Polly Mead, Grand Canyon's First Woman Ranger/Naturalist

Park ranger/naturalist, Polly Mead, discussing plant identification with a park visitor.

NPS photo/George Collins, June 1931

• Polly Pod - Behind the Scenery Podcast #5

  
  

  Grand Canyon National Park hired its first woman park ranger/naturalist in 1930, Polly Mead. What has changed 90 years later? Present day interpretive ranger, Becca, compares her experiences working at Grand Canyon, to the stories told by Polly Mead in a 1995 oral history interview.

  Credit / Author:

  North Rim Interpretation, Grand Canyon National Park

  Date created:

  12/01/2020

  Audio Transcript

  Becca: We are indebted to her for being the 1st and we are indebted to all the people who are being first now.

  Jesse: You’re listening to Behind the Scenery, the Canyon Cuts. I’m Jesse, a park ranger on the North Rim, and we just heard from my colleague Becca

  Becca: I’m Becca, park Ranger, North Rim

  Jesse: talking about Polly Mead. Grand Canyon's first female park ranger. We recently got our hands on an oral history interview with Polly done by the parks creative media specialist, Mike Quinn, in 1995. Becca and I sat down and had a conversation about what we heard. What do you know about Polly Mead?

  Becca: I know Polly was the first woman ranger at Grand Canyon, is that correct?

  Jesse: That's right.

  Becca: And I know I've seen a picture of her wearing a hat that's shaped like kind of like an upside down Tulip. I get the sense she was a passionate thinker but that's basically the extent of my knowledge.

  Jesse: OK yeah. I'm just going to play clip for you that will give us a little background on Polly Mead Polly studied botany at University Chicago and her first trip to Grand Canyon was part of the trip out West with her botany class.

  Polly: As we were going through the Kaibab Forest us my professor said “do you notice how the trees come right down to the edge of the Meadow and just stop? He said that would makes an interesting study to see why the tree lines just stops suddenly like that at the Meadow.” I thought haha! That’s the subject of my thesis for my Masters. So when I graduated from college, my aunt and benefactor gave me a choice. She said “I’d like to give you a gift of a trip to Europe or trip to the Grand Canyon to do your research work.” I've never been to Europe. So, I tried to cover the whole plateau. It took me a long time, mostly on horseback. I had a plant press on my back and I’d go out and collect specimens. At night I’d put a bed roll on the floor of the forest and sleep there. All I needed was a canteen of water and a bed roll.

  Jesse: So Polly came from the University of Chicago, she came from a big city and she came out West and was just like for her research just traveling around camping alone every night on horseback. you've camped alone, right Becca?

  Becca: Yes I have.

  Jesse: In fact I think you're working on a podcast about camping alone.

  Becca: Yeah, the working title is Becca Camps Alone.

  Jesse: Tell me about your experiences camping alone.

  Becca: Before I started camping alone I thought I would feel more confident out there by myself. The first time I camped alone I spent the first little portion lying in my sleeping bag in my tent planning what I would do upon human attack, but as time has progressed and I’ve camped alone more I still have that in my mind, but I also have other things in my mind like “oh I'm happy to be here and I'm glad I can do this.”

  Jesse: I think she also experienced some of the same things you talked about, too.

  Polly: When I was doing my thesis work I had a little pistol, because I thought I'm a woman alone. I might need it if there were any drunken man or something like that. So one time I was out in my bed roll asleep. I heard footsteps going around me. I put on my hand up to get that pistol and I went to sleep. In the morning there were footprints of a deer all the way around me. Jesse: At the end of her research Polly needed to get to the South Rim to talk to the park geologist about including the geological information of the Kaibab Plateau in her thesis. Polly: Now I didn't know any other way but to just walk across. And I did. Of course, I was 25 then. So I walked down. Nobody knows how big Grand Canyon is unless they have walked every step of the way and across the river with still boots and blistered feet. I got up the South Rim. I didn't know that there was a, maybe there wasn’t the Kaibab Trail going out to Yaki Point, I only knew of Bright Angel so I had to walk all across the Tonto and go up Bright Angel. I was so tired I couldn’t sleep, but anyway some kind person hauled me a pail of water and I made it.

