Date: August 23, 2017
Contact: Andrew White, 307.739.3431
MOOSE, WY— The National Park Service will celebrate the 101st anniversary of its founding on Friday, August 25. To celebrate Founder’s Day, Grand Teton National Park will waive entrance fees, as will all other national park units across the country. All park visitor centers and information stations will host a birthday celebration and cake cutting at noon. In addition, a special program with former park ranger Doug Leen will take place at 12:30 p.m. at the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center Auditorium in Moose.
During his program, “Lost Art Returns to Grand Teton National Park,” Leen will tell his story of discovering the Works Progress Administration’s iconic Grand Teton poster almost 50 years ago. The discovery of the poster, the first in a series of only 14 serigraphs printed between 1938 and 1941, led him on a 40-year search for other park posters. To date, he has located 42 surviving posters out of the 1,400 that were originally printed.
Five of the original posters—including all three of the Grand Teton prints which Leen has located, and one each from Yellowstone and Glacier national parks—will be on display. At the conclusion of the program, Leen will donate the original poster he discovered to Grand Teton National Park. After the program, Leen will host a poster-signing session with reproductions of the posters available for sale. The event is sponsored by the Grand Teton Association.
Leen, also known as Ranger Doug or the Ranger of the Lost Art, was a seasonal ranger at the Jenny Lake Ranger Station from 1970 through 1976. He recently retired after 35 years as a rural dentist in Alaska and currently devotes his time to searching for and preserving the Works Progress Administration’s national park posters.
Visitors who plan to attend the program and would like to request accessibility-related accommodations can do so by calling 307-739-3399 or by email at grte_info@nps.gov.
