Guess what will?
What's that mango?
So I found this thread from Reddit on some of the stupidest things that park rangers have had to deal with every day, and I just had to share some of these ridiculous stories. So there are people who try to take selfies with bears.
Yeah, I say that's pretty stupid.
There are people who try to take home baby gators from the Everglades because they think they're so cute, which is partially dumb because these things obviously grow up, but also because baby gaters apparently cry and that puts all the mamma gators in the area in attack mode. Oh wow. And there's a family who thought that bear spray, which is like a heavy duty pepper spray, was supposed to be applied on their bodies like mosquito spray.
Yeah, I'd say that takes the crown. That's pretty bad.
Yeah, should have made for a rough day. But the saddest and funniest thing to me is the complaints that they get. So apparently one woman balled out this park ranger because the tree she traveled to visit looked exactly like the trees in her backyard.
I like that she was bawling out of park range, Like, I kind of don't think that's the range Here's fault exactly.
Yeah, it is an n ridiculous tourist. Are the least of what these heroic park rangers have to deal with today. We're talking about how they've foiled poachers, saved species, and yes, help plenty of tourists along the way.
Let's dive in, Hey their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesha Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass, decked out in a Smoky the Bear cosplay man. This is just going all out. That's our friend, producer Tristan McNeil. He's even wearing this fuzzy brown sweater. I guess is this is this because smoke he always refuses to wear a shirt or what.
Yeah, but dressing like a bear is a pretty sharp look because trist And really pulls it off it really does, you know. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Smokey's actually a symbol of the National Forest Service, not the National Park Service.
Well, I think you have to be fair here because the hat is part of the National Park Rangers' uniform. Now, speaking of hats, park rangers wear a bunch of different
hats figuratively speaking. And that's because national parks, no matter how safe they might feel to us, there's still wild places and anything can happen there, and that means park rangers have to be prepared to serve the public in whatever way is needed, whether that's teachers, tour guides, EMTs, search and rescue workers, even law enforcement officers, and sadly, even as coroners you know, sometimes all in the same day.
So with all the rigors of the rangers job in mind, we thought we'd show a little appreciation by devoting an entire episode to them. We'll talk about how park rangers got their start, how the job has changed over the last one hundred years, and we'll also learn some of the tricks rangers used to contend with whatever nature throws their way. I mean, we're talking things like grizzly bears and even these annoying tourists. So where do you want to start, Mango, Well, believe it.
Or not, I actually want to stick with the hats for a second, because the ranger hat we've been talking about, which is I guess that flat hat with what's called a lemon squeezer on top. It's actually a really interesting holdover from the earliest days of the national parks. And this is back when they were patrolled and protected by military soldiers rather than park rangers.
Which isn't something most people know, I imagine, So clueus in on this. How did the military wind up in charge of the national parks?
So it was really out of necessity essentially. President Grant designated Yellowstone as the world's first official national park, and this was way back in eighteen seventy two, but the National Park Service wasn't established until about forty years later, and in the meantime, there was no specialized government agency
task with overseeing national parks. Instead, that responsibility fell to the Department of the Interior, where you know, there were administrative duties that were passed from one point to the next, but no one was particularly skilled or even that interested in managing Stone properly, and as a result, poachers just reaked havoc on the parks, like they decimated the bison population,
the elk population, the deer population. And it wasn't just poachers, like it was a total free for all timber companies cut down forests there, vandals graffitied rock formations and the geysers, and visiting ranchers even fed their herds there. And there was also this problem of former settlers who were now illegally squatting in a national park. So rather than leave quietly, these furious locals would set fires and destroy hundreds of
acres of parkland. And this all kept the administrators scrambling to put it out. Like once word of all this chaos reached Washington Congress, and the politicians were just so mad that they refused to allocate any additional funding for Yellowstone, And for a minute, it actually seemed like the dream of a national park system might not make it to the twentieth century.
And so is this where the military steps.
In or what that's right? So Congress basically reached a compromise with the Department of the Interior, and it said that Yellowstone would only continue to be funded as long as the day to day management shifted to the military. So this is in eighteen eighty six, which is fourteen years after Yellowstone's founding, but a troop of sixty US cavalrymen came to stand guard there over the park's two
point two million acres. And you know, if you think about a sixty people covering two point two million acres of land, isn't a lot of people.
Yeah, yeah, But this was still a.
