Ansel Franklin Hall
Encyclopedia
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
.
Early career
Hall graduated in 1917 from the University of CaliforniaUniversity of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
with a degree in forestry. He joined the then-infant National Park Service as a ranger in Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park
Sequoia National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California, in the United States. It was established on September 25, 1890. The park spans . Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly , the park contains among its natural resources the highest point in the...
. His Park Service career was then interrupted by military service in France during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
From 1920 to 1923, Hall served as the first Park Naturalist of Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park is a United States National Park spanning eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in east central California, United States. The park covers an area of and reaches across the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain...
, where he established innovative interpretative programs, founded the Yosemite Museum Association, made geological models and native crafts, mounted natural history specimens, and edited the seminal Handbook of Yosemite National Park, published in 1921.
National service
Hall's energy and competence attracted attention in Washington and he was promoted to serve in the following posts:- 1923 – 1930: Chief Naturalist of the National Park Service.
- 1923 – 1933: Chief Forester and Senior Naturalist of the National Park Service.
- 1933 – 1937: Chief of the National Park Service Field Division.
In 1930, Hall co-wrote (with Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
's sons) a report for an Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
foundation which "...advocated a revolutionary new concept: a regional approach to park development, the creation of truly large, interconnected parklands that would define an urban landscape...", and which led directly to the establishment of the East Bay Regional Park District
East Bay Regional Park District
The East Bay Regional Park District is a special district operating in Alameda County and Contra Costa County, California, within the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area...
in the Oakland area
In 1933 - 1934, Hall led an expedition to the Rainbow Bridge
Rainbow Bridge
Rainbow Bridge may refer to:Bridges :* Rainbow Bridge National Monument, a natural rock formation located in Utah, USA* Rainbow Bridge , in Kansas* Rainbow Bridge , on the United States – Canada border...
- Monument Valley
Monument Valley
Monument Valley is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching above the valley floor. It is located on the northern border of Arizona with southern Utah , near the Four Corners area...
area, which produced thousands of valuable photographs of Indian life in the Four Corners area of that time.
Hall left the Park Service in 1938 to operate concessions in Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde National Park is a U.S. National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. It was created in 1906 to protect some of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in the world...
. Later he worked as a consultant in park design and interpretation and wrote books on the topic.
Publications
Hall, Ansel Franklin. Guide to Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park: A handbook of the northern section of Sequoia National Park and the adjacent Sierra Nevada (Hall, 1921)
Hall, Ansel Franklin, editor. Handbook of Yosemite National Park: a compendium of articles on the Yosemite region by the leading scientific authorities (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1921) LCCN 21014069. Library of Congress Call No. F 868.Y6 H18.
Hall, Ansel Franklin. "Mount Shasta" in Sierra Club Bulletin. 1926. Vol. 12. No. 3. pp. 250-67. Publications of the Sierra Club.
Hall, Ansel Franklin. Yosemite Valley: An intimate guide (National Parks Publishing House, 1929)
Hall, Ansel Franklin. A Guide to Sequoia and General Grant National Parks (National Parks Publishing House, 1930)
Hall, Ansel Franklin. General report on the Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition of 1933 (University of California Press, 1934)
Hall, Ansel Franklin. A pictorial guide to Mesa Verde National Park (Smith-Brooks, 1951; Mesa Verde Company, 1960)
Hall, Ansel Franklin. Mesa Verde, a brief guide (publishing details unknown)
Turner, Jack, author, and Hall, Ansel F, photographer. Early Images of the Southwest: The Lantern Slides of Ansel F. Hall (Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1998). ISBN 1-57098-217-1
Turner, Jack, author, and Hall, Ansel F, photographer. Landscapes On Glass: Lantern Slides For The Rainbow Bridge - Monument Valley Expedition With a foreword by President Bill Clinton. (Durango Herald Small Press, 2010). 978-1-887805-31-5