George Leroy Collins

Cornelius Amory Pugsley State Medal Award, 1959

 

George LeRoy Collins (1903-2000) received the state/regional level Pugsley Medal in 1959 "for sustained imaginative direction of important planning projects for the conservation of park and recreation resources of national, state and local significance, especially in Alaska, and for his consultative and advising assistance to the states." He was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, but when he was an infant, his family moved to Corning in northern California and he started his public schooling in that rural community. At the age of six or seven he contracted polio and then typhoid fever, which caused a loss of physical coordination that he never recovered. In 1919, his family moved to the Bay area and Collins attended Oakland Technical High School. His father was in the printing business, so Collins worked in printing offices part-time while he was growing up. His intent was to study printing at the high school, but his interests shifted to the fine arts, and consequently he changed schools to attend the California School of Arts and Crafts.

 

His rural roots and heritage led him to seek work in the mountains during his high school summer vacations. He became especially interested in the Lassen county as a result of several trips made there with his family. After completing art school in 1924, Collins found that he could make a living at drawing and design. His brother had acquired property in the Lassen country, but he also worked for the NPS as the first employee and then the first superintendent of Larson Volcanic National Park. He needed someone to design and make signs for the park, which was how Collins launched his NPS career. While there, he on several occasions interacted with Horace Albright who encouraged him to take the NPS ranger exam. After passing it, he was assigned first to Yosemite and then after a short period to Grand Canyon where he was a ranger from 1930 to 1935.

 

During this period, the NPS made use of his graphic arts training and interest by involving him as part of a team responsible for making exhibits consisting of large dioramas depicting several of the larger parks which were used to promote NPS at the 1934 Chicago World's Fair. His next assignment was at Lake Mead, which had recently been created by the Boulder Dam, with a mission to design and plan the new park and to use CCC labor to develop facilities there. After organizing that work he was transferred to Santa Fe to establish a district office as part of the NPS reorganization to establish several regional offices around the country. With land donated by the Rockefeller family, Collins planned and designed the regional headquarters building. His role had gradually evolved away from direct designing and planning projects, towards responsibility for broader policy issues.

 

From 1937 to 1945 Collins was assigned to the NPS director�s office in Washington D.C. as deputy assistant director for land planning. One of the major projects for which he was responsible at this time was the Colorado River Basin study. Proposals for dam projects on the Colorado were proliferating with the Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and others as advocates. Collins approached these agencies and successfully argued for a joint study of the entire basin so the proposals' benefits costs and impacts could be viewed holistically. The outcome was a dam in Glen Canyon, but not in Bridge Canyon or Grand Canyon. Collins reflected, "We couldn�t say no to everything. So while this is an absolutely magnificent region and we hated to see the thing go in at the Glen Canyon, nevertheless we would have disliked it more anywhere else."

 

In 1945 at the end of World War II, Collins yearned to move from his position as a bureaucrat in Washington D.C. back into the field where he could engage in hands-on planning. So he left the director's office, to head the NPS team involved with the Bureau of Reclamation in the Central Valley Project which involved the Shasta, Folsom and Millerton dams.

 

He was transferred from Shasta Lake to the San Francisco regional office in 1948 as chief of its state and territorial division.  In this position, he worked closely with state park agencies and their political subdivisions in recreation area planning. Subsequently, Collins was appointed regional chief of recreation resource planning. Here he completed the West Coast Recreation Survey. He was particularly interested in protecting the Channel Islands off the coast of California and he created the momentum that resulted in them being subsequently added to the NPS system. Another outgrowth of this survey was the establishment of the Point Reyes National Seashore which he nurtured into the system. He was one of the first to perceive its unique national value and he was the prime, though often modestly inconspicuous, mover, both within and outside the NPS in enlisting local support for the project.

 

Alaska was one of his responsibilities and he argued forcefully that under the Park, Parkway and Recreation Act of 1936 the NPS had an obligation to learn as much as possible about the territory and the recreational resources there. He was successful in persuading the NPS to initiate the Alaska Recreation survey and he was appointed its head. The project continued from 1950 to 1954 and its purpose was to develop long-range plans that would provide guidance to the NPS and others in

1. The protection of Alaska's scenic, scientific, historic, and other recreational resources.
2. The development of park and recreational facilities and services for the people of Alaska, and
3. The development of tourist facilities in Alaska.

