One Hundred Years in Yosemite: The Story of a Great Park and Its FriendsRussell, Carl Parcher
History
One Hundred Years in Yosemite: The Story of a Great Park and Its Friends
Russell, Carl Parcher
Yosemite National Park (Calif.) -- History; Yosemite Valley (Calif.) -- History
In the spring of 1921, through a coöperative arrangement with the
California Fish and Game Commission, the National Park Service
instituted a free nature-guide service in Yosemite. The aim of this
service was to furnish useful information regarding trees,
wildflowers, birds, and mammals, and their conservation, and to
stimulate interest in the scientific interpretation of natural
phenomena. The means used to attain this aim were: trips afield;
formal lectures, illustrated with lantern slides or motion pictures;
ten-minute campfire talks, given alternately at the main resorts of
the park; a stated office hour when questions regarding the natural
history of the park could be answered; a library of dependable
reference works, and a flower show where the commoner wildflowers,
properly labeled, were displayed. Occasionally, visiting scientists
helped by giving lectures.
About this same time, a Yosemite ranger, Ansel F. Hall, conceived the
idea of establishing a Yosemite museum to serve as a public contact
center and general headquarters for the interpretive program.
Superintendent W. B. Lewis endorsed the plan, and the old Chris
Jorgenson artists’ studio was made into a temporary museum; Hall was
placed in charge as permanent educational officer. The same year found a
museum program under way in Yellowstone National Park, where Milton P.
Skinner was made park naturalist, and in Mesa Verde National Park, where
Superintendent Jesse Nusbaum organized a museum to care for the
archeological treasures brought to light among the ruins of prehistoric
man’s abode. Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain,
Sequoia, and Zion quickly organized educational programs similar to
those established by Yosemite and Yellowstone, and in 1923 Hall, with
headquarters in Berkeley, was designated to coördinate and direct the
interpretive work in all parks. Working with Dr. Frank R. Oastler, Hall
in 1924 organized a comprehensive plan of educational activities and
defined the objectives of the naturalist group.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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