Stephen Mather

So, yeah, we had parks for a little bit before that.

But in the early 1900s, you had Stephen Mather, who is talked about a lot as like the first director of the National Park Service.

And then Robert Sterling Yard was sort of his.

kind of part of the money behind the operation, although Mather had a lot of money too, but he also had the pen because he was a New York Herald writer.

Uh, they formed the National Park Service.

Um, Stephen Mather's, another club member, was the head of the National Park Service, and they formed the Wildlife, the National Wildlife Refuge System, all in a span of about nine years.

So you're looking at close to 300 million acres of public land-

Wow

namely Grand Teton National Park.

Setting aside that Stephen Mather, the first superintendent of the National Park Service and the man who built the park system into the crown jewel of the American experience that has come to be known, had a policy of doing nearly anything to bring people into the parks, I will keep this very simple.

No.

Absolutely not.

And the second floor of that building was a hotel back in the day.

In fact, the link to National Park is that Stephen Mather and his group of m- of, um, influential people stayed there before they did a trek through the national parks that ultimately helped to create the National Park Service.

Whole different story there.

But the businesses down below, there was a woman who said that the people that ran the hotel came to her often.