The Gentle Anarchy of the Park Ranger
“Rogue” National Park Service Twitter accounts play on park rangers' distinct place in American culture.
Probably the first AltParks project started in 1919, just three years after President Woodrow Wilson signed a law creating the National Park Service to oversee what were then 14 parks, including Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier. Robert Sterling Yard, a Princeton-educated veteran of the New York Sun and Scribner’s, was running the new service’s public-education wing, where he produced publicity praising the parks as the nation’s “gallery of masterpieces” and “the shrine of the Infinite.”
Other Park Service officials at the time had a less religious view of their role. Visitors to Yosemite
