The Story Behind The National Park Service Posters of the 1930s

Above, a NPS poster promoting Yellowstone National Park.

This year marks the centennial of the National Park Service.

Travel + Leisure has an article on promotional posters issued by the WPA (Works Progress Administration) in the 1930s. As a program to combat unemployment of the Great Depression, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt started the WPA and the National Park Service was a major beneficiary of that program. Many of the WPA facilities in our national parks still remain in use to this day.

The article includes several of the silkscreened posters.

They wrote, in part:

Between 1938 and 1941, the WPA produced a series of 14 hand silkscreened promotional posters for the parks. Eight of them, from the collection of the Library of Congress, can be seen here.

To read the article, go here.