Major improvement over the park's civilian run days, when there were only about ten people on patrol, and plus only about five hundred people were visiting Yellowstone each year in the eighteen eighties, so a small staff kind of worked well for the most part. And as more people started visiting, the military's presence increased too, and by nineteen ten there were actually a total of four sixty man troops in Yellowstone and the yearly park attendants had grown to nineteen thousand people.
Wow, all right, but I don't want us to lose track of the hats. We were talking about the hats earlier, So so you're saying these cavalrymen, they were the first to wear the flat hats that we associate with park rangers.
That's right. But it wasn't just a fashion choice. So the hats actually served a very practical purpose and it has a history from eighteen ninety eight. This is when American cavalry had been sent to fight in Cuba and the Philippines, and this is during the Spanish American War, and while they were there, they had to deal with intense tropical rains, you know, like monsoons that would just
soak them to the bone. And the soldiers wore army issue hats that were pretty similar to the modern ones worn by rangers, but according to the regulations at the time, they were only supposed to increase the hats in the front and back. But the soldiers found that if they pinched it in quadrants, it actually shed the rain water off better.
So that's where you get what you call that lemon squeezer pinch.
Yeah, that's right. So if you actually want to get technical, that particular kind of hat pinch is known as the Montana peak.
Anyway, I definitely want to get technical. If it's called the Montana peak, that's just the Yeah.
Well, veterans of the Spanish American War brought their hats back and other soldiers realized it was worth doing the same squeeze, and by nineteen eleven, the Montana peak was officially added to the troopers uniform, and then a few years later, when civilian park rangers took over the new recruits adopted that same fashion.
Well, that's pretty cool, and I'm glad you directed as to the military's early role in all of this, because you know, not only did they set the bar for the park ranger fashion, but they also pointed the way
forward in terms of the work that they did. You know, for instance, pretty much from the moment troops arrived in Yellowstone, they started waging war with the poachers there, and from what I've read, this was no easy task, especially because you know, the military didn't really have legal authority to punish these poachers, or at least not in any significant way.
Right. There weren't any national protections for wildlife at the time, so soldiers basically had the authority to like confiscate gear, or they could kick connors out of the park, but really there wasn't that much more they could do beyond that.
Yeah, in most cases, that wasn't enough to dissuade these people from coming back with new supplies the next week. So I asked Gabe to pull the numbers, and a fresh bison scalp could fetch you three hundred dollars back in the eighteen nineties, and that was the equivalent of about eight grand today, So for poachers, a shot at that kind of money was well worth the stern talking
tos that they might get from the military. And of course the soldiers at Yellowstone felt a little deflated about this, so they decided to get creative and sort of stretch the limits of the legal penalties that they could impose. Sometimes they'd lock poachers in the guardhouse for a couple of weeks, or you know, they'd force them to scrub
graffiti off the rocks. But probably the most effective practice I'd heard about was that soldiers would march a group of poachers to the south entrance of the park and then inform them that all of their guns and supplies they were, you know, available for pickup at the park headquarters, which was conveniently located about seventy five miles away at the park's north enters.
Well, I mean it serves them right in of course, park rangers have upheld that zero tolerance stance on poaching ever since, so this actually has nothing to do with poaching. But I do have to mention it. Do you hear about the park superintendent who kicked the KKK out of the park?
No, but I definitely want to hear the story, So what happened?
Well, to start with it, it helps me know that the Klan was super active in Colorado during the mid nineteen twenties. And not only that, but the group actually received like open acceptance from a number of politicians, like, I want to say, the governor, the mayor of Denver, even a US Senator named Rice Means, and Wow. In nineteen twenty six, Senator Means held his pr event in Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park, and of course, like a
bunch of clansmen came out to support their boy. Some of them even tried to convince the park's superintendent, this guy Jesse Nussbaum, to join up with them.
So let me guess he declined the offer, at least I hope he did.
Yeah, he did. And once the Klan knew where he stood, they started threatening to hold a torchlide parade through the park like it was supposed to culminate with this giant rally and burning crosses right in front of the ruins of this famous Native American settlement. But Nussbaum wasn't having any of it, so he told a clan they weren't welcome in Mesa Verde, and just to make sure he got his point across, he armed his small park staff with these pickaxe handles and other makeshift weapons, and he
positioned them where the clansmen could see them. And for whatever reason, this intimidation tactic worked because the klan left without incident.
