Tracy Baetz: Good afternoon, and welcome. I'm Tracy Baetz, the curator here with the
Interior Museum, and it gives me great pleasure to welcome you here to our monthly lecture
series with the Interior Museum. I see a lot of familiar faces, and a lot of new ones as
well, so that's great. Quick bit of housekeeping, if you like today's
lecture, or you've gotten into others, we do them every month, typically on the first
Wednesday of the month, at this time, and usually in this room. Next month, we have
Dr. Jason Goldberg, a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, talking about invasive
species, and specifically, "Can we eat our way out of a crisis?" So, it's a very diverging
series of topics that we cover with Interior Museums.
I also wanted to give you a heads up, and there's a poster outside. It's a rarity that
the museum itself is open on Saturday, because we are on a federal building. But we do have
an open house coming up on October 18th, Saturday, 10:00 to 4:00. It's a great chance to bring
your family and friends in to see our posterity exhibition, and also the closing of our "See
America" Traveling Exhibition.
We have some craft projects with silk screening that ties in directly with those two shows
as well. We'll be doing some Fall greeting cards, and I encourage you all to attend if
you have not seen the exhibition already.
Turning our attention to today's talk. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Renee Braden
and Cathy Hunter. They are both with National Geographic and I was just tallying up and,
combined, they have over 50 years at National Geographic Society. I won't divvy that out
at how many years apiece.
Cathy is a Senior Archivist and Renee is the Manager of Archives and Special Collections,
and together they end up doing quite a bit in terms of outreach and interpretation on
behalf of the Society. That ranges to anywhere from giving any kind of orientation classes,
so high adventure, internally, to staff and people on board and new to the Society, but
also providing tours to visitors and development prospects, and other special VIPs and donors.
Also, they are working to build an in-house encyclopedia of National Geographic Society
history, called "The Timeline." They work extensively with the oral history program,
and also with a lot of the explorers, and documenting with past, present, and future
of the Geographic's mission.
It's a great pleasure to welcome them here today, and they're going to be talking about
that intersection between National Geographic Society and the National Parks. We didn't
know this when we booked the lecture for today, but it is the 50th anniversary, today, of
Lyndon Baines Johnson signing into law the Wilderness Act.
That is a neat legacy of public lands, and of course we have our National Parks Service
Centennial coming up in a couple of years, so it's very timely that we have the entree
to National Parks Service history and founding blocks, with some outside support from National
Parks Service and National Geographic so without any further ado, Renee and Cathy.
[applause]
Cathy Hunter: Thank you for coming and thanks for turning out for this presentation on our
long and storied history together, the National Geographic and the National Park Service.
However, I'm going to start a little bit before the creation of either organization, because
the scene that is up here is from the work of one of our founders, Captain Clarence Dutton.
He was one of the 33 founders of the Geographic.
He was a geologist who was quite take with the Grand Canyon are and this was from the 'Tertiary
History of the Grand Canyon.' Dutton, as I said, was a geologist, but not by training.
He worked for the Ordnance Survey. Our most illustrious founder, Major John Wesley Powell,
recognized Dutton's latent genius, and that he would be a wonderful geologist, so he got
him detailed to his survey.
Powell's survey was one of the four great surveys of the West. At this time, after the
Civil War, we're still a very young country, the US. We still had all this territory west
of the Mississippi, quite a bit which still needed mapping. The Colorado Plateau was considered
one of the most difficult. That had not yet been mapped.
He got Dutton to do that work for him. Dutton said he had to turn to Eastern literature
to give him the language he needed. He thought the Grand Canyon was "the sublimest thing
on Earth," and in fact, he calls this view "Panorama from Point Sublime."
Looking through his tertiary history, he has wonderful names like "Vishnu's Temple," and
things like that, because, he said, "It just doesn't do justice." He said, "The Grand Canyon.
You find yourself a poet. It just makes the heart quicken and the throat tighten."
This is Dutton's boss, while he's on detail from the Ordnance survey. This is John Wesley
Powell with a Native American. Powell was one of the most prominent scientists of his
day.
He managed to raft down the Colorado River and into the Grand Canyon. Having lost his
right arm, at the battle of Shiloh, he survived that and went on to a great scientific career.
He wanted to systematically map the West. He was always at loggerheads with Congress
for funding to do this, of course, but eventually he did get most of his mapping done.
Many of our founders besides Powell and Dutton worked for the Federal Government. Powell
entrusted much of the mapping on to his brother-in-law, Almon Thompson, also Henry Gannett, the premier
mapmaker of the United States at that time, and G. K. Gilbert, who mapped the Henry Mountains.
Eventually, the work of the four great western surveys, it was combined into one organization
which became The US Geological Society, and Powell very quickly became the director of
that. I'm going to turn this over to Renee, who can tell you all about a wonderful camping
trip.
