A Park Service article argues the early ranger uniform was never only for men

For decades the story went that early National Park Service women had no official uniform and wore whatever they liked, until a separate women's uniform was created. A National Park Service history article argues the opposite: the first uniform was a standard uniform for officers and rangers, regulations applied to women in uniformed jobs, and the picture of a "men's uniform" came later.

What the rules said

The target of the article is R. Bryce Workman's 1998 NPS book National Park Service Uniforms: Breeches, Blouses, and Skirt 1918-1991, long the go-to resource on the history of women's uniforms. The article credits its information and photographs but challenges some of Workman's assumptions.

The NPS approved its first official uniform on March 20, 1920, publishing the Regulations Governing the Use of the National Park Service Uniform by Officers and Rangers. Those first rules are remarkably neutral and refer to officers, permanent rangers and temporary rangers by position, not by gender. Male pronouns appear from 1923 as the rules were updated, which does not by itself show whether women wore the uniform. Their growing use is unsurprising given how few women rangers and officers there were in the early decades.

The 1920 official ranger uniform coat was similar to the authorized 1917 pattern, except that "NPS" was no longer embroidered on the collar. The drawing sent to the uniform manufacturers simply lined through that part of the 1917 pattern. NPS History Collection photo.

The 1926 memo

A memo in NPS records at the National Archives gives the clearest evidence. On December 13, 1926, Acting Director Arno B. Cammerer wrote to Mount Rainier National Park Superintendent O.A. Tomlinson after some members of the uniform committee suggested exempting women in field positions. That someone asked shows women were not exempt. Cammerer answered that this had not been done, and that it had been left to superintendents to decide what exemptions to make. Exemptions meant approving alternatives, such as for a local climate, or having an employee in a given position wear no uniform at all.

Ranger Frances Pound in her uniform coat approved by Director Mather, 1926. Yellowstone National Park photo.

The timing matters. The memo came less than four months after two Department of the Interior inspectors visited Yellowstone and recommended against continuing to hire women rangers. In 1926 there were three women rangers at Yosemite, none of whom wore the uniform, and five at Yellowstone who did. In 1927 the NPS and the department decided against hiring more women until a designation other than "ranger" could be found.

From 1927 to 1940

Draft rules written in 1927 mention women for the first time. They allowed female appointees to be required to wear the uniform, and suggested the uniform could be kept as close to the specified type as practicable. That probably echoed the modified coats approved in 1926 for Yellowstone's Marguerite Lindsley and Frances Pound, and may foreshadow the skirt some women wore from the 1930s. The women-specific language did not reach the final rules approved in 1928. Those instead said superintendents and the director could decide which positions wore uniforms, and the 1928 design drawing added, for the first time, a sketch of a man dressed as a ranger.

Two other things happened in 1928. A standing uniform committee was set up, and the Civil Service split ranger jobs into park rangers, ranger-naturalists and ranger-checkers. That gave the NPS a way around hiring most women as park rangers. At their superintendents' discretion, women rangers and ranger-naturalists at Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite kept wearing the standard uniform into the early 1930s.

Yosemite's ranger force, June 1931. Yosemite National Park photo.

By 1940, when drawings were added to the regulations themselves, they showed only men, which entrenched the idea that the "standard uniform" was only for men.

Sketch of a man in the standard uniform from the 1940 uniform regulations. NPS History Collection photo.

Where the myth came from

The article says Workman did not create the myth but promoted it with good intentions. He described the gender-neutral standard uniform as the men's uniform, calling Frieda B. Nelson's 1925 outfit the standard men's uniform cut for a woman and Herma Albertson's 1929 uniform the complete male-style Park Service uniform. He concluded that early women wore whatever the superintendent or their own whim dictated. The article points back to the regulations and superintendent discretion, which were official practice. It also suggests his chronological approach hid patterns that show up park by park: Yosemite's women rangers followed the superintendent's preference and went without the uniform, while Yellowstone had women in uniform in the 1920s.

Yellowstone's ranger staff in the standard uniform, June 1933. NPS History Collection photo.

The cost of the myth, the article says, is that it hides how most women were deliberately shut out of uniformed positions in the late 1920s and early 1930s, with long-lasting results.

Sources

• National Park Service, "The Unisex Uniform" (nps.gov article); rewritten in hubnx's own words.