Good design lasts: the National Park Service uniform button has worn the same face since 1912. It is widely believed that the Waterbury Button Company of Connecticut has made it from the start. The buttons themselves, examined for this final entry in the NPS History Collection’s 50 Nifty Finds series, tell a more complicated story.
NPS uniform button with back mark "B. Schellenberg & Sons, Brooklyn, N.Y." (NPS History Collection, HFCA 2731)
The 1906 Interior Department ranger badge (top) was the model for the button’s face (below); coating loss reveals brass underneath. NPS History Collection.
An eagle borrowed from a badge
On December 13, 1911, uniform maker Sigmund Eisner of Red Bank, New Jersey, answering the Interior Department’s request for ranger uniforms, offered either Army eagle buttons or custom buttons kept in stock for the service. The department chose bronze buttons bearing an eagle surrounded by “National Park Service, Department of the Interior,” as on the ranger badge. Eisner agreed on January 10, 1912, to have dies made in all sizes; the department lent him a badge to copy, and on April 30, 1912, he returned it with the first samples.
From 1911 to 1919 uniforms were authorized but not required, so few were sold and only one or two pre-1920 uniforms survive. Much about the early years remains unknown.
Who really made them?
Eisner supplied the buttons but did not make them — and never named his maker. A 1991 book on NPS badges and insignia by R. Bryce Workman credited the Waterbury Button Company, citing a conversation with its curator; but Workman’s own notes, now in the NPS History Collection, don’t confirm it.
AA Quality Waterbury B Co button. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 2730)
Waterbury was a major button center, but New Jersey had makers too. The American Button Company of Newark made metal uniform buttons only about 36 miles from Eisner’s factory — more than 100 miles closer than Waterbury, no small difference in the 1910s. More research is needed.
Reading the back marks
The button face never changed, so dating relies on the back:
- Shank attachment: external solder mostly until the mid-1920s (sometimes to the 1940s); internal solder from the mid-1920s until about 1973. Backs were made in slow periods and stockpiled, so dates are approximate.
- Coats help but mislead: buttons were replaced as needed, old coats stayed in service, and parks kept caches of spare uniforms.
In spring 2024, staff reviewed more than 125 uniform coats in the NPS History Collection and the Yellowstone and Yosemite museum collections and found 13 different back marks — button makers and uniform companies, including two previously unknown suppliers.
Russell Uniform Company back stamp. The company name and location are difficult to read and seemingly deliberately obscured. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 382)
The 1917-pattern uniform worn by Bill Wiggins at Yellowstone in 1919 — the oldest known NPS uniform coat — with both Eisner back marks and one Army replacement button. Yellowstone National Park.
| Back mark | What it suggests |
|---|---|
| SIGMUND EISNER RED BANK and …RED BANK N.J. | Eisner, founded 1859, became the largest U.S. military uniform supplier and, by 1918, the world’s largest uniform maker. The plain mark likely dates from 1912–1922, the “N.J.” mark from after the company incorporated in New Jersey in December 1922 — though mixing on coats (such as Horace Albright’s) blurs this. The firm dissolved in 1956 |
| B. SCHELLENBERG & SONS BROOKLYN | a single known button; a uniform firm from 1857, later named with others by the FTC in 1942 for price fixing, closed by 1948 |
| RUSSELL UNIFORM COMPANY NEW YORK | found on three coats, the name apparently deliberately obscured; a police and firefighter uniform maker — perhaps linked to the U.S. Park Police |
| SUPERIOR QUALITY | generic and hard to trace; on uniforms dated 1929–1958. A claimed link to Connecticut’s Steele and Johnson company found no support in its ledgers |
| AA QUALITY / WATERBURY B CO | the earliest Waterbury mark in the collection, created about 1922 |
| WATERBURY BUTTON CO. and variants | common from about 1932; after the company became Waterbury Companies Inc. in 1944 and was bought by OSG Technologies in 2000, later marks read WATERBURY BUTTON CT USA |
Waterbury Button Co Waterbury Con. button back mark. (NPS History Collection)
Superior Quality backstamp. The soldered shank attachment suggests this could date from 1912 to the mid-1920s. (NPS History Collection)
In February 1923, the superintendent of Sequoia and General Grant National Parks complained that the buttons’ bronze finish wore off almost immediately. Could that be what brought in the Waterbury Button Company? Later buttons were acid-washed before bronzing, which stopped the finish flaking off.
Acid washing the brass button before applying the bronze finish prevented the coating losses found on earlier buttons. (NPS History Collection)
The two Sigmund Eisner back marks. NPS History Collection.
Buttons by the gross
For decades the NPS bought buttons by the gross and sent them to parks or uniform makers. One surviving card of 22 overcoat buttons was cut from packaging for a toy zeppelin sold by Ferdinand Strauss Inc., whose ill-fated partnership with Waterbury on toy tractors ended in bankruptcy and a lawsuit. Since 1981, uniform makers have had to buy buttons from Waterbury; since the early 2000s, employees can order replacements directly.
Left: Zeppelin button card with buttons. Right: Button card without buttons. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 2742)
The Park Service invites anyone with more examples of back marks to contact its History Collection archivist.
Sources
Based on "50 Nifty Finds #50: Buttoning It Up," NPS History Collection, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain, with R. Bryce Workman’s published account and Sigmund Eisner’s correspondence rewritten in hubnx’s own words. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.
In these publicationsYellowstone National ParkYosemite National Park
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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