a committee to revise the sign system; its new Sign Manual, approved in 1940, had no sequoia cone at all.

The Yosemite sign shop, November 1935: stop, speed, slow and winter-sports signs carry the cone in two sizes. Yosemite National Park photo.

The west entrance arch at Mount Rainier, six miles below Longmire, August 14, 1932, with carved sequoia cones. NPS History Collection, photo by George A. Grant, HFCA 1607.

On the uniform

The first official NPS uniform, in 1920, had hand-embroidered sleeve insignia showing rank. Rangers wore sequoia cones — one for a permanent ranger, two for an assistant chief ranger, three for a chief ranger — while superintendents had acorns and oak leaves, most other officers oak leaves with other motifs, and the director and deputies maple leaves. From May 15, 1928, only rangers wore sleeve insignia; the cones stayed in the 1936 regulations but were gone by the 1940 specifications.

Ranger sleeve insignia: permanent ranger (bottom), assistant chief ranger (middle), chief ranger (top). NPS History Collection photo.

Not everyone liked it. At the 1928 superintendents' conference, landscape architect Thomas C. Vint reported "considerable criticism of the sequoia cone because it is significant of California alone"; another said it "doesn't look like anything." Bison, pack horse and mounted-ranger designs were suggested, and Frank Pinkley, custodian of the Southwestern National Monuments, asked for a geometric design to cover the whole Service.

No agreement came, and the cone stayed. It appears on the earliest known NPS hatbands, from 1929; the official hatband of January 1, 1930, kept a sequoia design, and a silver cone ornament was added — gold-plated from 1981, solid brass since 1984. Both remain on the uniform today. So does the cone on the tooled leather belt, probably drawn by Vint around 1939 for the 1940 uniform. A silver cone also decorated the sun helmet from 1940 until it was dropped in September 1953, though some wore it into the late 1950s.

A tooled uniform belt with a sequoia cone, about 1939, believed drawn by Thomas C. Vint. NPS History Collection, HFCA-01249.

In print

• In January 1932, a sequoia cone by junior architect William Max Haussman appeared on the employee newsletter, the Park Service Bulletin. Haussman had joined in 1931 at Colonial National Monument, working on the Yorktown Sesquicentennial, and retired in 1963 as head of design and construction for National Capital Parks. His cone stayed on the Bulletin cover through December 1934, and his page heading through November 1939.
• A round sequoia design, once thought an early Service-wide logo, was really an entry in a 1938 employee contest for a library bookplate (one of 35). It didn't place in the top three, but from February 1939 it headed the editorial page of The Regional Review, Region One's internal magazine for eastern parks — an odd choice in a region without sequoias. It may have been drawn by the magazine's art editor, assistant landscape architect Samuel O. Smart.

A sequoia cone design entered in the 1938 bookplate contest. NPS History Collection, HFCA 1645.

A parting gift

When Director Horace M. Albright left for private industry in 1933, the field staff gave his family a grandfather clock. Its silver plate, inscribed "Presented to the Albright Family December 1933 by the National Park Service Field Personnel," bore a large sequoia cone — a sign that the people in the parks saw it as their emblem.

The design drawing for the clock's silver plate, dated January 12, 1934. Courtesy of the National Archives.

Official or not?

For all its use, many did not consider the cone official. A special superintendents' meeting in January–February 1936 recommended that the Service "officially decide upon some distinctive emblem … such as the sequoia cone." By 1940 it had vanished from everything but the hatband and belt, and World War II held up a replacement — staff didn't return to Washington from wartime offices in Chicago until 1947. The search began in 1949 and, a couple of years later, produced the emblem visitors know today: the NPS arrowhead.

A "Slow" sign with the sequoia cone at Obsidian Cliff, Yellowstone, June 1934. NPS History Collection, HFCA 1607.

Sources

Based on "50 Nifty Finds #37: Planting a Seed," NPS History Collection, National Park Service, drawing on the Park Service Bulletin (1938, 1939), the NPS Historic Listing of National Park Service Officials (1991) and R. Bryce Workman, National Park Service Uniforms: Badges and Insignia (1991); a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article spells the illustrator both "Haussman" and "Hausmann"; Haussman is used here.