Renee Braden: Thanks. For the first 10, 15 years of the National Geographic's history,
it's National Geographic in title, but mainly local Washington based in activities. As Cathy
said, there were 33 men, mostly government scientists, who were the founders. We were
beginning to fund research. We were having a lecture program.
We put out the "National Geographic" magazine, the journal of the activities of the organization.
We had not fully been able to fund the types of research that those 33 men wanted to do.
That came a little bit later, as the membership widened, and they were able to do some of
these things.
From these Washington connections, and this is one of the things that Cathy and I sort
of love in our research, because we get to walk around downtown and sort of see where
it all happened. Washington was really the seed of science for the United States. The
government was funding science, as Cathy said, with the USGS, and mapping, a lot of mapping
and topographic studies out west.
This town is where scientists come. They all have a great energy together, they socialize
together, they formed a lot of other organizations, they served on the board of regents of the
Smithsonian, and people say Washington is still its own small town now, and it definitely
was then.
The sort of a spirit of all of these men in Washington builds up and leads to better things.
The Mather Mountain Party happened in 1915. It's named after Stephen Mather, who became
the first director of the Park Service, and was on the board of National Geographic Society
right after that.
Again, it's the spirit amongst all these people that lead to some of these things. The Mather
Mountain Party begins with...Stephen Mather was a Chicago industrialist, millionaire,
he was also called The Borax King. He invented the slogan, "20 mule team borax." He made
all of his money in borax and industry.
As all good Victorian, Edwardian era Americans did the grand tour of Europe and all of those
kinds of things. Stephen Mather and his family traveled all over Europe and particularly
Switzerland, where the public lands, the parks were pristine. There were paths in them, they
were well maintained, they were for the benefit of the citizenry.
Stephen Mather went out west here in America, went to Yosemite, he was from California and
he had a great of love of the big trees. Even though part of it was a National Park and
part of it was a State Park, very poorly maintained, could hardly get around in it, wasn't protected,
there were private lands within the Federal parts, and it was sort of disjointed, and
kind of forgotten.
As a patriotic American, he was appalled. Why should Europeans have better parks than
Americans? That's an outrage. He wrote, [laughs] as people should do, he wrote to somebody
here in Washington and said somebody should do something about this. He wrote to the Secretary
of the Interior, Franklin K. Lane, who was also on the board of "National Geographic."
Franklin Lane wrote back and said, If you think you can do a better job than we are
doing, you should come here and run some of these parks." And he did, he took him up on
the challenge. Mather came to Washington, realized that just the Department Interior
alone, with all of its varied interests and needs and responsibilities, couldn't manage
the parks the way they should be. The need for a National Park Service Bureau, a separate
one to manage the parks, was what was needed.
Mather puts together this Mather Mountain Party of influential writers, newspapermen,
businessmen, and he sends them...he takes them on a two week pack trip through the High
Sierra, through the Sequoia, and eventually they climbed Mount Whitney.
This photograph was taken by the President and Editor of National Geographic, Gilbert
H Grosvenor. He was on that trip. This trip started out with, they lost of few, because
Mather, to sort of make it more adventurous, dramatized, "Well, you might, some of those
bones over there might be human bones," and "Watch out for bears." A few, [laughs] not
as hardy types, one claimed a toothache, and said he had to leave.
But of all of the men, Emerson Hough, the great author and novelist of adventure and
western novels, was there. Also, the ranking, republican senator on the Appropriations Committee
was, or the congressman was, on that trip, and a couple of other politicians, as well.
Mr. Grosvenor, the interesting thing about, I'll call him "our" Mr. Grosvenor, for the
Geographic, is that he had been born in Constantinople, as it was then called, and had traveled all
over the world. Just before this, he had been in Tsarist Russia, and took a series of photographs
that are still incredibly beautiful and impressive, and are used for research a lot at the Geographic.
He had been all over the world. He had never been west of the Mississippi, in the US. The
east coast was the heaviest center of population in the US, and people looked in the other
direction. This was a life altering experience, this trip, for him.
He was amazed, and fell in love with the big trees, and was one of the more active...he
was one of the younger, I think, too. When they eventually climbed Mount Whitney, he
sprinted, this is, like, over 14,000 feet. A few of them, but there was a doctor with
them too, and he had advised a few of the older ones not to go all the way to the top.
Mr. Grosvenor sprinted all the way to the top, the last several hundred yards or so.
From this trip on, he pledges to support, everything that the Geographic can do, to
bring about a park bureau, a National Park Service, and to support the parks in any way
possible.
Stephen Mather comes on the board of the Geographic. When they get back to Washington, it's Mr.
Grosvenor, Mather, and just a few other people pulling all-nighters, writing the legislation.
The National Geographic published an entire issue, its April, 1916 issue, "The Land of
the Best."
