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Women and the National Park Service
The Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York, commemorates the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention held in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in that small upstate town and the ensuing fight for women’s rights. Among other rights that they could not exercise, women in America in 1848 could not vote and could not inherit or own property, and they could attend only a very limited number of colleges. On July 13 of that year, five women met for tea in the Hunt home: Jane Hunt, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Lucretia Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton wrote in her autobiography that she “poured out, that day, the torrent of my long-accumulating discontent with such vehemence and indignation that I stirred myself, as well as the rest of the party, to do and dare anything.” The five women decided “then and there, to call a Women’s Rights Convention” to air their discontent and their demands for change.1
The very next day, they placed an unsigned notice about “a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious rights of women” in a local newspaper, the Seneca County Courier. On July 16, Stanton traveled to the home of Mary Ann M’Clintock in Waterloo, where the women drafted the text for the Declaration of Sentiments, which would proclaim women’s equality, and drafted the proposed resolutions for change, including the controversial demand for female suffrage, or, as they called it, the “elective franchise.”2
Despite only five days’ advance notice, about three hundred people met in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls, among them about forty men, including the well-known abolitionist Frederick Douglass. For many of the women, traveling to the convention would have been a challenge. Some of them walked—not easy with their long dresses, and some wearing a corset and many petticoats. The women who called the convention, and the women and men who attended the 1848 convention, were not fitting in with the societal norms of the time. Women were expected to be accompanied by their husband when leaving their home. They were not expected to gather together with men in public, and they were not expected to speak in public. Flouting such expectations, Elizabeth Cady Stanton attended and addressed the gathering. Emboldened by their acts of attending, and speaking, those who gathered in this sacred meeting space met many others equally emboldened by traveling and gathering together. Some had experience working for the abolition of slavery and brought that energy to the gathering. The assembled individuals created an explosive energy greater than their apparent numbers. Lynn Ivey described the convention as like many embers scattered around, smoldering individually. But when raked together into one large pile, a fire erupted.
The three hundred assembled focused on the newly drafted Declaration of Sentiments. About a third of the three hundred voted to approve the resolutions demanding change, even including the right to vote. The women voted! The document created a focus, an agreed-upon mission that gave one loud, strong, shared voice to their demands for change. Additional conventions to demand women’s rights followed: a month later a convention was called in Rochester, New York, and later conventions were held in Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and in the city of New York. A national convention was called for Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850.3
The “burned-over district” of upstate New York had been the host for countless revivals and other progressive movements. Here, almost in the middle of that geographic area, were Seneca Falls and, a handful of miles away, Waterloo. The proceedings of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel were held above the waterfront of an emerging industrial town. The Seneca River cutting through town was repurposed as a network of sluices and raceways, with a narrow canal, and the surviving rapids providing waterpower for the new industries. The economy was shifting from agricultural to industrial, causing significant changes in the community. Within a hundred years of the founding of the village of Seneca Falls, the falls themselves would be gone, flooded over as a result of a dam built as part of the New York State Barge Canal in the 1910s.
The Women’s Rights National Historical Park is in Seneca Falls and Waterloo, New York. The park was authorized by the United States Congress in 1980 and opened in 1982. You can explore the visitor center and the historic structures. The visitor center is at 136 Fall Street, the main street of Seneca Falls, coinciding in town with New York Route 5 and US Highway 20. Just east of the visitor center is the historic Wesleyan Chapel. Declaration Park connects the Wesleyan Chapel and the visitor center with a spacious grassy amphitheater leading down to a water wall, which is inscribed with the Declaration of Sentiments. A visitor can drive across town to the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, now fully restored by the National Park Service. A tour of Waterloo, the next town to the west, showcases the Hunt home and the restored M’Clintock home.
Seneca Falls and Waterloo are in the center of New York State. Three airports are each about an hour’s drive away: at Ithaca, Rochester, and Syracuse. The New York Thruway, also designated Interstate 90, is just north. The nearest Thruway exit is fifteen minutes away. The drive from New York City can be done in under five hours, and from Albany in about three hours.
