Conrad L. Wirth
(b. December 1, 1899 - d. July 25, 1993)
Role
National Park Service Director
Dates of Involvement
1951 - 1964
Context
Wirth, as Director of the National Park Service, oversaw the creation, funding, and execution of the Mission 66 program. In this capacity he approved of the plans to construct the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center at Rocky Mountain National Park and was essential in coordinating with the Department of the Interior and the Congress to ensure funding for the project was sustained.
Education
Wirth graduated from the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts) with a Bachelor of Science degree in landscape gardening (Caldwell, 2017).
Career
“After a few years in the private practice of landscape planning, Wirth embarked upon his federal career in 1928 as a member of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission. In 1931, Horace Albright brought him into the National Park Service as an assistant director for Land Planning. He continued in this capacity under Arno Cammerer and Newton B. Drury, and was named in 1951 as an associate director by Arthur E. Demaray.
During the Roosevelt administration, Wirth distinguished himself with his brilliant implementation of Civilian Conservation Corps programs in support of federal, state, and local parks. He conceived Mission 66 and masterminded White House and congressional support for this herculean effort to, in his own words, . . . overcome the inroads of neglect and to restore to the American people a National Park System adequate for their needs." The program and Wirth were criticized by many in the conservation movement as self-serving development. But Park Service employees were heartened by the ten-year $1 billion program that ended during the Service's 50th anniversary year in 1966. It produced not only such tangible items as 2,000 new employee residences, 150 new museums and visitor centers, and the training centers at Harper’s Ferry and the Grand Canyon, but also fostered a spiritual rejuvenation within the "National Park Service family." It was a time when things were held together with something more serviceable than paper clips and baling wire” (Caldwell, 2017).
