Ranger Things #1: The Whistling Ranger

Max and Zilpha Gilstrap. (Courtesy of Yosemite National Park Museum)

Max K. Gilstrap was born on July 9, 1911. He grew up in Oklahoma, graduating from Ardmore High School in 1928. He attended the 1929 World Boy Scout Jamboree in England where the London Daily Mail chose him as "the typical American Boy Scout." In 1934, he graduated from the School of Journalism at the University of Oklahoma, where he was a lieutenant in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). He also completed some graduate work at Harvard University.

He worked four summers as a ranger at Yosemite National Park. While there he taught himself to whistle and developed a remarkable ability to mimic bird songs. Naturally, he whistled while he worked and added that skill to his natural history talks. Newspapers began calling him the "Whistling Ranger" in a May 1933 story about a California woman who had attended one of his programs and later called him long distance on the telephone to whistle to her because she was lonely! Despite it being 2am, Gilstrap obliged and whistled until the anonymous woman thanked him and hung up.

Gilstrap was a gifted speaker, and he made many whistle-stop tours around the country giving lectures on national parks and the National Park Service—and, of course, whistling songs, imitating more than 50 bird species, and teaching his audiences how to whistle. He lectured for Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps, schools, and community groups. Gilstrap also worked as a ranger-naturalist at Grand Canyon National Park from 1937 to 1940. In 1938, US Senator Josh Lee said, "I think Max Gilstrap is the best lecturer in the country in his field." That must have been music to Gilstrap's ears.

In March 1941 he got a job with the Christian Science Monitor. During World War II he was stationed in England and worked as editor for the Stars and Stripes. After the war he continued his career with the Monitor until his death on December 20, 1957, in Boston, age 46.

In 1958 the vinyl album “Max K. Gilstrap Whistles” was released, providing a recording of his popular Adventures in The National Parks, No. 1 lecture, recording his bird whistles and NPS lecture for posterity.

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