My dream to make the National Park Service more inclusive evolved from my first simple idea of a proposal to commemorate the 1848 Seneca Falls convention and the ensuing national fight for women’s rights. But throughout the course of my work to create the park I heard “it does not look like a national park,” and it did not. In 1978 the Wesleyan Chapel building was a functioning laundromat. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s home still stood but was not impressive or grand and had been substantially altered. It was a perpetual challenge to convince representatives of the National Park Service or Congress or any of the many critics or reviewers that these two buildings were nationally significant. The buildings were not telling their 1848 story.
This concept of “looking like a national park” could have been the death of the dream for this park. The Stanton house most definitely did not look like the other homes in New York State already owned by the Park Service, which included the palatial fifty-four-room mansion built in 1898 by Frederick William Vanderbilt in Hyde Park on the Hudson River, or the sprawling Springdale home of Franklin D. Roosevelt outside Hyde Park, or the imposing home of President Martin Van Buren in Kinderhook. In 1848, women were restricted to the domestic sphere, so structures associated with their achievements were often their homes. And their homes were not necessarily grand or imposing architecture.
Congress gave a particular role to the National Park Service for cultural resources: to preserve and interpret history through authentic original historic structures. Park Service interpretation of physical structures is an experience to be appreciated with the senses: not just information associated with a place or connected to an event, but what does a building look like, what feeling is conveyed by the rooms—large or small, grand or plain—and what does that tell about what happened there. What does that say about the particular era of the historic event? What context is given—is it in the middle of a battleground, or is it in a small upstate New York village? What does it smell like? What sounds are in and around the building? What images can be created by an interpretive ranger? An experience of all the senses can be created in a historic building and bring alive what happened there.
The restrictions associated with women’s history, however, were dramatically evident among the national parks. In 1978, there were 318 park units and roughly 1,500 designated National Historic Landmarks. Fewer than 1 percent of these commemorated the history of American women. Why? This was likely neither an accident nor an oversight. Why hadn’t the nationally important women’s rights sites in Seneca Falls become a national park until 1980, even though the Stanton house had been declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965? Certainly, the right to vote changed the lives of half the population of the United States, at the least. Why was this story ignored? Whose history was the National Park Service telling? Or not telling?
The reluctance to provide equal treatment to women was reflected also in the lack of appointments of women to leadership positions. In the Park Service in the late 1970s, the key posts were held by men. There had never been a woman director leading the National Park Service (and wouldn’t be until 2001). In my visits to the Washington headquarters, I saw no women associate directors or even senior staff other than Peggy Lipson, legislative specialist for my region. There were no women regional directors until Lorraine Mintzmeyer was appointed in 1979 by Director William Whalen. She was the only woman regional director for the next ten years. Polly Welts Kaufman’s book National Parks and the Woman’s Voice, published in 1996, notes that “between 1971 and 1980, the number of women park superintendents gradually rose to twenty-three, about 9 percent of all superintendents.” After Ronald Reagan appointed James Watt secretary of the interior in 1981, the percentage dropped to 7 percent. Under Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, the percentage increased to 12 percent. After 1995, during the presidency of Bill Clinton, Park Service director Roger Kennedy pushed that figure to 16 percent.4
Another indicator of the extent to which the National Park Service embraced women’s history is funding for operating expenses for the Women’s Rights Park. Operations funding determines how many staff can be hired and must also cover basic expenses like renting office space, purchasing office supplies, buying a truck for park uses, travel, training, and so on. It also must cover programs and all aspects of communication. Money, of course, is required to build and maintain a park. It is especially key in determining how many staff can support a new and growing park. Withholding funding is a way to strangle growth. In spite of my efforts to dream the biggest park possible, and to work at high speed to acquire and preserve historic structures, the Women’s Rights Park was hampered by a severely limited operating budget. All funds must be requested through the National Park Service, and there is an intricate and highly structured internal system for allocating operating funds. To simplify, it is as if every superintendent and every regional director are voting on the budget for every park. And there is another set of requirements to even request an increase. In the early years of the Women’s Rights Park, the cap on operating increases was 15 percent of the prior year’s budget. A 15 percent increase over not much is still not much.
