The 1920 Congressional Park Tour: How an Appropriations Committee Came to Back the NPS

In the summer of 1920 the House Appropriations Committee made one of the first inspection tours of national parks by a congressional committee. For the young National Park Service, badly short of money, the stakes were high. Horace M. Albright, then Yellowstone's superintendent, later remembered the Service begging Congress for inspections — even investigations. A few reporters called the trip a needless junket, but it showed Congress what the parks needed and built support for budget increases throughout the 1920s.

The NPS History Collection holds Chairman James W. Good's album of photographs and clippings from the trip, given by his son James W. Good Jr., who worked three college summers as a Yellowstone ranger in the 1930s.

A hand-colored photograph by Asahel Curtis from Good's album of the 1920 tour. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

Getting it going

Albright said it was his invitation to Good to see Yellowstone that set it off. Director Stephen T. Mather's 1920 report credited Good's suggestion; Good recorded that the committee accepted the Interior Department's invitation on Saturday, June 5.

The arrangements took 30 minutes after Congress adjourned. The representatives:

Mather had courted Good, Byrnes and Byrns — and many others — for years; Good had chaired the committee since May 1919. The NPS and the Reclamation Service planned the trip, but only the reclamation part was funded, so Mather improvised: a 10-compartment Pullman car for the rail legs, railroad officials riding along on their own lines, western cities and booster groups paying for the park visits, and park concessioners looking after the party inside the parks.

They left Chicago at 11:30 pm on June 20, 1920. Beyond the parks they inspected 11 reclamation projects and several private or proposed irrigation schemes. Assistant Director Arno B. Cammerer escorted them to Denver.

Rocky Mountain

"The park trip commences," at Rocky Mountain. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

Dignitaries met them in Denver on June 21. They drove to Estes Park and that afternoon up the newly opened Fall River Road — today's Old Fall River Road, the first auto route into the park's high country: grades up to 16 percent, 16 tight switchbacks, generally only 14 feet wide, and few passing places, some on the switchbacks themselves.

"Lined up for the camera," Glacier Basin, Rocky Mountain National Park. Arno B. Cammerer is second from the right. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

On June 23 they visited Glacier Basin and its free campground and fished Sprague Lake. At dinner in Denver, Good said the park "must be given publicity, and I'm sure that Congress will appropriate sufficient money for the development of this park." He hoped the private land inside the park would come under NPS control, and one clipping reported "open confession" that appropriations since the park's founding in January 1915 had been "grossly, beggardly inadequate."

Sequoia

After two days in Oakland, most members stayed in San Francisco for the Democratic national convention. Mather persuaded Good to make an unofficial side trip, and on June 28 they reached Sequoia in the rain with hosts from the Visalia Board of Trade. Next day they drove to Moro Rock, hiked seven or eight miles, saw the General Sherman tree and drove onto a fallen giant.

"On side of Moro Rock, pointing out location of proposed new road." Mather is gesturing; the other man may be Good. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

The point, the Visalia Daily Times wrote on June 30, was to show Good a proposed road up the Middle Fork of the Kaweah River. One clipping judged that he was "thoroughly convinced that Giant Forest is one of the greatest assets of this country."

"A Fallen Monarch." (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

On July 5 Mather slipped away to Lassen Volcanic — his first visit. Congress had just appropriated $2,500 for it, its first money since the park's creation in August 1916.

Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy

In Yosemite the committee looked into the nature guide program, which Mather, a wealthy businessman, had largely paid for himself beyond the appropriation. They were photographed with the Wawona Tunnel Tree and the Grizzly Giant, visited Crane Flat, and some climbed Nevada Falls.

"Two fishermen and eighteen fish and the limit is five fish each." The man standing on the left is Stephen Mather. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

Then the cars were loaded onto the Hetch Hetchy Railroad, built by San Francisco and finished in 1917 to serve the 430-foot O'Shaughnessy Dam, approved by Congress in 1913 after a fight conservationists lost; the first phase was done in 1923. Good's album shows the valley before it was flooded.

Composite of photos of the train to Hetch Hetchy Valley from Good's album. Left to right: "All the cars are loaded on the train," "the Hetch Hetchy Railroad," and "one thousand and one steps." (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

"In Hetch Hetchy Valley": Mather (center), committee members and a ranger, July 1920. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

Crater Lake and Mount Rainier

At Crater Lake on July 8–9, Mather raised enlarging the park to take in other scenery. Will G. Steel of the Eugene Chamber of Commerce reported that "every member of the congressional party was enthusiastic over the lake," but the committee "made no statement as to their attitude or their future intentions as to appropriations."

The party reached Paradise Inn at Mount Rainier on July 15, snow still on the ground, as guests of the Rainier National Park Company, and left the next day.

"At Paradise Inn." (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

Yellowstone

They arrived on July 20 for four days with Albright. The burning issue was the Yellowstone Irrigation Association's proposed 8-foot dam at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake, which would "submerge 4 or 5 hot springs, of which there were 5,000 in the park." Albright made sure they heard how dams would ruin the park; the dam's backers made their own case, and a Cody paper headlined "Yellowstone Dam Project Assured." Representative Evans said only that the committee "would express no opinion, but they had been at the dam site, and they had eyes and used them."

"Arrival at West Yellowstone, ready for park trip." Albright is at far right. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

Roads were the other topic. Albright admitted in 1969 that he may have left them ungraded to make his point — then rain forced crews to grade them into near-perfect shape, and his daily pleas for paving money got nowhere.

They saw Old Faithful and the geyser basins, fed a begging bear from the cars (since banned), and visited National Park Mountain, where the national park idea was born around a campfire. Albright also took some to Jackson Lake to argue for extending Yellowstone to it and part of the Tetons, where dams also threatened Jenny Lake; Grand Teton National Park followed in 1929.

"National Park Mountain. Here was born the national park idea." (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

Glacier

At Glacier from July 28, the chamber of commerce lobbied for a lower route for the road to Belton instead of the planned one over Logan Pass. In two days the party rode up Logan Pass, stayed at the Going-to-the-Sun chalets, and saw lakes McDonald, Two Medicine and St. Mary.

"On the Logan Pass Trail. It was a strenuous Day." (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

They posed with five Blackfeet men outside the Glacier Park Hotel, the Great Northern Railway's first hotel; no record of any conversation survives, and the album's caption reflects the paternalistic and racist views of the 1920s.

Committee members and five Blackfeet men outside the Glacier Park Hotel. (NPS History Collection, HFCA 1826)

In all, the trip lasted 42 days: 7,000 miles by train and boat and almost 2,500 miles by car.

What it achieved

Good wrote to Mather: "I was prepared in some degree for the grandeur of the scenery … but I was not prepared for the splendid service which is afforded persons who are permitted to visit the parks. … You certainly are to be congratulated upon a very great accomplishment with respect to the entire park management." Mather's report noted that, with one exception, no committee member had before seen the parks they were yearly asked to fund.

The tour made lasting allies — among them Louis C. Cramton, in Congress until 1931 and then a special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior for a year. NPS budgets rose through the 1920s, just as post-war travel and car ownership brought more visitors to "the national playgrounds."

Sources

Based on "50 Nifty Finds #21: A Good Trip," NPS History Collection, National Park Service, drawing on the James W. Good album (HFCA 1826), 1920 newspapers, the Director's 1920 annual report, and Horace M. Albright's later recollections (The American West, 1969; The Birth of the National Park Service, 1985), which are paraphrased; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source dates the campfire at National Park Mountain to 1872, which is left out here as doubtful. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.