The Early Women Naturalists of the National Park Service

In 1926, Herma Albertson spent her mornings as a maid at Old Faithful in Yellowstone, earning $15 a month plus room and board, and her afternoons working for the National Park Service. She had no rank, no title and no uniform. Five years later she passed the naturalist Civil Service exam with the highest score in the country that year and became the first permanent woman naturalist in the NPS. Hers is one of the stories in this National Park Service article on women who became park naturalists.

Only two early women park rangers made the move from ranger to naturalist. Marguerite Lindsley Arnold, who had resigned her permanent ranger post when she married, returned to Yellowstone as a temporary park ranger (naturalist) from 1929 to 1931. Yosemite rehired Enid Michael as a temporary naturalist every summer from 1928 to 1942. A handful of other parks hired a few new women under the ranger-naturalist title that was created in 1928.

Ranger-naturalist Dr. Margaret Fuller Boos wore the standard Park Service uniform at Rocky Mountain National Park. NPS History Collection photo.

The doctor at Rocky Mountain

Dr. Margaret Fuller Boos was hired as a temporary ranger-naturalist at Rocky Mountain National Park for the 1928 and 1929 seasons, although Superintendent Roger W. Toll said he would prefer a man. She was the first woman in the NPS with a PhD. What persuaded him was not her doctorate in geology but her teaching record and, above all, her collection of lantern slides, since he wanted her to make more for the park.

She gave evening lectures to thousands of visitors, led field trips, some lasting all day, and wrote 20 articles for the park's Nature Notes newsletter. After the 1929 season she was offered a permanent job, but Toll had moved to Yellowstone in February 1929 before the offer was made, so it did not show that competence had changed his mind. She turned the job down and built a career as a respected geologist outside the NPS.

From maid to naturalist

Albertson came to Yellowstone in 1926 with a degree in botany. By her later account, Horace Albright offered to try her out as a naturalist without the rating or title if she lived in the Old Faithful cabins and worked as a "pillow puncher" (a maid) for her room and board, since there was no other housing for a woman. She did the maid's work for the Yellowstone Parks Camp Company in the mornings and worked for the government in the afternoons. In 1927 the park found her a room in the "puphouse," an old Army cabin, where she ate with the rangers and no longer needed the second job.

Herma Albertson on the Nature Trail at Yellowstone, about 1927. Yellowstone National Park photo.

From 1926 to 1928 she worked as a laborer, helping to develop the Nature Trail at Old Faithful, making signs and leading tours. The Park Service's policies on protecting the "ranger image" probably made hiring her outright impossible, and in 1927 the park roster listed her as "without appointment." The new ranger-naturalist classification in 1928 changed that. Her official appointment as a temporary ranger-naturalist came on June 16, 1929, and on May 8, 1931 she was converted to junior park naturalist, a permanent job, after the exam.

Ranger-naturalist Herma Albertson at Yellowstone National Park, 1929. NPS History Collection photo.

Being permanent did not mean being treated as one. Toll began to use her more as a winter secretary than as a naturalist, and NPS Director Horace Albright rebuked him when he learned of it. A newspaper noted in 1931 that her uniform, of which she was proud, caused a stir among some women visitors. In 1929 she married the park's chief ranger, George Baggley, and she resigned on December 31, 1933 to be a full-time homemaker. As with many women who married NPS men, she kept offering her expertise to the bureau, unpaid.

Polly Mead at Grand Canyon

Pauline "Polly" Mead was the first woman ranger-naturalist at Grand Canyon National Park. A botanist, she had studied plants in southern Utah before taking the plants of the canyon as the subject of her master's research. The Forest Service turned her down because she was a woman, so she joined the NPS. Her own recollection and her personnel record disagree about her start date.

Polly Mead in the standard uniform with approved hat, 1930. NPS History Collection photo.

She wore the standard uniform of breeches, coat, riding boots and badge, but the superintendent approved a different hat, one like those worn by women guides for Fred Harvey's Indian Detours. The article also notes puzzling photographs from 1929, 1930 and 1931 in which Mead wears white breeches, a white shirt, boots, tie, badge, a vest that looks like a coat with its arms torn off and a knitted or felted hat. It is not the standard uniform, but one photo shows her in it planting a memorial tree for NPS Director Mather in 1931 among uniformed men, including Assistant Superintendent Preston Patraw, and the article reasons it was practical wear for outdoor work away from visitors, tolerated by her supervisors.

Mead kneels in the middle of a group of rangers during the planting of a Mather memorial tree in 1931. Grand Canyon National Park photo.

She married Patraw in May 1931, and when Albright later named Patraw superintendent of Zion in 1932, he recalled that it was Polly's knowledge of Zion's resources that decided it. No other woman naturalist worked at Grand Canyon until Elizabeth Ann Livesay took a seasonal job in June 1949.

A career of seasons

Like Enid Michael, Mildred Ericson had a long NPS career without a permanent naturalist job. After graduating from the Yosemite Field School of Natural History in 1939, she developed a nature guide service for Minnesota's state parks under the Works Progress Administration in the early 1940s. In 1945 she became a guide at National Capital Parks, and the next year she got a naturalist position at Yellowstone, where she worked 20 summers and taught biology and wrote natural-history articles the rest of the year. A newspaper article described her as the only female park naturalist in the West. Some more women got naturalist jobs in the 1950s, but the permanent posts mostly went to men, and Ericson remained the only woman in uniform at the park until October 1959.

Sources

• National Park Service, "The Women Naturalists," https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-women-naturalists.htm (part of the NPS history of women and the uniform, supported in part by a National Park Foundation grant); rewritten in hubnx's own words.