The park got caught in the restrictive policies of the Reagan administration and its intention to cut costs across the agency. The region’s initial funding request for the park was $400,000. When the Reagan administration came in, in January 1981, the request was reduced to $5,000. Getting money to start up a new park when Secretary Watt was not only tamping down on all the parks but also trying to get rid of parks was a steep climb. Starting tiny was terrible. Operating funds for my years as superintendent totaled $5,000 in 1981, $60,000 in 1982, $106,000 in 1983, $148,000 in 1984. In 1985 it jumped to $230,000, but only grew to $240,000 by 1987. After seven years of operations the budget was only about half the initial request.
Congressman Frank Horton (R) in 1983 took over a newly redistricted territory that then included Seneca Falls. We quickly bonded as Cornell graduates, and he adopted the new park as his own. He was fiscally conservative and seemed to think our tiny park budget was typical for a park of its scale. But it was not. I concluded he needed to understand the context of our budget. It was a risky move, as federal employees are prohibited from lobbying Congress for funding. But the Stanton Foundation agreed to make the ask the next time Congressman Horton came to town for his regular “office hours,” when he would meet with everybody who wanted to talk with him.
Native son Hanns Kuttner stepped in to help. He was working in the Office of Management and Budget in the White House in Washington and mailed me a copy of the “Green Budget Book.” The book was public information but was not distributed to the individual parks. I researched the thick book and ferreted out the operating budget for every park in the region and typed it on plain white paper. And gave it to the Stanton Foundation. And they gave it to the congressman.
Horton was shocked. A quick read demonstrated dramatically that the Park Service was not as poverty stricken as perhaps he had thought. The largest operating budget was for the sprawling park around New York City, the Gateway National Recreation Area, at $10.5 million. The Boston Park was nearly $4 million. Ellis Island was $2.7 million, and Cape Cod National Seashore was $2.3 million. Horton took action, which resulted in the big increase to $340,000 for the year 1989, almost bringing the park to its original first-year request after a wait of eight years.
Congressional intervention in operating funding is even more challenging than project funding. Representative Horton would be quite successful in supporting the development funding that is determined in conjunction with Congress. But the functioning of the mechanism for determining park operating budgets is well shielded from outside influence. Still, Frank Horton had managed to break through the barriers to get the park budget increased to $340,000.
An additional perspective on the exclusion of women in the Park Service is expressed in the history of uniforms for women rangers and how they supported the discrimination against women rangers.
Congress created the first national park by authorizing Yellowstone National Park on March 1, 1872. Additional parks were established until eventually it was decided that central management would be a good practice. Congress consequently created the National Park Service on August 25, 1916. Prior to the creation of the Park Service, the on-site park superintendent made the management decisions.
The history of resistance to women as rangers is intertwined with the history of uniforms for women rangers. In 1920 the National Park Service issued both its first official ranger uniform and its own ranger badge.5 Soon after, to quote Park Service archivist Nancy Russell, “In the early 1920’s … within the department of the interior and the NPS there was a growing backlash [against women rangers]. At Yellowstone women Rangers wore the National Park Service uniform, which probably added to the sense that they were encroaching on manly Ranger territory. Even some of the men who hired the women didn’t like the idea of them on what Yellowstone Superintendent Horace M. Albright described as a ‘He Man Force.’ ”6 “On August 25, 1925,” Russell notes elsewhere, “Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work issued Order Number 76, directing the chief inspector make a survey of the NPS… . A year later, two inspectors made their official visit to Yellowstone. The report included a recommendation against hiring women rangers.”7
Russell goes on: “In 1927 The Secretary of the Interior stated that they did not want to hire more women until a designation other than ‘ranger’ could be found because that title has been, for many years, a term associated with ‘vigorous and courageous men of the West, particularly in the field of strenuous police service.’ ”8 The following year, “the Civil Service reclassified park rangers into three types: rangers, ranger-naturalists, and ranger-checkers.”9 That change meant that women could be hired but were sidelined from the career path of “ranger”—which could lead to promotion to superintendent—and into the naturalist and checker paths, which did not lead to the much-coveted position of park superintendent. In 1998 the National Park Service published a booklet by R. Bryce Workman titled Breeches, Blouses, and Skirts. The eye-opening cover picture shows a young woman modeling the 1970 women ranger’s uniform. It was a long way from the “He Man” look.10
Until 1978, sixty-two years after the creation of the National Park Service, only male Park Service rangers were authorized to wear the impressive gray and green uniform with the prominent gold badge, gold name tag, and iconic flat-brim hat. The formal jacket was handsome and elegant, the design based on early army uniforms and unchanged for decades. The uniform was identical to that worn by Park Service law enforcement rangers, who also carried firearms. The uniform was intended to present authority; the badge, plated with real gold, was the ultimate symbol of the considerable power held by rangers. The uniform also bonds all Park Service employees authorized to wear it: present, past, and future. Among those designated to wear the uniform, it has been a symbol of honor and of the privilege to serve. For men, that is. The numerous variations of not impressive, not iconic, and not even safe official uniforms for female rangers vividly portray the protracted difficulty of integrating women into the uniformed ranks of the Park Service.
