Books by National Park Service

Among the most important contributions the National Park Service has made since its founding in 1916 has been the development of extraordinary museum technology and administration---national in scope and international in influence. This manual, a distillation of what many persons have learned about the day-to-day operations of museums, is meant to provide curatorial standards and serve as a reference for museum workers everywhere. This book was written by Ralph H. Lewis, an outstanding museum administrator and curator with many years of experience in the National Park Service. It is an outgrowth of an earlier (1941) volume entitled Field Manual for Museums by Ned J. Burns, a work that went out of print during World War II and is, even to this day, in demand by curators and museum managers. In this present manual, Mr. Lewis carries on a tradition of excellence in museum practice that can be traced back to the mid-1930's when Carl P. Russell set the basic pattern for museum work in the national parks. In those early years most park museums could not afford or were too small to engage a full time professional museum staff. Dr. Russell set up centralized laboratories staffed by curators and preparators and provided the parks with exhibition and preservation expertise from this pool. The ordinary maintenance and operation of the museums were left to the superintendents who managed the parks, and to the archeologists, historians and naturalists who interpreted them.

Describes how cultural perceptions of nature and the resulting trends in tourism have shaped Oregon Caves and the area around it over the span of more than a century. 252 pages. maps. ill.

He hated the radio; he called it a "lemon." He had even less use for the electronic phonograph. In 1925 he sounded the death knell for the Edison name in the home phonograph industry by saying he would stick with his mechanical device. After much stubborn hesitation, his company brought out an electronic phonograph in 1928. But it was too late. In 1929 the Edison company stopped manufacturing entertainment phonographs and records. A last-minute venture into the mushrooming radio field failed soon afterwards. Thomas Alva Edison belonged to the 19th century. It was there, in the beginnings of America's love affair with technology, that the dynamic and sharp-tongued "country boy" from Milan, Ohio, put his extraordinary genius to work and achieved national fame. In that age before the horseless carriage and wireless Thomas Edison made his remarkable contribution to the quality of life in America and became a folk hero, much like an Horatio Alger character. Edison's reputation stayed with him in the early 20th century, but his pace of achievements slackened. At his laboratory in West Orange, N.J., in the 1900's he did not produce as many important inventions as he had there and at his Menlo Park, N.J., lab in the late 1800's. Edison's projects and quests became expensive, costing millions and resulting in few rewards and profits. His forays into many fields were continuing evidence of a Da Vinci-like breadth of mind, but they were not financially successful, or, one suspects, personally satisfying. Besides some financial success with a battery, it was profits from the phonograph and motion picture innovations, both fruits of his work in the 19th century, that kept Edison solvent in those later years.

This volume is a guide prepared by the National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings, a nationwide program conducted by the National Park Service to identify historic and prehistoric places of significance. The sites and buildings described in this volume represent a colorful phase of American history. Yet, it was a tragic era. It has also been distorted in the popular mind by television and motion picture presentations. Visits to these pertinent historic sites will do much to dispel the myths associated with the period and contribute to better understanding of its complexities. Each site listed has a detailed history in this book.

The moving or transplanting of trees and shrubs is an activity probably as old as mankind. Basically, the process of moving growing plants from one place to another is little changed from early times, but our increased understanding of the processes of nature through recent research and investigations in the broad fields of horticulture, arboriculture, and forestry, and the development of better machinery and equipment have brought about many improvements in the technique of moving trees and shrubs. Today, the moving of trees 12 to 18 inches in diameter is a matter of routine, and trees several times as large frequently are transplanted with success. The cost of such operations is relatively high and seldom in national park work is it justifiable, except under special conditions.The transplanting of small- to medium-sized trees and shrubs, however, is a constantly recurring activity in areas under Service jurisdiction, and it is to aid the planners and supervisors of such work that this bulletin is issued. Because of the varying conditions of climate, soil, temperature, species, etc., encountered in national park areas, it is impossible to lay down rigid rules for transplanting. The principles involved, however, are the same in Maine as they are in Texas, and it is hoped that a codification and explanation of some of these principles and descriptions of certain techniques will prove to be adaptable and of value under many of the various conditions encountered.

On September 8, 1886, soldiers and Indians gathered on the parade ground of a frontier post nestled amid cactus-studded hills. A cordon of blueclad troopers formed around a train of open wagons loaded with Indian families. As a military band drawn up at the base of the flagstaff played "Auld Lang Syne," the procession moved out of the fort and headed north.The post was Fort Bowie, Arizona, for a quarter of a century a lonely bastion in Apache Pass, the heart of Apacheria. The Indians were Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua Apaches, for more than a decade scourges of the southwestern frontier. Now the warfare had ended, and with a touch of musical irony the victors bade farewell as the vanquished were escorted to the railroad cars that would bear them eastward to an uncertain future.Today the gaunt ruins of Fort Bowie, set in an environment otherwise uncluttered by man's works, recall a dramatic and significant phase of the American past"Ythe struggle of a dynamic and aggressive people to conquer the wilderness, and the struggle of a proud and independent people to retain the wilderness and the way of life they had known.