Collins spent the summers of each of these years in Alaska, learning as much about the territory as possible and inventorying the resources there. The survey team quickly discovered that not only was the NPS's knowledge of Alaska superficial, but that any detailed knowledge about the land was surprisingly scanty. The Alaska recreational survey, as a result, contributed not only to the NPS's understanding, but made major contributions to a more general body of knowledge about Alaska.

Over the next several years the Alaska recreation survey sponsored, among other things, a comprehensive study of the economic aspects of tourism in Alaska, the first comprehensive geological survey of the territory, a thorough biological study of Katmai, a preliminary geographical study of the Kongakut-Firth River area in northeast Alaska, and developed a broad-scale recreation plan for Alaska. In 1952, the team studied and first proposed establishment of an Arctic Wilderness International Park on the northeastern Alaska-Yukon border, an area that became the Arctic Wildlife Range in 1960. Two articles he contributed in 1953 "Northeast Arctic: The Last Great Wilderness" and "Arctic Wilderness" were instrumental in awakening public appreciation of the wilderness values of northeast Alaska and adjacent Canada and introduced the proposal to establish the Arctic Wildlife Range to a wide audience.

Collins' commitment and advocacy for Alaska within the NPS was unrelenting. As money became available under the Mission 66 program he was able to use funds from it to prepare studies of park boundaries and inventory proposed park areas. In 1960, he hired a long-time Fish and Wildlife Service employee in Alaska to develop a general recreation plan for Alaska that would identify areas that should be protected by the federal, state or local governments.

These were the critical foundations from which the decisions on which major lands to protect were made during the following 20-year period. It was largely through Collins' skillful efforts in securing cooperation of groups and individuals that a comprehensive research program covering that vast territory was accomplished and knowledge of Alaska's recreation resources and park potentialities brought to public and official attention.

In 1958, Collins was presented with a "Special Act Award" by the undersecretary of Interior "for outstanding accomplishments in wilderness conservation and in the presentation of the scenic, scientific, and recreation resources of Alaska." Special recognition was also given to him for his part in the initiation and planning of a book to promote understanding of the physical evolution of Alaska's land forms, entitled Landscapes of Alaska, published in 1958.

Throughout his career, Collins was known as a free spirit. He was warm, friendly, inspirational, gregarious and outgoing with an excellent network of NPS senior managers who enjoyed his company and respected his intellect and ability to get things done. He didn't hesitate to end-run superiors if the end justified the means, but always owned up to it when caught. His irascible, likeable personality enabled him to get away with this unorthodox behavior without sanctions most of the time. He was perhaps at the tailend of the highly individualized, personalized spirit of action and thought that characterized the NPS staff it the agency's early decades.

Collins retired from the NPS after 33 years at the age of 57 but was still highly energetic and passionate about conservation. He believed he could accomplish more in this arena with the flexibility of not being constrained by being a member of the NPS: "I didn't feel that I could achieve as much in government as I could privately. As I got older and wiser, I found that the ability to use age and wisdom more effectively was becoming ever more restrictive."

With three long-time friends he established Conservation Associates; a nonprofit organization which was highly active and successful in planning fundraising and parkland acquisition in California. He also was elected a director of the Nature Conservancy in 1960 and a couple of years later became its president and strengthened the organization's role in western conservation programs. According to one of his peers, he played a major role in transforming that organization from "a rather weak and ineffective organization to its present character of leadership in promoting conservation efforts and supplying funds -- in large amounts -- for land acquisition."

Collins was literate, thoughtful and articulate with a keen sense of humor. These qualities, together with his personal integrity, judgment, conservation consciousness and sense of civic responsibility, made him an extraordinary leader in the parks and conservation movement. He had a special talent for securing the confidence affection, and active support of fellow workers and the general public thanks to his persuasiveness, the obviously unselfish character of his objectives, and his ability to get influential persons to accept leadership while he modestly blended into the background. In addition to inspiring enthusiasm among his co-workers, Collins was blessed with an unusual fund of patience and forbearance when dealing with the frustrations of government.

Sources:
A. Frank Willis (1985) "Do Things Right the First Time": Administrative History of the National Park Service and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 Washington D.C.: National Park Service.
George L. Collins (1980). The art and politics of park planning and preservation, 1920-1979. Berkeley, California: The Bancroft Library Regional Oral History Office.