( Oh, Ranger!" 



To. the hundreds of thousands who visit the national parks each 

 year, everyone in the olive drab uniform is a ranger. "Oh, Ranger !" is 

 the almost universal greeting preliminary to asking questions about the 

 park and its life. But within the ranger service there are various desig 

 nations, ranging from superintendents down to Ninety-Day-Wonders. 

 In a broad, general way, all rangers are divided into two groups : Old- 

 Timers and Ninety-Day-Wonders. The Old-Timers are the permanent 

 rangers, serving the year around, year in and year out. The Ninety- 

 Day-Wonders are temporary rangers, signed on for the summer rush 

 period of three or four months, when the travel to the national parks 

 nears the three-million mark. 



The Old-Timers are, of course, the backbone of the ranger service. 

 In the summer months, they are in command at the various ranger sta 

 tions, assisted by the Ninety-Day-Wonders in the task of registering 

 visitors, directing them to camps and lodges, helping them find fishing 

 holes, or campsites, or wood, or what not, and in answering the millions 

 of questions about the parks. The Ninety-Day-Wonders are mostly 

 college men, with enough love for the out-of-doors to enlist for a sum 

 mer of hard work at long hours and low pay in the national parks. They 

 are a keen and resourceful group of men and what they don't know 

 about the great open spaces after a week in 

 a national park they manage to hide behind 

 an air of great sagacity. The majority of 

 these lads return to college work at the end 

 of summer, but a few of them succumb to 

 the spell of the mountains and become even 

 tually permanent rangers. 



The Old-Timers, particularly the vet 

 erans in the ranger service, are born men of 

 the mountains, gifted with a working knowl 

 edge of woodcraft, of trail-blazing, of the 

 ways of wild life, and with sufficient in 

 stinctive resourcefulness in the mountains 

 and the forest to be able to take care of 

 themselves and others under any circum 

 stances. They are practical naturalists, and are able to handle people in 

 numbers. They must serve as guides, philosophers, and friends. That 

 seems like an imposing list of qualifications, yet the permanent park 

 rangers are equal to it. The mountains have put their stamp on the 

 Old-Timers. You can tell that by talking to them. It shows in their 

 faces, in their actions. They are men who can stand solitude it takes 

 an unusual character for a man to be good company for himself in a 

 lonely ranger station, banked high with snow, for months on end dur- 



