| Researching the history of women and their influence on national parks has been like riding a storm wave to shore in a small boat. You think you have landed safely, but before you catch your balance, another wave is upon you. Eventually you must jump out into the unsettled sea, pull the boat in, and tie it up. |
| Despite continual changes in the national park story, the one factor that has been constant throughout the ten years of this project has been the steady support of people in the Park Service. No request for information was ever denied me, and many individuals reached into their files or memories to provide material they thought I should have. Although the story is still ongoing, it is time for me to jump out and tie it up. |
| This book had its genesis in the work of Dorothy Boyle Huyck, who was the first person to examine both the opportunities and problems women faced in their new roles. She conceived and designed a project to document the history of professional women in the National Park Service, gathering significant archival and manuscript resources, photographs and 140 taped oral history interviews before her untimely death in August 1979. I am grateful to her husband, Earl, and her daughter, Heather Huyck, who made it possible for me to continue the project by allowing me to use Dorothy Boyle Huyck's papers and arranging for me to listen to her interviews. While the scope and purpose of the book changed over time, I take this opportunity to honor Dorothy Boyle Huyck's groundbreaking contribution. |
| I also want to acknowledge the role individual Park Service women played in arousing my interest, unknowingly, in a series of events in June 1981. The first was at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women at Vassar College, where two groups of Park Service women made what seemed to me then astounding presentations. They shared the news that in New York State two places of great significance in women's history were about to become national parks: the site at Seneca Falls of the first women's rights convention and Val-Kill, the retreat and home of Eleanor Roosevelt in nearby Hyde Park. Judy Hart and a team of women explained that, six months earlier, President Jimmy Carter had signed a bill creating Women's Rights National Historical Park. Later, Heather Huyck and other Park Service women took us through Val-Kill, which at that time had not yet been rehabilitated. The second group of events occurred the following week on a trip |
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