User:Remi Puerto/Women in the national park service

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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 was Esther L. 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. 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 female 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.