In 1960 the director of the Park Service, Conrad Wirth, urged administrative officials “to consider fully all qualified applicants for vacancies within the Service, regardless of gender.” The service should “employ in its uniformed positions the best qualified men and women available.” He went on to say, however, that “women cannot be employed in certain jobs such as park ranger or seasonal park ranger … in which the employee is subject to be called to fight fires, take part in rescue operations, or do other strenuous work.” Wirth decreed that women nevertheless did have a place in Park Service work: “Participation by women employees in lecture programs, guided tours, museum and library work, and in research programs would be entirely appropriate and very helpful in many parks. Increased attention may also be given to children’s programs in some parks and to extension work in schools for which women interpretive employees may be even more effective than men.”11 Even that statement was a breakthrough, shaded as it was with limited appreciation for the breadth of women rangers’ abilities.
Ten years later, in 1970, the miniskirt-like uniform was introduced with great fanfare. The costumes had even been flown to the Texas ranch of President Lyndon B. Johnson for his preview and approval the previous year. Models posed in the rose garden of Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park during Freedom Week in July 1970. A film crew recorded the unveiling of the miniskirt-like culottes and also an outfit with polyester slacks. One of the models added a pair of white plastic knee-high boots with two-inch heels, which led to confusion later regarding whether “go-go boots” were officially mandated for the tunic and culottes she was wearing. They were not. However, the large color photograph chosen for the cover of the Breeches and Blouses booklet shows a model in the culottes and go-go boots. The photo is also misleading in that the model is wearing the official ranger straw flat-brim hat, which she had borrowed from a male ranger standing nearby; women were not allowed to wear the iconic, flat hat the men wore. Events were held around the country to promote this new uniform. The women’s uniforms might have been considered stylish and attractive, but the women wearing them were not taken seriously. The men’s gold name tag had been converted to plastic for the women because of the new uniform’s thin material. The miniature badge was called a “badgette.” Women rangers were required to wear these official uniforms.
The culottes, along with the similarly styled pocketless beige dress, had a short career before uniforms flipped 180 degrees. In 1974 the next iteration of women’s uniforms was dark green polyester scrubs. Again, they were devoid of the symbols of authority displayed in the men’s uniforms. The women could have been mistaken for fast food servers or medical assistants. Finally, in 1978, following the threat of a class-action lawsuit, women were authorized to wear uniforms equivalent to those of male rangers: the same material and similar style. The women’s uniform, however, included a little strip of green cloth to be crossed over the top button of the uniform shirt, rather than the traditional long green tie worn by the men. A skirt was an added option and required wearing pumps with two-inch heels, rather than the practical oxfords specified for the trousers. After sixty-two years, women were allowed to wear something close to the men’s uniform that had been a symbol of pride for male employees of the National Park Service for so many decades.