It's pretty much a photo essay, a love letter to America, to Americans, saying, "These lands
are worth preserving and protecting in a broader way, and if you believe that, write to your
congressmen."
National Geographic is not really an advocacy organization, but I would say we have a lot
of examples where we spur our membership to action, and so we touch the line, with regard
to the Park Service. Grosvenor hand-delivered a copy of this issue into every Senator and
Congressmen's hand, when the legislation was about to come up. It passed, and it had been
defeated a few other times, the legislation passed.
In addition to this, and that's Grosvenor, at one of the base of the trees. One of the
other things he did on this trip was Mather had said, Mather who was more experienced
around the big trees, picked out camping sides where he thought it was the most safe, so
that nobody would get crushed by a limb, huge limb falling in the middle of the night, or
something like that.
Grosvenor, again, so enamored of the experience and of the trees, insisted on putting his
sleeping bag right at the base, so he could just look up. So, Mather...the marketing genius,
it worked on our young Mr. Grosvenor. That's on that same trip, when all the gentlemen
on it ring around one of the great trees.
The legislation passed, and one of the next things to happen, which still happens, the
Congress passed the legislation, but didn't appropriate enough money. They appropriated
$50,000 to buy some of the land still held by private individuals to merge into the existing
park lands.
When they appropriated the $50,000, the owner of the land raised the price to 70. Congress
said, "No more. $50,000 is all we were going to give." So, the whole thing was in danger
of falling apart. Mr. Grosvenor went to the board of the Geographic, and the Geographic
bought the land, paid the extra $20,000, and donated the land to the United States.
There are number of those types of instances where the Geographic buys land from private
individuals, and donates it to the Park Service.
Cathy: Another way we've helped, hopefully, forward the mission of the Park Service is through
our funding of scientific research, and we have a research committee that has been...well,
it's been lending its name to expeditions since 1890.
This is an early example, this is Dr. Robert Griggs. In 1912, there was a cataclysmic eruption
in the Katmai District of Alaska, and no one could get up there for a year, it was so bad.
For the next few years, the Geographic funded him and the team of scientists to go up and
explore the area, and they found the whole town of Kodiak had been buried in ash.
That summer of 1912 is sometimes called, "the summer without summer." I mean, USGS knew
something big had happened. Griggs goes up there to find out, he is a biologist and a geologist.
I love this picture, in particular. I mean, it just looks like it could be any explorer
wading through a river, but he's actually wading through a river of quicksand. He would
talk about how he would take a step and sink down and sink, and finally the sand and dirt
would coalesce under his feet and then he could take another step, and another step.
It was really a very hazardous journey. At one point, the way this gets its name is they
come to a pass. When they look down as far as they can see, there are fumaroles and the
steam is venting. That's how it gets the name, "The Valley of 10,000 Smokes." He said they
had to be very careful walking along. They would use sticks to walk along in that area.
If the ground wasn't stable, they could fall right through and be boiled alive.
He said in some ways it's a great camping [laughs] exercise, because they would put
their food on to cook, and it's steam heat, so nothing ever burned. One camper complained
they couldn't fry bacon that way, it didn't work. When they'd been hiking all day, the
steam heat felt really, really good on their muscles. On the other hand, nothing ever dried,
in camp.
Anyway, Kriegs wrote about this so movingly in the magazine, and people were so interested
that it became a national monument in Katmai. The fumaroles are all played out now, but
they went on for many, many years.
Another example is Carlsbad Caverns. This was brought to our attention, and we sent
a scientist named Willis T. Lee to investigate Carlsbad. Yes, 1924. He mapped and photographed
the caverns, and then the Society supported the legislation that eventually resulted in
the creation of Carlsbad Caverns.
Renee touched on this, Grosvenor was once again instrumental in this legislation. He
was a very quiet sort, but he was always working behind the scenes. He came from an influential
family, I think he was related to Taft, I believe. He was very good at working in Washington,
[laughs] seemed to get what he wanted done.
We're going to go back a bit. We didn't mention dendrochronology. There was an expedition
that we funded in the 1920s, and this was in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Bureau
of Ethnology. Neil Judd was exploring Pueblo Bonito, in Chaco Canyon, which would become
a national monument.
Judd was having trouble determining the age of this Anasazi culture. He had heard about
this new science of dendrochronology, of tree ring dating. Trees lay down a new ring every
year.
We also funded what were called beams expeditions. This money was given to Dr. A.E. Douglass,
in Arizona. He took some beams from the buildings in Pueblo Bonito, and using this new science
with dendrochronology. It's still in use, even with radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology
is still part of the archaeologist's toolkit that gets used.
This is post World War II. During World War II, unfortunately, we couldn't fund many expeditions
at all, so we'll jump ahead.