Wow. That's pretty amazing though. It falls completely in line with the ranger motto, which is to protect the park from people, the people from the park, and the people from the people.
Yeah, and well what Nusbaum did definitely take two of those boxes. You know, Preserving natural spaces really takes a lot of nerve. I mean, I feel like sometimes park rangers are almost viewed as being on the softer side when it comes to law enforcement officers, but their jobs are really really hard.
Oh definitely, And actually I think you'll love this story I read about from Glacier National Park and this happened in the seventies when the park was apparently overrun with a bunch of snowmobilers who just kept illegally cutting through a stretch of the park that runs along the Montana Highway. This really ticked off one ranger in particular, a guy named Art Sedlek, who he was just sick of issuing these warnings over and over for this same stupid offense.
So one night in December, the ranger stopped yet another group of snowmobilers and gave them the usual speech, you know, to stay out of the area so they wouldn't get a ticket. And it was less than an hour later he heard the sound of snowmobiles in the distance, so of course he hops on his four x four to go investigate, and when he caught up with them, he
realized it was the same four offenders from earlier. So of course the guy was really mad and just about to lose it, and so he pulls up alongside the lead vehicle and he starts trying to pull out all of its spark plugs and couldn't get a good enough grip, and so he decided just like go all action movie on them, and he used a slightly different approach. So he pulls out his standard issue thirty eight caliber pistol
and fires it directly into the snowmobiles engine. That's insane, So, I mean I could identify with that sort of anger. Though if that was happening over and over and over, you know.
I guess but uh, what happened to the other perfs, Like, did they just speed away?
Well, what do you think? I mean, they pulled over and once they were in custody, each trespasser was forced to pay a whopping twenty five dollars in fines, So that.
Was totally worth it. But what about the ranger, Like, I feel like that kind of behavior either you get a promotion or you get put in jail, like depending on who your boss is. I guess well.
It was actually neither of those. I mean, he was reprimanded for firing the pistol, but he kind of became a hero among the other officers, which you know, I'm sure took away some of this thing from that, but he had the locals on his side for sure, and for years after the incident, the Montana Wilderness Association gave out this SEDLK Award for displays of creativity and defense of public lands. That's amazing.
Well as exciting as arm standoffs and high speed snowmobile chases are, we should probably talk a little bit about some of the more low key but still super vital work that park rangers do, especially when it comes to repopulating in endangered species.
Absolutely But before we do that, why don't we take a quick break. You're listening to part Time Genius, and we're talking about the highs and lows of being an American park ranger. So, Meg, for as long as there have been national parks, there have been poachers looking to exploit the wildlife there. And you know, one of the
earliest species they targeted was, sadly, the American bison. Now, a few centuries ago, tens of millions of bisons roam freely across the plains of North America, but by the late eighteen eighties, excessive hunting and poaching had drastically reduced those numbers. In fact, by nineteen oh two, yellowstones, once great herd, had decimated to just under two dozen animals.
I mean, that just feels absurd, especially when you consider that Native Americans had hunted bison for centuries, but you know, they didn't have guns and horses, so it made it
a bit of a faerofight. Also, Native Americans had always showed such a deep respect for buffalo and they were careful to use every part of the animals they killed, and this wasn't the case for American poachers, who were only interested in the body parts that commanded the highest prices on the market, and you know, you just had these enormous carcasses that were left to rot in the fields for some poor park rangers to stumble upon.
Right. I feel like that's an aspect of this we don't think about much, like the people who find the horror shows that the poachers leave in their wake. The fact that it's usually people who have sworn to protect these animals and the land that they live on it actually makes it that much more tragic.
Yeah, but thankfully, the American bison story doesn't end in extinction, or at least it hasn't yet, because once the park officials realized the sorry state of Yellowstone's bison population, they immediately set to work on fixing the problem.
And remember this was still.
A decade or so before the actual National Park system was formed. At the time, Yellowstone was still under the jurisdiction of the US Army, and it was actually these soldiers who helped launch one of the world's first attempts to preserve a wild species solely through protection and also stewardship.