The challenges of bringing women’s history into the Park Service were similar to the challenges of women entering the celebrated ranks of rangers. Mary Bradford’s career in the Park Service portrays the difficulties faced by women rangers. Mary was a pioneer, determined to be a ranger, who rose through the traditional ranger ranks to eventually become the associate director for administration in the Washington headquarters. She generously shared her career story for this book.
Mary’s first appointment, at which she served from June 1967 to 1970, was as a seasonal ranger in Fort Washington, built on the Potomac River to protect Washington, DC. Policy then required that rangers be five feet, eight inches or taller and weigh more than 145 pounds. At five feet, ten inches, Mary was able to overcome a requirement that excluded many women. Although she worked year-round, she was required to be listed as a seasonal or temporary employee only, rather than as a permanent employee. This denied her the benefits available to permanent male rangers.
When National Park Service women rangers were finally permitted to go permanent in late 1970, Mary was one of the first to do so. After a temporary detail to Yosemite National Park, she was assigned to Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego, where she moved with her husband. That posting came to an end in 1974 when she had to leave her beloved ranger job because she was pregnant with her second child, and no family leave could be granted in that era. There was also no uniform for a pregnant ranger, and to be a ranger one must wear the ranger uniform.
Yet through persistence and talent Mary resumed her career up through the complicated classifications and inflexible rules for Park Service personnel, in spite of the obstacles. Finally, after several more moves, including to a position as deputy regional director in the Park Service regional office in Santa Fe, Mary was appointed associate director for administration at the Washington headquarters. She served in the Hall of Heroes from 1994 to 1997. By that time, several other extraordinary women were also counted among Park Service leadership positions after following similar convoluted pathways to the top.
Mary’s experiences in her positions were analogous to the complicated story of uniforms for women rangers; she herself worked through several of the uniform changes. Early in her career, she had to help fight a brushfire wearing the women’s required skirt and pantyhose. Her hosiery melted down around her ankles and left permanent scars. Yet she managed her work and her career in spite of what she was required to wear.
Mary Bradford summarized her understanding of her career vicissitudes: “The image of the male ranger, standing tall and strong in a flat hat, protecting grand and important places, was confounded by people and places who did not fit into the origin myth of the National Park Service and its rangers.”
On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the National Park Service Organic Act creating the National Park Service.12 Several national parks had been designated by that time, and consistent management was needed and created through the National Park Service. This “Organic Act” directed the agency to manage the national parks, whose “purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
Nineteen years later, on August 21, 1935, Congress enacted the Historic Sites, Buildings and Antiquities Act, which “declared that it is a national policy to preserve for public use historic sites, buildings, and objects of national significance for the inspiration and benefit of the people of the United States.”13 The law was clear: the Park Service should seek out and preserve nationally significant sites without restriction: the history of all America and all Americans. The law directed the Park Service to
- (b) Make a survey of historic and archaeologic sites, buildings, and objects for the purpose of determining which possess exceptional value as commemorating or illustrating the history of the United States.
- (f) Restore, reconstruct, rehabilitate, preserve, and maintain historic or prehistoric sites, buildings, objects, and properties of national historical or archaeological significance and where deemed desirable establish and maintain museums in connection therewith.
Significance is not inherent. Individuals or organizations assign meaning to an object, person, or event, and confer significance. And meaning or significance may change over time. Or mean different things to different people. A table is just a table unless the Declaration of Sentiments is documented to have been written on it. But even then, its meaning must be explained to the viewer. That function of giving meaning, and explaining significance, is a core mission of the National Park Service. The definition of “national significance” was defined in the Park Service Management Policies with definitions leaning toward the grandiose. Note that descriptors included “prominently,” “outstandingly,” “broad,” “larger,” “significantly,” “great,” “important,” “distinguishing,” “exceptionally,” “notable,” and “master.”14 These words do not conjure up a vision of a modest five-room wood-frame house, shingled inappropriately and needing repairs. Nor do they conjure up a careworn laundromat. These particular structures, however, were critical to interpret the story of the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s contributions.