  Jesse: Shortly after that Polly got a job at Grand Canyon, so her path was research at Grand Canyon, job at Grand Canyon. Of course, there were there barriers to that:

  Polly: I had trying to get a job with the Forest Service but they wouldn’t take me because I was a woman. Period.

  Jesse: I just wanted to ask you what is your path in getting to Grand Canyon?

  Becca: Sure, my path to Grand Canyon was not planned in advance. I was working for a nonprofit based out of Atlanta, Georgia and we hosted a training on the Sout rim of Grand Canyon. Todd Nelson, the volunteer program coordinator, reached out and said “hey would you like to take this position?” I was quite close to saying no. I had written on my planner “say no to Todd.” And then I just procrastinated it to the next day and pushed it to the next day and kept not saying no. So after some more reflection on how much of an opportunity that really was I decided to take that chance and move to the South Rim. And when I first visited the South Rim I was walking around the Albright Training Center and I just had this thought, this feeling: “Oh, I’m gonna live here some day.” And it came true so I worked a year coordinating facilitating volunteer experiences based mostly on the South Rim. I fell in love with Grand Canyon, I fell in love with that community. I was not ready to leave after the first year, so in a collage of different jobs (ski instructing nearby, working on a chainsaw crew, teaching preschool in Grand Canyon for about six months) it all led to the North rim position I hold now, which is the second time I’ve returned to it.

  Jesse: Can you just describe what it is you do as a park ranger?

  Becca: I see it as my job to provide and facilitate spaces of learning and discovery or where folks can create their own meeting and make their own connections with this special place. What that means on the logistical level is giving educational programming. Sometimes it's tied to a specific tangible topic like geology or the California Condor and sometimes it covers more expansive content like stories of resilience in Canyon, or uranium, or other sticky topics that we want to dive into.

  Jesse: Our roles as interpreters have evolved somewhat over the years especially in the last five years. I think if you were a park ranger at Grand Canyon in like 2015 your job description might sound almost exactly like Polly Mead’s, which is the next clip I’ll play for you.

  Polly: We lived in little cottages and I lived with 2 other women who worked at the office. I took people on nature hikes or gave campfire lectures at night. And then my main job was to be stationed out a Yavapai where the bus loads of people would come and I would give lectures to a group of people right there at Yavapai.

  Jesse: Sound pretty familiar, right?

  Becca: Sounds familiar and more perhaps deeply rooted in specific content to express.

  Jesse: Sure, yeah, and also we don't really like the word lecture.

  Becca: That's true, the language we use has changed.

  Jesse: I'm going to play just a couple other clips for you and I'm just interested in your reaction. There are some similarities and differences in her job description and I want to see if you've noticed similarities or differences in this other facet.

  Polly: One time I was giving a lecture, oh it was such a good one, on the rim of the canyon. Getting everybody so interested in the canyon and how old those oldest rocks in the bottom were, and how many years it took to the carve the canyon (200 million or whatever it was). I asked if there were any questions. One man put up his hand and asked “how old are you?” I wasn't there at that time.

  Becca: Yeah that's a familiar dynamic. so I'm aware that like my response today might not be my response in a year but, honestly when I hear that I’m like “yeah Polly!” It’s just obnoxious and a little undermining and a little patronizing. And those adjectives, especially experiencing patronizing moments from visitors is familiar to me. That being said I assume most visitors mean very well.

  Jesse: It wasn't just comments from visitors to Polly had to deal with. Not all of her coworkers were happy to be working with a woman.

  Polly: So I was very proud of that job. And some of the men ranger naturalists resented the fact that I was a woman and had the same position they did, and made it a little bit difficult. When I say give me a hard time it was just an attitude that I felt. That wasn’t important, I thought.

  Becca: Yeah, so when I first came to Grand Canyon in 2017 realities of sexual harassment at Grand Canyon were very much on the surface of, in my view, most folks and most work groups’ consciousness. I was very excited about that. I think part of that stemmed from ignorance because I didn’t fully understand at the time the depth and trauma of being so isolated and in a backcountry setting and experiencing sexual harassment. Not just in an office, but when the person who is victimizing you is like also your tether to survival, but anyway the reason I was excited that sexual harassment was on the forefront of Grand Canyon consciousness, was because I felt like “yeah sexual harassment exists everywhere.” And the fact that Grand Canyon is thinking about this, to me, is a step the right direction. Perhaps some male colleagues weren't sure how to act and they were navigating their own fear around that. To me, that's great you're growing. Growing uncomfortable and also it's helping the whole community be healthier and safer. Place in terms of like reflecting on my own experiences around like gendered dynamics in the Park Service I find I definitely benefit from having women leadership and women around me and not being the 1st. And I also feel more challenging gender dynamics in general from my interactions with visitors for sure. Jesse: Polly may have been alone as the only woman ranger at Grand Canyon, but she wasn’t the only woman ranger in the park service.

