Fireside Reads | An Exaltation Of Parks: John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s Crusade To Save America’s Wonderlands

At this dire moment in the history of America’s National Park System, we who love the parks can be consoled and encouraged by learning how we came to have them. The stories of dedication to our national parks are legion and inspiring, especially the stories of the individuals and groups who made the parks possible.

Without sustained effort by persistent advocates, many of our greatest parks would never have been created: George Bird Grinnell and Glacier National Park; William Gladstone Steel and Crater Lake National Park; Ernest Coe and Everglades National Park; Charles Sheldon and Mt. McKinley (now Denali) National Park — the list goes on and on. No one person alone ever created a park, of course, not even John Muir who cultivated an army of enthusiasts to get the job done for Yosemite and other parks.

Few individuals can be credited with helping establish multiple national parks, and foremost among them is John D. Rockefeller Jr. who enjoyed assets all other park advocates could only dream of. He was the son of John D. Rockefeller, a Gilded Age tycoon who amassed an incredible fortune, and which John Jr., with his father’s blessing, devoted his life to giving away to worthy charitable causes.

Junior was a businessman, but not of Senior’s ilk. His business was philanthropy, and a significant part of that work involved national parks. His approach was, when approached for a contribution to a project like purchasing private land for Great Smoky Mountains or Grand Teton national parks, to send in his expert assistants to ascertain whether it would be a good philanthropic investment, to pledge support and encourage others to contribute, and then to step in when a project would be impossible without his help and provide the money needed to achieve the goal. 

Author Steve Kemp worked seasonally as a National Park Service ranger in Yellowstone and Denali, served as publications director for the Great Smoky Mountains Association, and has written extensively about the Smokies. His immersion in Great Smoky Mountains National Park undoubtedly brought Junior, as he calls John D. Jr. throughout the book, to his attention because that was one of the parks Junior helped create. Indeed, he really saved the park at the last moment when funding prospects to buy private land to create the park looked bleak.

The other park histories where Junior played a role were Acadia, Mesa Verde, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Shenandoah, Yosemite, and Redwoods. Some of these parks as we know them were made possible by Junior’s generosity, including Acadia, Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, and Grand Teton. His money and his vision of what national parks should be were important to the evolution of the other parks as we enjoy them today, including park museums, landscape architecture, and park road aesthetics

Following a brief explanation of who Senior was and how he became so wealthy, Kemp describes how Junior’s interest in national parks grew, devoting several chapters to his involvement with creation of Acadia National Park, the first and for a long time only national park in the eastern United States.

Like many wealthy people, Junior owned a “cottage” on Mount Desert Island in Maine, where he would retreat from the heat and bustle of New York City with his family in the summer. He had a passion for landscape architecture, and especially carriage roads, and Kemp tells the story of how these interests gradually brought him into the campaign to establish Acadia. This experience planted the seed of broader interest in national parks, and Junior took his family on summer tours of Western national parks, the first of which spawned an important friendship with the superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, Horace Albright.

Albright was a historic figure having been acting director of the NPS when founding director Stephen Mather was ill, then superintendent of Yellowstone, and director after Mather’s passing. Albright retired in 1933 (to Junior’s disappointment), but continued to be active in national park business and with Junior’s contributions for decades.

Kemp describes in detail how Albright influenced Junior’s involvement with Grand Teton National Park. A small park including only the mountains was in Albright’s view inadequate, and he had a vision of an enlarged park that might be added to Yellowstone, a project that would involve purchase of much land at the eastern base of the mountains in Jackson Hole. After Albright cleverly exposed Junior to this ambitious idea, Junior famously launched a secret campaign to purchase as much of the prospective park land as he could, which became controversial but which eventually became the enlarged Teton National Park of today. Kemp’s telling of this story is compelling, revealing much about how Junior pursued his philanthropy, as is his account of the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Rockefeller established solid relationships with NPS leaders over the years. Albright, Superintendent Jesse Nusbaum at Mesa Verde, and Arno Cammerer, associate director under Mather and Albright, then NPS director, all became important collaborators with Junior in various projects. Kemp writes of Junior’s relationships with NPS leaders.

Even though the Rockefellers rubbed elbows with presidents, members of Congress, kings, queens, princes, and princesses, scientists, the world’s greatest artists, wealthiest businesspeople, and most influential innovators, there must have been something about the humble public servants in green and gray that opened his eyes, as well as his wallet, to the incalculable worth of protecting nature and history. Not only did he come to like the NPS leaders, he appreciated that they always worked hard to assure excellent value for his philanthropic dollars. Through this collaboration, Junior came to realize how national parks fit into the larger scope of Rockefeller philanthropy, as another way to ‘serve the public good and improve the conditions of humankind.’”

One strong feature of this book is that it reveals the exceptional dedication and skill of important early NPS leaders. Albright has received much praise for his work, and in this book Kemp describes how lesser-known leaders in NPS history like Cammerer and Nusbaum collaborated with Junior to enable his contributions to the national park system.