After it was authorized by Congress and work on its development began, the Women’s Rights National Historical Park became known as the first “idea park”—that is, a park where the symbolic significance was more important than the structures. As the Park Service grappled with the challenge of sites and structures that did not meet its traditional policy requirements, it needed to distinguish between a nationally significant story and nationally significant sites and buildings. The Women’s Rights Park demanded facing this distinction, as the buildings clearly did not match the agency standards and criteria for park designation. I was told at the time that a senior historian in the Park Service in Washington decreed that the Seneca Falls proposal was not nationally significant. However, many others agreed that the story was indeed nationally significant, and the Park Service should tell it. The buildings did not appear nationally significant, but the story was. Or so it was in the minds of many, if not all.
I was not aware, in 1978, how radical my suggestion for the Women’s Rights National Historical Park was. When asked in 2019 about the significance of the Women’s Rights Park, John Reynolds, retired director of the Park Service’s Pacific West Region, offered that it broke the mold for national parks and opened eyes to new sites highlighting the social history of our country. The scope of the revolution that burst out of Seneca Falls distinguished the park. Reynolds noted that the name “Women’s Rights National Historical Park” said it all: a name so radically different that it changed the Park Service. It expanded the scope of preservation and expanded the definition of nationally significant. John Reynolds called me “subversive,” meaning it as a compliment.
This separation of story from buildings enabled and facilitated later “idea parks.” The precedent established by this park was applied in 1992 at the Manzanar National Historic Site in the California desert, where nearly 120,000 Japanese American citizens were interned during World War II. What remained at the site included the ghostly windswept outlines of foundations and the historic auditorium. Jerry Rogers, the Park Service associate director for cultural resources, testified on May 21, 1991, at a House hearing recommending passage of HR 543 that just such evocative features were what made the site so moving and important.
The Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park was another prime example in 1999. I was assigned to create a compromise between John Reynolds, then the regional director for the Pacific Northwest office, and Denis Galvin in Washington. John wanted the “Rosie Park” legislation to include acquisition and preservation of the entire extant World War II shipyard #3 in Richmond, California, as well as the SS Red Oak Victory built in that shipyard, and a Ford Assembly Building long enough to hold four football fields end to end. After hearing John’s position, I met with Denis Galvin, then associate director for planning and development in Washington. Denis had argued with the regional office that the Park Service could not afford the acquisition and preservation and maintenance of the vast shipyard, huge transport ship, and the massive Ford Assembly Building. I knew the agency had fundamentally changed when Denis began the meeting with me by declaring that clearly the story was nationally significant. With this opening, I suggested that the Park Service could support legislation that authorized the more manageable acquisition of the first aid station, triage hospital, day care centers, and war worker housing, all relatively modest structures. The preservation of the vast shipyard #3 and the SS Red Oak Victory and the enormous Ford Assembly Building could be up to the Richmond community to determine, perhaps resulting in adaptive reuse. To my surprise, the next year I was selected to be the founding superintendent of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park and was challenged to make the legislation work on the ground. That became my final assignment in the National Park Service before I retired. Thanks to heroic local leadership and work and a new National Park Service Visitor Center, the site is now a flourishing national park.
Perhaps the ultimate “idea park” was the Stonewall National Monument, decreed by President Barack Obama on June 24, 2016. The Park Service brochure for the site states, “Stonewall was a milestone for LGBTQ civil rights that provided momentum for a movement. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn provoked a spontaneous act of resistance that earned a place alongside landmarks in American self-determination such as the Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights (1848) and the Selma to Montgomery March for African American voting rights (1965).” To honor the LGBTQ civil rights movement, the Park Service acquired the tiny Christopher Park across the street and erected Park Service signs and arrowheads. The Stonewall Tavern remains in private ownership and continues open to customers to buy refreshments inside. It allows for a kind of pilgrimage different from that of most parks.
And the first idea park prepared the way for questions about the preservation of “unhappy history.” The Park Service joined the International Sites of Conscience, a worldwide group founded in 1999 that now has over two hundred members in fifty-five countries. The sites of conscience support one another in their mission to connect their own history with current issues and tell frank stories about historical violence and subjugation. The days of arguing whether the Park Service should only commemorate the triumphs of America were replaced with a new understanding of the role of the Park Service in interpreting the full range of our American history.