I mean, that's pretty cool, But what did they do exactly? Well, the first step was to try and rebuild the bison's numbers. So to that end, Yellowstone bought twenty one bison from private owners and think gradually started to mix them in with the free range population. And when the NPS took over the operation, the rangers kept up those husbandry methods
while continuing to crack down on poachers. And now they also had the backing of new laws for a nature species from Congress, and these efforts ultimately proved super effective. By nineteen fifty four, the bison's numbers it skyrocketed to about thirteen hundred animals, and today Yellowstone actually has about five thousand American bison, which makes it both the largest
and the oldest free roaming bison herd in the whole country. Wow. So, you know, so bison are obviously on the larger end of the spectrum of animals that the National Parks are helping to preserve. But let's talk about a smaller animal that could still use a lot of help, and that's sea turtles. Because you know, at this point, just about every species of sea turtle on the planet is classified
as endangered. We're talking all over the world. Adult sea turtles are hunted for their eggs, or their skin, or their meat and shells. I mean, all of this goes for big bucks on the black market, and things aren't any easier for their offspring. I mean, they have to run the gauntlet of these crabs and raccoons and seagulls just to get to the water after hatching.
And even if they do make it to that like water, like, the babies still have to dodge like nets and pollution and predators like sharks. It's crazy.
Well, in fact, less than one percent of sea turtle eggs wind up producing a turtle that survives to adulthood. Isn't that crazy? Less than one percent?
Yeah, I mean such grim numbers. But what are the National Parks actually doing to help these little guys?
Well, anything they can really. I mean, for instance, at the Canaveral National Seashore in Florida, you've got specialists there who are helping the green turtle population recover, and they do this by keeping local predators from chowing down on the unhatched eggs. Beyond that, the National Parks work to keep the coastline as clean and safe as possible for the sea turtles that are nesting there. And I don't know if you noticed or not, but most of the
threats to sea turtle survival we listed from humans. So being able to preserve a pristine stretch of beach that's safe from developers and free of artificial noise and light pollution, it goes a long way toward getting baby sea turtles
into the water. And actually I've noticed, you know, several times when we go on trips down to the shore, especially if it's in more remote areas, you'll see these, you know, signs on the you know, on the buildings that you stay in or on the houses that you stay in that will remind you to turn your outdoor lights off at night for that very reason.
Yeah, but I mean, even with those protective measures, like those odds still seem really slim. And you know, the rangers have to be a little despondent about this, right, like they're fighting this losing battle to some degree, especially when I guess, like one hungry shark or a careless fisherman could you know, destroy the effort of the little hatchling that finally makes it to the water.
Well. And it's certainly stressful, but there's some encouraging signs so staff members that Canaveral counted fewer than one hundred nests each year back in the mid to late eighties, but since launching their program, those numbers have risen sharply. In fact, twenty fifteen was a banner year for green sea turtles, with more than thirty five hundred nests found along the shore there at Canaveral. But at the same time,
park rangers aren't blind to what they're up against. I mean, they know they can't save all or even most of these animals, but it never stops them from doing what they can. For instance, I read this account from a former park ranger. Her name is Andrea Lankford, and she spent some time working at Cape Patteras at the National Seashore there in North Carolina, and she routinely prowled the beaches in search of sea turtle nest and then documented the location so she could check back in from time
to time. One day, she comes across this tiny baby loggerhead turtle in the dunes, and the experience, which was early in her career, it really made her reflect on whether or not her work was truly worthwhile. So this is from an article in backpacker dot Com and Andrea writes this. She says, holding this single turtle in my hands brought my decision about being a park ranger into sharp focus. How could I not fight to keep this
in danger? It's she's from becoming extinct. How could I not risk my life jumping from helicopters or fording rivers so this baby turtle could someday return and lay its own eggs, retirement benefits, health insurance, decent housing. On my knees in the sand with a baby turtle struggling for its life in the palm of my hand, I thought I had found the best and most important job in the world.
That's such a beautiful thought. And you know that danger she mentions, like jumping out of helicopters and fording rivers. It's a part of the park rangers' jobs that we don't even see often or think about, but it's so present.
In fact, I read some statistics from the Department of Justice, and apparently National Park rangers are more likely to be assaulted while on the job than any other federal officer, and in terms of fatal accidents involving plane crashes and natural disasters, park rangers are up to twelve times more likely to die in the line of duty than FBI agents.
That is unbelievable. Well, we really don't give them enough credit, and their search and rescue work alone should have us singing their praises. According to the NPS, park rangers came to the aid of over forty five thousand people between two thousand and four and twenty fourteen, and only about fifteen hundred of those incidents resulted in fatalities. That's a pretty amazing track record.
