Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • W I N T E R 2 0 1 6 80 Despite their late acceptance to the role of fully-fledged Park Rangers in 1978, many women made an impact on Montana's National Parks, especially the nation's first designated park: Yel- lowstone. In the 1920s the Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park was a forward-looking man, the son of a miner from Califor- nia: Horace Albright. He battled the entrenched "boy's club" atmo- sphere that dominated the Park Service by hiring female employees when there was widespread animosity towards the idea. Between 1920 and 1933, Albright hired 10 women in Yellowstone and came under fire for doing so. But he was outspoken and believed in the skills and commitment to the Park Service by these women. He wrote to one of his adversaries, "Personally, I believe that in certain phases of our educational work women can do just as well or better than men." He went on to say that he had "found most male rangers are more or less useless in the Chief Ranger's office and I think that if we are going to keep our organization at the highest efficiency we may have to employ a few women in the organization." e most notable of Albright's female employees in Yellowstone was the naturalist Marguerite "Peg" Lindsley who was born at Mammoth Hot Springs in 1901 at a time when the U.S. govern- ment still had no idea what to do with its abundant wilderness areas. During this period the Parks came under military charge. Growing up in Yellowstone, Marguerite regularly heard the sound of cannon fire and the hooves of cavalry horses along with the cry of wolves and birdsong. e daughter of Yellowstone Park's superintendent Chester A. Lindsley, Marguerite was home-schooled by her mother until she was fourteen and then spent the next three years studying at Montana State College. As a teenager she spent her summers as a seasonal worker at Yellowstone giving tours on the geology and wildlife of the Park. She had plans to become a doctor, but was unsuccessful in her application and majored in bacteriology at the University of Pennsylvania instead. In 1923, she went to work in a biological laboratory near Philadelphia. In an interview in 1927 she commented that her job was indeed "most interesting and instructive," but the pull back to Yellowstone was too strong to resist. "I could almost smell the melting snow and growing things, and feel the thrill of an early morning horseback ride," she wrote. Marguerite gathered her savings and bought a second-hand Har- ley Davidson. She travelled the 2,500 miles with a girlfriend in her sidecar — both of them disguised as men — camping along the way in "hail, sleet, mud and washouts". You would think that this epic cross-country trip would be the voyage of a lifetime, but Marguerite made it clear that it was only the second best trip of her life — the first being the 143-mile loop of Yellowstone that she accomplished one winter on a pair of skis. is escapade was done with another woman who lived at Mam- moth Hot Springs, and the two of them were the first women to ever complete it. In 1925, Marguerite became a full-time em- ployee — the Park Service's, and therefore Yellowstone's, first. She proudly pinned a badge emblazoned with a pine cone onto her uniform, which was the symbol for the Park's permanent staff. As there were no official uniforms for female employees, Peg impro- vised with jodhpurs, a tailor-made green blouse with a smart green tie, riding boots, and a Stetson. She also adapted her uniform in other less obvious ways: it was said that she kept her suitors' letters pinned to the inside of her wide-brimmed hat. Despite her intimate knowledge of Yellowstone's flora and fauna, there is one recorded mishap during her early years as a ranger. While on a month-long horseback trip through Yellowstone, Mar- guerite fell into a geyser in an area known as Artists Paint Pots. Not only did she sink up to her knees in boiling mud, receiving third- degree burns, but she was given the nicknames "Geyser Peg" and "Paint Pot Peg." is accident, however, did nothing to deter her. In 1926, Sunset Magazine published a glowing article about Marguerite entitled, "She's a Real Ranger," which spawned interest from women around the country to apply for jobs in the Park Ser- vice. Lindsley's response was practical and not overly encouraging: "Personally, I believe that in certain phases of our educational work women can do just as well or better than men." SOME OF HORACE ALBRIGHT'S OTHER FEMALE RANGERS IN YELLOWSTONE: Isabel Wasson hired in 1920 Miss Mary Rolfe who ran the lecture service "a fine enthusiastic girl who tried very hard to please." Margaret Thorne (hired in 1924) Irene Wisdom (1924-1925) Frieda Nelson (1925-1926) Frances Pound (1926-1929) Virginia Pound, Frances's sister (1927) Herma Albertson (1929-1933) Superintendent of Yellowstone Horace Albright and friends.

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