Ranger Confidential: Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks

by Andrea Lankford

The service thus established shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks . . . which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. —The National Park Service Organic Act, 1916

the park ranger credo: “Protect the park from the people, the people from the park, and the people from themselves.”

Titled Angels of Light, the novel was inspired by an actual event involving a real drug smuggler’s plane that crashed in the park in 1976. The only realism to be had in the film Cliffhanger is the fiery plane crash and the rangers crippled from posttraumatic stress.

Among the first troops to patrol the rugged backcountry of Yosemite, Sequoia, and General Grant National Parks were the Twenty-fourth Infantry and the Ninth Cavalry, otherwise known as the Buffalo Soldiers. Like their white counterparts, African-American soldiers collected fees, eradicated sheep, built roads, and confiscated guns from potential poachers. In 1904, under the direction of Maj. John Bigelow, troops from the Ninth Cavalry constructed the first self-guided nature trail in a national park.

When one examines published histories of Yosemite for example, one would be hard put to find more than a handful of references to either the Ninth Cavalry or Twenty-fourth Infantry. These soldiers lie on the edges of an obscure chapter in a forgotten book. They are not, I believe, the victims of overt racism, but rather casualties of a greater society that simply doesn’t see them. They are invisible men.

Death is not a merciful conclusion but a border crossing into a new land that could be more beautiful and majestic than the tallest mansion. Faith, courage, and hope are the characteristics that create happiness. They will stand as remembered monuments for all those left around the bed, and they are the qualities I will strive to obtain. —From the journal of Cale Shaffer, dated September 7, 1992, written when he was eighteen years old