Throughout the first century of the United States National Park Service (NPS), the organization's workforce has grown more inclusive and gender-balanced. When the organization was formed in 1916, few female rangers worked within its ranks. As the organization grew, more women were hired into white-collar and clerical positions. As social activism and second-wave feminism movements gained ground in the 1960s and 70s, women were hired into more diverse occupations and leadership roles within the NPS. Today, the National Park Service still faces a gender disparity with 37% of the workforce being female and has been criticized for its response to several sexual harassment cases.
Early female rangers
Female rangers existed in the early 20th century in small numbers. Because of the rarity of encountering a female employee, these women's careers were often highly publicized. However, there are cases where the women did not receive publicity until several years, or even decades later.
Records show that the first paid female park ranger in the National Park Service was Esther Brazell at Wind Cave National Park. Brazell was hired as a park ranger in 1916, by her father Thomas W. Brazell. The salary was recorded as $50 US per month. Esther was hired again in the summer of 1917 to guide tours in the cave, at a salary of $75 US per month.
Other women were able to have brief careers with the Park Service due to the scarcity of available male employees, particularly during times of war. Claire Marie Hodges, known as the first female ranger at Yosemite National Park, was hired as a seasonal ranger in the summer of 1918, when the park was facing a shortage in able-bodied young men due to World War I. Unusually, Hodges had the same duties, and wore the same stetson hat and badge as her male colleagues, although she did not carry a gun.
Helen Wilson was appointed as a temporary park ranger at Glacier National Park on June 17, 1918. Notably, Wilson's salary matched that of four male park rangers hired at the same time, long before the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Wilson worked at the entrance station and also issued permits for people who wished to gather wildflowers.
Some, though not all, of the early female rangers were the wives or daughters of male NPS employees. A fairly well-known figure in the 1920s was Marguerite Lindsley, a junior student at Montana State College and the daughter of Yellowstone's assistant superintendent, who was popularly known as the "first woman ever to be named as a ranger at Yellowstone National Park." Lindsley's main qualification for the position was that she had "spent every summer of her life in the park", and thus familiar with not only the hills and valleys of the park, but with the birds and "beasts" as well.
One of the other early Yellowstone rangers was Mrs. Cal Peck, who met her husband, a ranger at Yellowstone National Park, when she visited the site as a tourist. The Pecks both went on to work as Park rangers at the Grand Canyon in 1922, where "her patrol is on the north side of the Grant Canyon running into Arizona, amid the most beautiful scenery of the park." Instead of a standardized uniform, Mrs. Peck wore a brown, homemade animal skin uniform during for her patrol.
Historian Polly Welts Kaufman writes of the contributions of these early women park rangers, stating that "Although women... who did achieve park ranger status before the early 1970s have gone down in Park Service history as the first women rangers, they did not bring real change to the position of women in the Service. But they did demonstrate that women could do the job..."
Ranger wives
Although not employees themselves, many ranger wives had great influence over their husbands and, at times, the parks they called home. Horace Albright, the second director of the NPS, even described ranger wives more as "charming and versatile, competently to carry out, within the limits of their strength, their husband's varied assignments."
Some ranger wives also wrote about their experiences. Bears in My Kitchen was the memoir of Margaret Merrill, who had been a ranger wife at Yosemite from 1930 until the book was published in 1956.
Other women participated more directly. Helen Hartzog, wife of NPS Director George B. Hartzog Jr., became popularly known as the "First Lady" of the National Park Service due to her involvement with the organization. She acted as a trusted advisor for her husband during his tenure as director, fostered an increased sense of community within the growing organization, and assisted with the growth of the NPS's burgeoning Volunteers In Parks (VIP) program.