Rockefeller did not always wait for park advocates or NPS leaders to suggest how he might help. For instance, Kemp describes how Junior, who especially loved trees, inquired of Cammerer about a logging threat to sugar pines near Yosemite he had read about in the papers.

“Is there any prospect of saving those trees?” he asked. “What are the facts in the matter? Is this a situation to which I might well give consideration?”

It was, and he did. After lengthy negotiations, a deal was made to purchase threatened stands of sugar pines and add them to the park. President Herbert Hoover signed the bill expanding Yosemite National Park and saving the pines.

Kemp writes, “All told, 11,818 acres (18.5 square miles) of old-growth forest were saved. Junior’s final share of the expense was $1,709,238 ($31.7 million in 2025 dollars.”)

Over his lifetime, John D. Rockefeller Jr. contributed more than $50 million to national park and redwood projects, which Kemp notes is over $750 million in 2025 dollars. Some might scoff in today’s world of billionaires and soon-to-be-trillionaires that Junior’s contributions were just pocket change to him, but as Kemp documents throughout this book Rockefeller funds went to many beneficiaries, totaling more than $200 billion from the 1850s to 2011, and Junior’s commitment to national parks made him the greatest philanthropic financial backer in the history of America’s national parks. He worked hard to be sure his park philanthropy might have the best effect.

 John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s life was certainly blessed, but he also had his problems. Kemp describes the catastrophe at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CFI) in Ludlow, Colorado where in 1914 violence broke out in a strike dispute resulting in many deaths and much destruction. Junior was on the board of this company since Senior had purchased a controlling share of its stock, and he had taken an anti-union position before a congressional hearing shortly before this tragedy and was tarred with some responsibility for it.

Senior had been anti-union, as had other Gilded Age plutocrats, and Junior followed suit. Kemp examines how this affected John D. Jr. and describes his long and difficult path to redemption. Another challenge to the reputation of Junior and his philanthropies was an association with eugenicists and support for eugenics research. In a chapter titled “of Trees and Men” Kemp examines this and concludes that if he was a eugenicist at all, he was a “positive eugenicist,” believing as a progressive that the “science” of eugenics could result in superior intellects that could solve the world’s problems.

Kemp writes of “negative eugenics,” that “those deemed less brilliant (usually by junk science intelligence tests and quacky psychological exams [should be discouraged] from reproducing.” Eugenics was thoroughly debunked as junk science and Kemp makes a case that Junior was not guilty by association with racists who were leaders in science and conservation.

Many Americans have taken their national parks for granted, assuming they are a birthright and will always be there to enjoy and inspire. This book reveals to readers how  some of the most popular parks today, such as Acadia and Great Smoky Mountains, had to be rescued as campaigns to create them foundered, and Junior was the rescuer.

How fortunate that Senior made such a gigantic fortune and rather than indulge his ego as some of his plutocrat colleagues instead felt an obligation to do good with his gains, inculcated this in Junior, and Junior and his wife Abby in turn did so with their children.

Some today condemn all plutocrats, no matter the much good they may have done. Creation of national parks displaced people and “locked up” valuable resources that might have sustained or enriched people, but this was for a common good. On balance, Kemp’s account testifies that the Rockefellers have done much good for America and the world.

Kemp closes his Introduction as follows:

Every year, an astonishing thirty-five million people or more visit the national parks which Junior played a major role in establishing, expanding, or improving. No other philanthropic projects have been more enduring or economically viable. Our nation is fortunate indeed that John D. Rockefeller Jr. resisted the temptation of other Gilded Age tycoons to litter the globe with yachts and mansions, choosing instead to toil and bear the slings and arrows of conflict to bequeath to us a legacy of natural beauty, open to all, forever.

The words “open to all, forever,” strike a painful note in 2025 as the National Park Service is being dismantled by the Trump administration, and some powerful people, including the secretary of interior, view public lands merely as real estate.

The National Park System of America is at risk, An Exaltation of Parks, the book, and “An Exaltation of Parks,” the emotion, are much needed. To exalt is to elevate, praise, glorify, and celebrate. The need for this has never been greater since the first national park appeared in 1872.

Kemp writes that the parks today are under siege not only from politicians but from millions who are visiting them, loving them, more millions than they can handle. He writes in his Epilogue, “If ‘America’s Best Idea’ is to endure as something people can be proud of, we will need more national parks and larger national parks.”

He does not say that we need more “tycoons” like John D. Rockefeller Jr. but he certainly implies it. What if, instead of building four-hundred-foot yachts, multiple mansions, and dreaming of  colonies on Mars to escape an overcrowded and damaged Earth, the tycoons of today invested in parks and other worthy and necessary causes. Maybe a few will read this book, or someone who reads it will influence them, and Junior’s example will inspire. One can only hope. This is an excellent and timely book.