Definitely, And since we're giving credit where it's due, I do want to make sure we're not overlooking one of the most unique heroes to serve on the frontlines of our parks, and that's the bark Ranger, which the Montana Glacier National Park added to its team in twenty sixteen.
Wait, sir, are we letting dogs be park rangers?
Now bark rangers? And it's not just any dog. This one is a border calling named Gracie, and it's her job to help keep wildlife at a safe distance from park visitors. So apparently there's this particular parking lot where mountain goats and bighorn sheep like to gather, and this led to all kinds of problems, like sometimes the animals would lick the poisonous anti freeze that leaked out of
people's cars. And of course they're the tourists who try to spook the animals or get too close while trying to snap selfies.
All right, but couldn't a good old fashioned human ranger drive away the hers just as easily as a dog.
So that's why I was wondering too, But apparently not. I mean, they tried this for a while, but the animals always came right back after being driven away by humans, and this is partially because they were getting so many
mixed signals. I mean, you've got tourists trying to feed the animals and coax them closer for better pictures, and then you've got these park rangers who are like simultaneously like shouting and waving their arms to scare the animals off, and it probably seemed almost like a game to the
sheep and goats. But Gracie has changed all of that, Like the herds could tell when she barked, she met business, and now she and her handler visit the parking lot to scare off animals a couple times a week, and it's with the hopes that eventually the wild sheep and goats will just deer clear of the parking lot altogether.
Has some pretty good interspecies teamwork there. That's pretty interesting. Well, I want to steer us back to the human side of things because there are a few more notable park rangers I want to make sure we get to. But before we do that, let's take a quick break.
Okay, Well, so before we run down the list of park Ranger All Stars, I do want to just take a minute to talk about some of the colorful lingo you might hear in a national park. So we've already mentioned flat hats and lemon squeezers, which are actual nicknames that rangers use to talk about their headgear. But have you ever heard of code W?
I can't say that I have is just guessing. Is W for water? Is this like when a hiker gets dehydrated or something?
So, I mean, code water is a pretty good guest, but the W actually stands for wimpy, and really code W is just a playful put down that some park rangers developed to describe these melodramatic tourists who call in for a rescue when there's no actual emergency.
That's pretty great.
Rangers actually waste a lot of time fielding calls about fake emergencies, you know, and it's mostly from hikers who just bit off more than they could chew.
I do feel for the park rangers and the said sUAS because partially because they have to put up with so many silly requests and all these weird questions that come from visitors. Actually read this one anonymous account from a park ranger at the Grand Canyon, and he listed out some of the ridiculous questions he's had to feel out from adult tourists, like is the Grand Canyon human made? And what time do you feed the animals? And when
do you turn on the waterfalls. One time, this poor guy even caught a confused tourist who had rolled his suitcase several miles into the Grand Canyon because he thought his hotel was down there.
Oh no, well, I mean they also try to take measures to prevent that sort of thing. I read about this effort called PRS, which is, uh, it's preventive search and rescue, and it's basically a way to make sure our visitors are prepared before they go out on hikes. You know. It's mainly so rangers won't have to save them later on. But the program trains rangers to look out for all these telltale signs of novice hikers, like someone shows up in flip flops or is heading into
the wilderness without a backpack. You know, when they see someone like that, the rangers make suggestions like wear shoes, or a stock up on water, or try a shorter trail. And you know, they can't force tourists to take this advice. But the program does seem to be working. Since it was institute at the Grand Canyon in nineteen ninety seven, the park has actually seen this dramatic drop in its search and rescue efforts.
That's pretty cool. And speaking of saving people from their own dumb choices, you remember that ranger I mentioned that that really sweet moment with the turtles, Andrea Langford.
I'll never forget her.
Well, she also worked a stretch at Yosemite, and there was this one time she actually wound up foiling a bank heist. I mean, this woman has done everything. Apparently these robbers were just hiding out in the park after pulling a job, but they got lost in the middle of the night and they got so scared that they ended up calling the police to come get them.
That's amazing. I feel like I want to hear all of Langford's stories because she sounds like a park legend. But perhaps the ranger who's had the roughest GOVID all in the line of duty is Roy Sullivan, who has to be the most put upon render in history.
So what makes you say that?
So during his tenure at Gendoah, he was actually struck by lightning seven different times.