  Polly: I can’t say I was the first woman ranger naturalist because Herma Bagley was the 1st at Yellowstone. When there was the superintendents conference at the Great Smokies she was there. And she and I were going off into the woods and just talk about plants all the time. She was a wonderful person and a wonderful botanist.

  Jesse: Polly’s only female counterpart in the Park Service worked at Yellowstone National Park. She had to go to the superintendent's conference at the Great Smokies to have interaction face to face with her. How is that similar or different from your experience?

  Becca: Super different from my experience. I am surrounded by powerful women in the Park Service and specifically at Grand Canyon. The women around me, both in my work group and beyond have shown me in some ways that more is possible for me. So for example I never considered law enforcement before I got to Grand Canyon, and though I don't think it's the career path I'll choose, when I arrived in Grand Canyon and discovered a whole number of women who are doing incredibly competent thoughtful important work in the front and backcountry, that opened up a whole sphere of possibility for me just in how I conceptualize that work. I don't need to look far for allies here of all genders, and I don't need to look far for women doing incredible things that I admire and collaborate with, so that is a huge change.

  Jesse: I think like without seeing yourself in that position it would have been challenging to know that that's something that is an option.

  Becca: Yeah, I agree I think this ties into so many current and continuing conversations about why representation matters. It matters to see people that you see yourself in in positions of leadership and just in positions of leadership and in diverse jobs across so many spheres. It super matters. Jesse: Well, the last clip I want to play for you is, well, I’ll just play.

  Polly: I got my job in 1930. And I was so interested. I loved that job, and I sort of thought I would go on with it. But my husband said he didn’t want his wife working, so I said yes dear. That’s the way we did in those days.

  Becca: What a loss, not only for Polly personally, but for the Park Service and for Grand Canyon. When I hear that I just think of all the people just like Polly. Yes, Polly was first here and alone in terms of her gender identity perhaps in her work group, but I think of so many people who past and perhaps present have had more experience where it's like that's what you did in those days or that's what you do now or that's the role of the wife or mother or a person of this gender or a person of this racial identity. The boxing in is a real tragedy I think for the individual and for the collective.

  Jesse: Yeah, to me this is this is so heartbreaking, especially after knowing how hard she worked to get to that place, getting her undergrad in botany, doing her Masters research on the North rim of Grand Canyon, being denied by the Forest Service because she was a woman, and then finally becoming the first woman at Grand Canyon to do this job, and to love it and to do it well for a year and a half and then to be told by the person she loves that he doesn’t want her doing that job anymore. I can't imagine what she must have felt in that moment. So at the end of that clip she just sort of laughed it off saying that's the way it was in those days, and I wonder if that's what she would say today.

  Becca: I wonder that, too.

  Jesse: I'm mostly just thankful for Polly for doing what she did and being the first woman at Grand Canyon and being a pioneer in that way. I’m thankful that we have this audio recording of her, thanks to Mike Quinn for doing this oral history. It's incredible to be able to hear her voice.

  Becca: I share your sense of gratitude for Polly, I really do. And I feel like there's so many different ways to frame what we know of her story or at least what I know her story. We can frame it as a triumph we can frame it as a triumphant and temporary assertion of the patriarchy. However we choose to frame it I think the fact remains that this seems like an incredible scholar and human being and that's something to celebrate.

  Jesse: This episode of the Canyon cuts is brought to you by the interpretation team at Grand Canyon National Park. We gratefully acknowledge the native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant native communities who make their home here today. Hey Polly, what do you think of the Park Rangers working at Grand Canyon today?

  Polly: Bunch of cowboys. Rough men, but they were very very shy. I want to chat you know talk to them a little bit, but they wouldn’t talk

  Credits: Music and sound production by Wayne Hartlerode

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