Upon the resignation of Director Mather in 1929, it was but natural that Albright should succeed him. He entered into the Yosemite administrative scheme by actual residence in the park and study of its problems. From the Yosemite personnel he drew new executives for other parks, field officers for the service at large, and administrative assistants for his Washington office. He turned to Crater Lake National Park to obtain a superintendent who would succeed Lewis. Colonel C. G. Thomson had distinguished himself as the chief executive of Crater Lake and in 1929 was called to Yosemite. Some of the developments in Yosemite for which Thomson was largely responsible included the construction and improvements of the Wawona Road and Tunnel, improvement of the Glacier Point Road, commencement of the Big Oak Flat Road and Tioga Road realignment, the installation of improved water systems at the Mariposa Big Trees, Wawona, and Tuolumne Meadows, construction of the new Government Utility Building, and many smaller projects. Such important land acquisition programs as the Wawona Basin project and the Carl Inn sugar pine addition constituted heavy administrative responsibilities imposed upon the superintendent’s office during his regime. The establishment of “emergency programs,” C.C.C., C.W.A., W.P.A., and P.W.A., greatly expanded the developmental activities in the park after 1933, and the inclusion of the Devils Postpile National Monument and Joshua Tree National Monument in the Yosemite administrative scheme increased the duties of the superintendent. In 1937, Colonel Thomson was stricken by a heart ailment and died in the Lewis Memorial Hospital on March 23. In eulogy, Frank A. Kittredge said: “Colonel Thomson has, through his dynamic personality and energy and the wealth of his experience, been an influence and inspiration not only to the thousands of Park visitors with whom he has had personal contact, but especially to the Park Service itself. His keen sense of the fitness and desire for the harmony of things in the national parks has made itself felt in the design of every road, every structure, and every physical development in the Park. He recognized the importance and practicability of restricting and harmonizing necessary roads and structures into a natural blending of the surroundings. He has set a standard of beauty and symmetry in construction which has been carried beyond the limits of Yosemite into the entire National Park system. The harmony of the necessary man-made developments and the unspoiled beauty of the Yosemite Valley attest to the Colonel’s injection of his refinement of thought and forceful personality, into even the everlasting granite itself of the Yosemite he loved so well.”