Acorns, Sequoia Cones and a Bear's Head: The Park Service's Short-Lived Sleeve Insignia

"The visitor doesn't care whether the chief ranger wears a pair of crossed cactuses with a shovel rampant, while the ranger wears only one cactus and two shovels," wrote Frank Pinkley, custodian of the Southwestern National Monuments. "What the visitor wants is a ranger." He was writing about the embroidered sleeve insignia that the National Park Service's first official uniform regulations, issued on March 20, 1920, assigned to every rank. To the public they were a distinction without a difference — visitors then, as now, approached anyone in uniform — and within the service they soon had critics. Yet even after a uniform committee recommended dropping them in 1925, it took almost 15 more years to get rid of them.

Officers' sleeve insignia, compiled from original patches and photographs; not all colors are true. Credit: NPS History Collection, Yosemite National Park and Yellowstone National Park.

Officers and "men"

The 1920 regulations gave sleeve insignia to three groups — directors, officers and rangers:

NPS landscape engineer D. R. Hull, at Yosemite, drew at least some of the designs. None seem to have been ordered until April 5, 1922, when F. J. Heiberger & Sons of Virginia won the contract, by which time supervisors (a white wheel on maple leaves) and chief clerks had their own. A generic patch — the electrician's with the lightning removed — was combined with embroidered titles for park naturalists, chief buffalo keepers and park physicians. The insignia were hand-embroidered on uniform cloth, 2¼ inches across with a light-green border, worn on the right sleeve between elbow and shoulder, and cost from $0.36 (temporary ranger) to $2.10 (forester), plus $0.80 a letter for words. The work was subcontracted to the General Embroidery and Military Supply Company (GEMSCO) of New York City.

The backlash

Six months after the 1922 contract, a survey of the parks drew complaints. Hawai'i superintendent Thomas Boles thought acorns and pinecones belonged to the Forest Service, and proposed a snow-capped peak over blue water under a red sky instead — adding that, to be selfish, he would insist on a wisp of smoke from the summit. Rocky Mountain's Roger Toll said the insignia looked so alike at a distance that they did not serve their purpose; a chief ranger said they "mean nothing to the public." New patches kept being added anyway, and in October 1925 the uniform committee, meeting at Mesa Verde, recommended ending the distinction between "officers and employees" and dropping sleeve insignia altogether.

A bear for the naturalists

Sample bird and bear's-head insignia made by GEMSCO in September 1925, and (bottom) the final product. Credit: NPS History Collection; bird insignia at the National Archives.

In 1925, Chief Naturalist Ansel F. Hall asked Director Stephen T. Mather for a distinctive emblem for the service's educators, with no marks of rank — "I do not want any of them to feel that they are being brought under an 'officers and men' regime." An eagle design was dropped; GEMSCO sampled a bird and a bear's head, embroidering them in white rather than the brown the Park Service asked for. Hall found both "almost unrecognizable to the public," settled on the bear with a less round head, a stronger snout and triangular eyes, and approved a new sample in January 1926 — asking only that the bear's cheeks be "not quite so fat." The first four went to park naturalists Carl P. Russell (Yosemite), Floyd Schmoe (Mount Rainier), Edmund J. Sawyer (Yellowstone) and Hall himself in March 1926.

"Worthless"

Ranger sleeve insignia, about 1922–1940: chief ranger, assistant chief ranger, permanent ranger, temporary ranger and ranger-naturalist. Credit: NPS History Collection, Yosemite National Park and Yellowstone National Park.

In 1928, Acting Director Arno B. Cammerer attacked the "officer and man" idea directly: under the rules, even a temporary clerk outranked a chief ranger. "This brings in the army idea," he wrote. "I am heartily in favor of the elimination of the arm chevrons. I think they are worthless. I, myself, cannot tell in the parks what the different arm chevrons mean." Office Order 152, of May 15, 1928, limited sleeve insignia to the ranger force, including a new patch for park ranger-naturalists.

Women rangers wore them too

The rules applied to women in uniform as well, and photographs show women rangers wearing sleeve insignia — most of them temporary appointments, most at Yellowstone in the 1920s. Frieda B. Nelson's patch is visible in a photo of the Yellowstone ranger force about 1925. Herma Albertson and Dr. Margaret Fuller Boos wore patches as ranger-naturalists; and in the 1930s women at Carlsbad Caverns, including Julia Dean and Jo Whitt Yardley, wore them as rangers. Grand Canyon ranger-naturalist Pauline Mead's surviving coat, though, has none.

The Yellowstone ranger force, about 1925. Frieda B. Nelson, back row, second from left, wears a sleeve insignia on her right arm. Credit: NPS History Collection.

Women rangers and guides at Carlsbad Caverns, May 7, 1932. The woman second from left wears a permanent ranger's insignia. Credit: NPS History Collection.

The end of the patch

At the 1934 superintendents' conference, ranger insignia were judged an unnecessary expense serving no useful purpose, but they stayed in the 1936 regulations, and were gone from the 1940 uniform specifications. One photograph shows rangers wearing them as late as 1946. Employees paid for their own uniforms and could wear older ones while "serviceable"; one suggestion is that removing a patch left a darker patch of cloth that meant buying a new coat, though a Yosemite uniform shows the difference was not always so stark. Perhaps, too, some rangers simply put their prewar uniforms back on when they came home from World War II, when new cloth was still scarce.

A replacement permanent ranger patch on a Yosemite uniform; the darker fabric around it suggests a larger patch was once there. Credit: Yosemite National Park (YOSE 23954).

Sources

Based on "50 Nifty Finds #27: A Distinction Without a Difference," National Park Service History Collection, a work of the United States government in the public domain. It draws on NPS records, the NPS History Collection and park museum collections, and R. Bryce Workman, Badges and Insignia, 1894–1991.