Beatrice Ward Nelson
Cornelius Amory Pugsley Bronze Medal Award, 1928
Beatrice Ward Nelson (1893-19xx) was born in Kansas and received the Pugsley Bronze Medal in 1928 "for her services as secretary of the National Conference on State Parks." When Stephen Mather became NPS director, he was frequently lobbied to accept lands into the system which were of lesser status than he believed national park standards required. He believed they should be the responsibility of state governments and sought to expand the fledgling state park movement which had emerged. To this end, he conceived a National Conference on State Parks (NCSP) in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1921. It was attended by 200 enthusiastic supporters of the state parks idea. Under Mather's guidance, the group became a formal organization with an executive committee of ten people to guide its mission of fostering the growth of state parks.
Beatrice Ward, who worked for Mather at the NPS, was appointed secretary of the NCSP. She became the NCSP's first staff person under an "employee on loan" arrangement with the NPS which was orchestrated by Mather. She was Mather's aide-de-camp at the NCSP and was the organization's "jack of all trades" in the first crucial eight years of its existence. In 1924, the NCSP received funding from the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Foundation and hired an additional staff person to assist her. She was the office manager, but she also conducted research, did significant writing, and was central to propelling the organization forward.
Ward, Mather and Raymond Torrey (Pugsley Medal 1938) were the primary "voices" for state parks throughout the 1920s. Each of these principal spokespersons had a different point of emphasis, although they varied their comments as the occasion or purpose required. Mather was generous in his praise of individual state accomplishments, and spoke eloquently of opportunities that still awaited. Torrey completed a survey of state parks around the country and drew on his research to assess their current status and future potential. Ward focused on the role and mission of the NCSP. Together, the three of them provided a fairly comprehensive view of America's state parks movement in the 1920s.
In 1929, Ward published a reference book on state parks and other state recreational areas entitled State Recreation, Parks, Forests and Game Preserves. This monumental book was the first public complication of data on park locations, sizes, amenities, and functions. In addition, the book classified park areas according to land functions for the first time. Ward traced the evolution of the nations first two state parks, the Yosemite Valley (later to become a national park) and Niagara Falls, noting that:
In each instance it was a long fight to achieve success. Fifteen years elapsed before Yosemite was consolidated into a real park; it took eighteen years to save Niagara as a park area. From this it is evident that the successful culmination of efforts in State Park work took as long a period of time as the same effort for the establishment of some of our great national Parks. We should, therefore, not be discouraged if our first efforts in saving some of our outstanding state parks areas do not meet with success within a year or two.
In the same year this book was published, Ward left her position to marry Wilbur Armistead Nelson, who was a fellow member of the NCSP executive board and the state geologist in Virginia. Because Ward's replacement did not meet the standard which Mather had set, Ward was persuaded to return in 1934 to her position, and she conducted conference affairs from her home in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a number of years.