It's just crazy. It's hard not to laugh at that. I know we shouldn't laugh at something. I mean, the guy's been struck by lightning seven times when we're laughing about it, but that just is crazy. And I have heard of this guy. I'm pretty sure he actually holds the Guinness record for being struck by lightning more than anyone else. At least I hope nobody's been struck more than that.
Yeah, I mean, I hope it's the record. No one's trying to break. And if they did try, though, the odds wouldn't be easy. So the odds being struck by lightning are actually one in two hundred and eighty million, but seven times like according to a George Washington University staff's professor. The odds at that are actually four in. I don't really know how to say this number, but it's one with thirty two zeros after it, so it's a pretty big number. Wow.
And so did all seven of those strikes happen while he was.
A park ranger, so not exactly. The last one actually happened after his retirement, when Roy was trout fishing at a lake near his house. Poor cock, talk about bad luck, I know. So on the way back to his car, a black bear actually stole the fish he had hooked, but I think just survived this like lightning attack and
his seventh lightning attack on top of that. Roy was in no mood to be messed with by a bear, so instead he just took a stick and he hit the bear and stole his fish back, and then he ran He high tailed it out of there, kind of dazed but triumphant. Anyway, Roy Sullivan's kind of a legend, and people call him the spark Ranger.
Oh that makes sense, all right. Well, we've talked a lot today about the courage and the empathy that park rangers bring to their preservation efforts, but there's one more rather unique preservation campaign that I want to mention, and
that's the one headed up by Ranger Doug Lean. So, first of all, you've probably seen those classic travel posters from you know, several of the national parks, and they're those colorful silkscreen posters that were used as promotional tools, and this was all to boost tourism back in the nineteen thirties and forties.
Yeah, I love this so much. It's kind of that like art deco style you see on those old Disneyland detraction posters, and it's got such beautiful like light and shadows and muted colors. They're great.
Yeah, those are the ones, and the original posters were made by the WPA or the Works Progress Administration, and you know, if you remember, that was all part of Roosevelt's wide scale effort to get America up and running following the Depression. And to this end, a nice chunk of the WPA's budget went to arts projects, including these four thousand public murals and over two million posters intended
to promote art and education, health and travel. And you know, on the travel side, a team of Berkeley artists they were hired to produce more than fifty poster designs and they were all under this banner see America. And among these were a handful of designs representing the fourteen national parks.
So were they sold as like souvenirs or just hung around town or what was the deal there?
Well, the silk screens used to make the posters, they were pretty fragile, so only between fifty and one hundred of these posters were made for each park, and of course that's way too few to be sold to the general public. So instead the posters were distributed to places like, you know, chambers of commerce or other local government buildings, and then they were put in these communities surrounding each park. And so for a few years, the posters did their jobs.
They started getting new people, new visitors into the parks and really helping America get back on its feet. But then once their usefulness had kind of ended, the posters started disappearing, and once they were gone, nobody could find them, at least for several decades.
That's crazy. So now, obviously you can buy prints and postcards of all that old WPA art at the park, so obviously it must have resurfaced at.
Some point, right well, and that's where Ranger Doug comes in. This was back in nineteen seventy one. He was working as a seasonal ranger at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, and one day in the fall, the rangers were doing a general cleanup of the park and this was after a pretty busy summer season, so Doug was working on clearing out an old horse stall when he came across this tattered WPA poster for this park. It was the
very first design produced in the series. Now, the poster would have just ended up on the park burn pile if not for Doug, and he really took a liking to it and actually got permission to keep it for himself. But this was just the start for him. He actually figured that if Grand Teton Park had a poster like this,
maybe others did too. So over the next couple of decades, Doug started piecing together this forgotten story of these now iconic posters, and his biggest breakthrough came in nineteen ninety three. So that's the year Doug got in touch with the NPS archives in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and he actually uncovered thirteen black and white poster negatives. They'd just been tucked away in a file drawer for safe keeping.
Wow.
And using those Doug was able to reproduce the whole series. And that's why you can find all these postcards and prints you mentioned in the National park gift shops today.
That's really incredible. And I think you said though that the WPA only made like posters for fourteen parks, but you know, I've seen so many of those, and especially for parks that didn't exist in the thirties.
How's that come about? Well, that's the other really cool thing about this. So once Doug started reproducing the original post other parks began commissioning new posters in that same style as the WPA ones. So today they're over fifty national parks and monuments represented in this collection, with more coming. And you know, none of that would have ever happened if not for Doug lem you know, the self proclaimed ranger of the lost art.