Frank and John Craighead, Junior, they're the twin sons of grantee John Craighead. They
had been affiliated with the Geographic since they were 19 years old. They had helped teach
falconry to the son of a Maharajah in India. They had lectured and written for the Society.
They were among the first to use radio telemetry, radio tracking of mammals. Their grizzly bear
studies, that took place over a number of years, are really the standard by which others
are measured today. They also used LANDSAT to track golden eagles, and that is another
study. The technology has been used for things as small as voles to, even, tigers and snow
leopards.
Renee: Again, the redwoods. The "Save the Redwoods League" was begun in the late 19-teens.
Our hero of the time, Mr. Grosvenor, was put on the board and put on a communications...it
had sort of an old-fashioned version of PR committee. He was on that.
The Geographic, through a succession of Grosvenors, and editors, and board members pushed very
hard for the setup of Redwoods National Park. There had been a smaller portion of it, certain...again,
like the sequoias, there are tracts that are saved and there are tracts that are really
vulnerable. We're trying to protect them from the logging interests.
The Redwood National Park, part of that program of when it was made into a park in the 1960s,
really begins in the 1950s, with a National Geographic grant. Connie Worth, or Dr. Conrad
Worth, who was the Director of the Park Service, on the board of National Geographic.
There had been a huge storm on the coast, and a lot of big trees came down. There was
a lot of flooding, once trees came down. Connie Worth said to Melville Bell Grosvenor, son
of Gilbert H. Grosvenor, "We need to go out and figure out how much damage was done.
It's possible that we've lost some of the very biggest trees in there."
They had to use logging roads, and the Geographic put together a research grant to study that.
It went over a fairly long period of time. They mapped and found what became known as
the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree.
In the July, 1966, issue of the magazine, we talk about this, again, because the Geographic
steps right up to the advocacy line. We publish a map that, at the end, is recommending which
tracks to save and which tracks to become a national park, and what a benefit it would be.
At the very end, "If you agree that these great trees should indeed be preserved in
a national park, you can help by writing to your Senators and Congressmen." I think anything
to do with the Park Service is the only time that there is language like that in the National
Geographic magazine.
A very, very prominent, mid-20th century editor of the Geographic used to have the expression
that, "We hold up the torch, we don't apply it." We come very close, because of the love
and relationship between the Geographic and the parks.
Another thing that we wanted to mention in the funding is Russell Cave. When the Russell
Cave site was founded, it was on an individual's farm in Alabama. National Geographic bought
the entire 268-acre farm and, again, donated it to the government, to become Russell Cave
National...I think it's a national monument or national site.
Cathy: It's been said that the national parks are the greatest idea that America ever had,
and eventually it catches on internationally. For years, we have been supporting the work
of a young Englishwoman named Jane Goodall, who Louis Leakey had sent to the banks of
the Gombe Stream. in what was then Tanganyika. He sent her there because, the chimps living
along that stream, he thought their habitat was like that of early man. Being a paleoanthropologist,
he wanted her to gather some data for him. She thought she would be there a few years,
that was in the early 60s. Her research camp is still going in the Gambe Stream.
Jane Goodall just turned 80 back in April, and she still goes around the world promoting
habitat research, getting kids interested in the environment, and particularly trying
to improve the status, the care of animals that are kept in research labs. Anyway, eventually
her work at her area in the Gambe Stream became a park in Tanzania.
As well as another scientist, Michael Fay, a biologist. He conducted what was called
a mega transect, cutting a straight line across Africa, never deviating, and gathering all
kinds of scientific data along the way.
When the article came out, and he showed the article and the photos of our photographer,
Nick Nichols, they had a meeting with the president of Gabon, who was just really mesmerized.
He said he had no idea that such places existed in his own country. It inspired him to set
aside approximately 10 percent of Gabon as protected area.
Mike Fay has gone on to do other transects. He has done a mega flyover in Africa. He has
also done a mega transect of the redwoods. I'll read you this quote, this was an 11-month
trek from Big Sur to just beyond the Oregon border.
He says, "After walking through every kind of managed forest and talking to foresters
on all sides of the issue," Fay is "...convinced there is a better way. Grow bigger trees which
can maximize wood production, while providing good habitat. You've got to start thinking
about this as an ecosystem." he says, "All these plantations might as well be growing
corn. If you want clean water, salmon, wildlife and high-quality lumber, you've got to have
a forest."
We will end here with the BioBlitzes that were started here in DC and Rock Creek Park,
this is a years-long celebration coming up to the National Park Centennial. The idea
of a BioBlitz is to get professional scientists, along with volunteers, to go into a national
park and, over a 24 hour period, find as many new species as possible.
This picture is of an Estoperas hawk in Saguaro National Park, and I think next year is the
last one. That's in Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park.
Renee: It's a great project for kids. Cathy: Yes, it's a great project for kids.