Posters of the National Parks

Exhibit Created by Western Museum Labs for the 1939 WPA Exhibit at the National Museum in Washington, DC

1939 Printing the Yosemite Poster

At The National Park Services’ Western Museum Lab located in Berkeley, CA

Creating the 1939 iconic poster

Western Museum Lab Artist, C. Don Powell created the Yosemite National Park poster
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There is nothing so American as our national parks....

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Radio Address from Two Medicine Chalet, Glacier National Park (August 5, 1934)

The Original National Park Posters

FDR's New Deal and the Federal Art Project 

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, aiming to put millions of unemployed Americans back to work during the Great Depression. One of the programs under the WPA was the Federal Art Project (FAP), which provided jobs for thousands of artists, including graphic designers, painters, sculptors, and photographers.

 The WPA posters of 1934–1943 bring together the development of the modern poster in America and art for the common good under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Second New Deal.

In the history of the WPA art projects, over two million posters were printed from thirty five thousand designs. Today, only about two thousand of the posters produced by all the poster divisions are known to exist.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and The Western Museum Laboratories (WML) create the original park posters

The Western Museum Laboratories (WML) in Berkeley, California employed artists and craftsmen under many New Deal programs to design and create museum exhibits. The laboratories were operated as a joint project between the National Park Service (NPS) and the University of California.

The NPS Western Museum Laboratories (WML) created a new series of now-iconic posters between 1938 and 1941. Usually described as “the WPA park posters,” they should rightfully be called “the WML posters.” Artists and printers funded through several New Deal programs worked at the WML to create silkscreened posters publicizing specific national parks and educating visitors. 

Research indicates that the WML park poster series consists of 15 or 16 designs to include:

  • Grand Canyon National Park (Nov 1938)
  • Wind Cave National Park (Dec 1938)
  • Glacier National Park (Jan-Feb 1939)
  • Zion National Park (Feb – Mar 1939)
  • Yellowstone National Park - Yellowstone Falls (Mar – Apr 1939)
  • Yosemite National Park (Feb – Apr 1939)
  • Fort Marion National Monument (Jul – Aug 1939)
  • Saguaro National Monument (Jul – Aug 1939)
  • Lassen Volcanic National Park (Aug – Sep 1939)
  • Yellowstone National Park - Old Faithful (Oct 1939)
  • Mount Ranier National Park (Jan 1940)
  • Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Apr – May 1940)
  • Petrified Forest National Monument (Apr 1940)
  • Bandelier National Monument (Mar – Apr 1941)
  • Rocky Mountain National Park (Jun 1941)

Of the known designs, the number of surviving National Park posters is approximately 40.

Buffalo River Co's Versions of the National Park Posters

Here at Buffalo River, we have acquired archival scans of original posters from the Library of Congress for:

  • Fort Marion National Monument (Aug 1939)
  • Grand Canyon National Park (Nov 1938)
  • Zion National Park (Mar 1939)
  • Fort Marion National Monument (Aug 1939)
  • Lassen Volcanic National Park Sep 1939)
  • Yellowstone National Park (Oct 1939)

During the Summer of 2024, Buffalo River Co, worked with the Petrified Forest National Park to secure a new archival scan of their original poster, and surviving only copy from their museum collection. The Petrified Forest National Monument artifact postern was originally printed in April 1940.

We are in the midst of acquiring the balance of Original Poster archival scans to add to our collection.

We have minimally restored the posters to prepare them for Archival and Museum Quality Giclee printing. We have purposely left the creases, torn corner, push pin holes and other evidence of their nearly 100-year journey.

Essence of the Original is Evoked

We start with the antique original posters and either have them archivally scanned, or work with available archival scans. Our sources for information, research and images include the Library of Congress, from the museum collections of the Parks, as well as from The National Park Service Archivist.

We lightly restore and enhance the images so that their essence is evoked for display in your home, office, mountain cabin, or lake house.

Our Giclee prints are created to look like the original, as if you wandered into a vintage store and saw it hanging on the wall with an aged patina that only the vestige of time
can impart.

We print the entire image as it was created many years ago. That means we also reproduce the artworks aged patina, subtle imperfections, and signs of aging.