I love that. You know. We actually drove through Shendo on the way back from Thanksgiving this year and I was just so floored by the beauty there. And every time I look at those little postcards that we bought, which are just these tiny replicas of that art, like it really makes me very happy.
No, I completely agree. And the parks really are incredible. I mean, not only do they offer the chance to have these breathtaking or kind of life affirming experiences in our nation's most precious places, but they really offer that chance an equal measure to everybody. So to quote Dayton Duncan, a former director of the National Park Foundation, quote, national parks are the declaration of independence expressed on the landscape.
We were the first nation in the history of mankind to say that the most special place should be set aside, not for royalty, not for the rich, not for the well connected, but for everyone and for all time.
I mean that sounds so America to me. But before we make a beeline for the closest park, let's salute a few more of our favorite rangers and today's backed off. Did you know that before he went to law school, Gerald Ford briefly worked as a park ranger. Apparently he was a seasonal ranger at Yellowstone, where he was assigned to work as an armed guard on a bear feeding truck, and in years later he referred to it as one of the greatest summers of his life. Huh.
So, the country's oldest park ranger is ninety six years old. Her name is Betty Reed Soskin and she works at the Rosie the Riveter World War Two home Front National Historical Park in California. Though she only got into her career a little over a decade ago. She's also been a tremendous activist, from her civil rights work earlier to denouncing the defunding of parks, and she's won a presidential medal for her efforts.
So while the least visited national parks might be in Alaska or American Samoa within the contiguous US, the least visited park is actually in the middle of Lake Superior, and it's known as Isled Royal National Park. The problem is mainly accessibility, so you can actually only get there via a seaplane or boat, and that actually shows in
the numbers. The number of people who come there over a year is about sixteen thousand people, and that's equal to the number of people that might visit Yosemite on a single day in June.
I've actually never heard of that park, but now I
kind of want to go visit this. So did you know that for a while, Yellowstone was actually referred to as Wonderland like we said in the beginning of the show, only a few thousand visitors used to go to Yellowstone every year at first, but when the North Pacific Railroad was completed in eighteen eighty three, suddenly the accessibility of the park changed, and so to boost train travel, the railroad decided to launch this ad campaign for Yellowstone, kind
of building off the popularity of the Allison One Underland books. So they talked about Yellowstone as Wonderland. They even handed out pamphlets using Alice as a fictional tour guide to the parks and pointing out places you should visit it. In fact, one of the quotes from the brochure that I saw has her gushing and saying, tell me, is this not wonderland?
So I'm going to tell you about the bear lunch counter. So I guess Yellowstone used to have an open air garbage jump at the park, which were definitely not the prettiest thing at the parks, but it was an easy place to gin up a wild animal show if you ever wanted to see scavenging animals, and of course this meant big birds, but it also included black bears and grizzlies, which is how the dump got called the bear lunch counter.
But the weirdest part of it is that in the nineteen twenties and thirties, the park operators decided to take advantage of this, and they put bleachers around the trash pits so visitors could sit and watch, And they also put up signs that said lunch counter for bears only, which you know, I'm not sure why they had to clarify it.
Actually, since we're on a Yellowstone tear, I'm going to throw one more here, So did you know that park? Part of the reason we've got Yellowstone as a national park is thanks to an artist. His name is Thomas Moran, and in eighteen seventy one, Moran was part of a federally funded expedition to document the area along with geologists, botanists, and zoologists. His sketches in watercolors gave America its first
view of Yellowstone. But the real story is that his work was exhibited in Congress later that year, and that's where the sheer beauty of the depicted cliffs and geysers and rivers. This convinced politicians to protect the land and turn it into what they called a national playground.
Oh, I like that well. I want to do another show later on, specifically on the parks because there's just so much wonder and beauty there. But why don't you take home today's trophy?
I mean it kind of sounds like you're just giving it to me, like I didn't really earn it, but I'll take it either way. And listeners, I'm sure we forgot some great facts about the National Parks. We would love to hear those from it. You can always email us part Time Genius at HowStuffWorks dot com or call us on our twenty four to seven fact hotline. We always love hearing your messages. That's one eight four to four p Genius, or you can hit us up on
Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the mixy mixy sound thing.
Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army, including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves.
Jeffcok gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, and if you really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave a good review for us.
Do we forget Jason?
Jason who