A Historical Perspective of National Park Service Stewardship of Fossil Resources: Contributions of New Deal-Era Public Works Programs

Session: Science and Stewardship of U.S. National Park Service Paleontological Resources

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The National Park Service (NPS) has a rich and extensive history of preserving fossil resources, with many lasting stewardship practices established in the agency’s early days. Beginning in 1929, the economic downturn of the Great Depression created a pressing need for new jobs. President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal: a series of public works programs and welfare initiatives to relieve the nationwide economic burden. Programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) sent thousands of workers to NPS areas, a number of whom directly supported educational paleontology programs or assisted in the excavation of fossils.

The early histories of numerous parks contain significant interactions between public works programs and paleontological resources. A temporary museum with hundreds of fossils was erected at a CCC camp in Big Bend, and WPA crews quarried three sites to collect over 500 disarticulated vertebrate specimens in the late 1930s. At Dinosaur National Monument, Albert C. Boyle led crews of men as they improved the area around the dinosaur quarry, educating them in geology, including them in outreach efforts, and inspiring them in artistic endeavors. In 1935, the removal of the fossils which gave Fossil Cycad National Monument its name led to further excavations by Yale paleobotanist George Wieland and a CCC crew. Several pits were opened and over a ton of uneroded fossil cycad specimens were recovered, but the park was not ultimately rescued from abolishment. Extensive CCC work took place across Grand Canyon, including the excavation of Pleistocene fossils from Rampart Cave, the construction of fossil fern and trilobite exhibits, and the recovery of numerous fossils now preserved within the park’s collections.

Many other parks such as Agate Fossil Beds, Mammoth Cave, Petrified Forest, and Scotts Bluff owe aspects of their history to the work of men and women from these public works initiatives. While many were inexperienced or not scientifically inclined, they worked diligently and often developed a passion for the land they worked on, showing that stewardship is not just limited to rangers and researchers. The recovery, study, and communication of fossil resources in these NPS areas yielded many profound discoveries and laid another brick in the foundation of paleontological research in public lands today.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

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