The Art of Politics: Cartoonists Who Championed the National Parks

Political cartoons have long helped artists and their editors draw attention to social issues and corruption, and rally support for good causes. The NPS History Collection holds drawings by some of the most influential cartoonists of the 1920s to the 1950s, among them Ralph O. Yardley, Frank Kettlewell and C.K. Berryman. Their work publicised the National Park Service and helped build political support for protecting the parks from commercial interests. This is number 15 in the collection's "50 Nifty Finds" series.

Ralph O. Yardley

Ralph Oswald Yardley was born on September 2, 1878, in Stockton, California. He studied art in San Francisco around 1895 and began his newspaper career at the San Francisco Examiner. He went on to the Honolulu Advertiser (from 1900), the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Bulletin (which ran his comic strip "The Adventures of Ping and Pong" from 1903), the New York Globe and the San Francisco Call, and drew covers for Harper's, Leslie's and other magazines. In his early years newspapers could not reproduce photographs, so illustrators sketched in the field or drew from their own photographs.

In 1922 he became the first artist at the Stockton Record, where he spent the next 30 years as editorial and sports cartoonist, artist and photographer. His last regular editorial cartoon ran on July 12, 1952, and he died on December 6, 1961, aged 83.

The collection holds 13 Yardley cartoons from 1923 to 1928, many urging protection of park resources from loggers and other private interests. "Mr. Mather's Suggestion" (August 21, 1923) answered a challenge from NPS Director Stephen T. Mather to the people of Stockton: save the trees along the Big Oak Flat Road to Yosemite from the timber companies. In the top panel people boast of saving single trees while an axe labelled "Lumber Interests" looms; in the bottom panel only stumps line the road. Mather had already lost a fight over logging along the highway between Wawona and the Mariposa Grove, and the cartoon was a call to stop it happening again.

Ralph Yardley's "Mr. Mather's Suggestion," August 21, 1923. NPS History Collection, HFCA 524.

"Homeward Bound" (October 10, 1925) shows park superintendents driving home from their conference at Mesa Verde, with Mather at a filling station fuelling the last car with "pep". It was the first conference the superintendents and their wives reached by car rather than train, stopping at parks along the way to learn about other parks, the country around them and the roads. "Without a Gear Shift" (July 31, 1926) celebrates the opening of the all-year road to Yosemite, with cars labelled for each season climbing a mountain pass.

Ralph Yardley's "Homeward Bound" and "Without a Gear Shift," 1925 and 1926. NPS History Collection, HFCA 523 and 525.

A faithful friend to the parks

Behind most of Yardley's park cartoons was the Record's managing editor, G. Elmer Reynolds, the "idea man". For years he ran a full page on the national parks every Saturday, with photographs and maps sent by superintendents, persuading his publisher, Irving Martin, to spend on it although it cost a great deal and reached far beyond the paper's own readers. Reynolds died suddenly in the office on July 21, 1928; his last edition was finished with a Yardley cartoon he had planned, boosting "the people's parks". Mather and Horace M. Albright telegraphed Martin:

"The National Parks have lost their most faithful friend and we have lost one of our most beloved associates in a great public work. Yosemite flags are ordered to fly at half-mast in his honor and rangers will attend funeral in uniform."

Yosemite naturalist Charles P. Russell credited Reynolds as the "prime mover" behind the park's Nature Notes, printed only through the Record's partnership, and wrote, "We had come to look upon him as an integral part of the National Park Service."

Frank "KET" Kettlewell

Benjamin Franklin Kettlewell, Jr. was born on December 5, 1889, in St. Helena, California. He first went to San Francisco in 1906 with relief supplies after the earthquake and fire, and stayed to attend art school. He joined the Oakland Tribune in 1912 and by 1917 headed its art room. Besides being one of the Bay Area's leading editorial cartoonists, he was a photographer, painter, amateur astronomer, metalworker, woodworker and mapmaker: in 1948 his drawing of Sutter's Mill became the design of a stamp marking the discovery of gold in California, and his map of San Francisco Bay shrinking became a symbol of the Save the Bay Association. He died in Oakland on June 11, 1969, aged 79.

