20060603 It Began With A Hat

Yellowstone is our nation’s oldest national park, created in 1872. In fact, Yellowstone is the world’s oldest national park. Sequoia National Park takes second place, coming into existence in 1890, 18 years after Yellowstone. A distant third would be Yosemite, not born as a national park until an entire week after Sequoia. Does my bias show?

In the early days of national parks, there was no National Park Service to administer the parks. That agency did not exist until 1916 with the passage of the Organic Act. And of course, no one had ever heard of a park ranger. Instead, Congress sent the U.S. Cavalry [insert bugle audio clip] to protect the fledgling parks. The Army on horseback, including contingents of Buffalo Soldiers, was stationed at all three of the aforementioned parks.

If memory serves, the military protected Sequoia National Park for 13 summers [snow did the job in winter] from poachers, loggers, and squatters. Then the first civilian ranger was hired.

When it came to deciding on a uniform for the newly conceived park ranger, I suppose it just seemed natural to follow the military tradition. So to this day the national park ranger, modern protector of our national treasures [Who would dare cross the intimidating chap in the photo?], maintains the tradition begun in 1872 by wearing the same hat—the flat hat—as the U. S. Cavalry of the 1800s.