He signed his work KET and usually added a small bird, sometimes with its own comment. His cartoons often gave human features to park landmarks: geysers, volcanoes, El Capitan and Half Dome. The collection holds 15 of them, from the 1920s to 1930. In "Yosemite Timber", Uncle Sam hammers in a sign, "Belongs to Public. Private Interests Keep Out," with a "Congressional Bills" hammer, while a sulky saw blade and axe walk off and the bird says "On your way." "Stephen T. Mather's Monument," with "US National Parks" on a tree trunk, appeared on January 25, 1930, three days after Mather's death.

Frank Kettlewell's "Yosemite Timber." NPS History Collection, HFCA 508.

Six of the collection's KET cartoons are about visiting the parks. In a 1927 drawing a smiling Mount Lassen puffs out a cloud reading "Visit the National Parks this summer" while Mount Rainier cries "Atta Boy Lassen", a Yellowstone geyser adds "Ditto", and El Capitan claps. Others show cars streaming through Yosemite's tunnel tree under "460,610 visitors this year"; an audience before a stage of "California's National Parks and Monuments" (Lassen, Half Dome, Pinnacles, the trees of Sequoia, General Grant and Muir Woods) under "755,000 visitors this year"; and a smiling Half Dome beside a sulking Yellowstone geyser, Glacier mountain, Lassen volcano and Grand Canyon, under "11,639 people visited Yosemite over the Fourth. 81,303 visitors to date this season."

Four of Frank Kettlewell's cartoons encouraging and recording visits to the national parks, 1920s. NPS History Collection, HFCA 512, 509, 628, 629.

C.K. Berryman

Clifford K. Berryman, born on April 2, 1869, in Clifton, Kentucky, moved to Washington, D.C., in 1889 to work as an illustrator at the U.S. Patent Office, and became a political cartoonist for the Washington Post. In 1907 he joined the Evening Star, where he stayed for 42 years; he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1943 and died in 1949. His son James T. Berryman also won a Pulitzer. Washington's best-known political artist of the early 1900s, he is credited with creating the teddy bear: after President Theodore Roosevelt famously refused to shoot an old, haggard bear on a hunt, Berryman drew it as a cuddly cub, and the "Berryman bear" stayed in his cartoons long after. The National Archives holds more than 2,400 of his drawings.

The collection has two. "In the Yellowstone" (Evening Star, 1927) shows President Calvin Coolidge, in suit and boater, with a fishing pole and an empty can among spouting geysers: "And I thought I was getting away from all suggestions of Congress."

C.K. Berryman's "In the Yellowstone," 1927. NPS History Collection, HFCA 611.

The second announces a talk by NPS Director Horace M. Albright at the University Club on February 28, 1933. Albright, in uniform, holds a Berryman bear's paw and his cased lantern-slide projector ("Oodles of park pictures. 'All Bright.' Worth Seeing!"), and the bear promises he will "take 'depress' out of Depression!" Berryman often gave his originals to their subjects, and probably gave this one to Albright after the talk. Albright resigned from the Park Service on August 9, 1933.

C.K. Berryman's announcement of Horace Albright's lecture at the University Club, 1933. NPS History Collection, HFCA 517.

Other artists

The collection also holds a few cartoons from the late 1920s to the 1950s by others: two Yellowstone panels by Gaar Williams for the Chicago Tribune (1928 and 1934); three political cartoons by the Saturday Evening Post's Herbert Johnson; a Sequoia cartoon by Hy Gage of the Philadelphia press; John T. McCutcheon's four-panel "Commercializing Our National Parks", inscribed to his friend Stephen Mather; and a park cartoon that Jim Berryman gave to NPS Director Conrad L. Wirth in 1955.

Sources

• National Park Service, NPS History Collection, "50 Nifty Finds #15: The Art of Politics." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/50-nifty-finds-15-the-art-of-politics.htm. Its sources include the Stockton Evening and Sunday Record (1922–1961), the Oakland Tribune (1969), the minutes of the 1925 national park conference at Mesa Verde, and Robert Shankland, Steve Mather of the National Parks (1970).
• Corrected: the original dates the Mesa Verde conference 1923; the cartoon and the conference minutes it cites are from 1925. "Lassie volcano" is Lassen.