Originally created by The Works Projects Administration (WPA), The WPA’s Federal Art Project hired unemployed artists to make paintings, murals, sculptures, graphic art, photography, theater sets, museum scenes, arts and crafts, and two million silkscreened posters. But a small fraction—14 of some 35,000 designs—became some of the most iconic posters ever created: the National Parks posters. Glacier. Yosemite. Mount Rainer. Grand Teton. These famous parks and more had gorgeous designs celebrating their grandeur. From 1935 to 1943, an estimated 1,400 National Parks posters were printed to celebrate the formation of the NPS back in 1916—100 years ago. Today, just 41 posters are accounted for, and two of the original 14 designs—Wind Cave and Great Smoky Mountain—have been lost completely, existing now only as black-and-white photos of the original posters. For the small collection of authentic WPA posters we do have, America owes a debt to people like Ranger Doug who have spent years tracking them down and preserving them. Most of the classic National Parks posters you’ve seen were probably imitations created by Doug to mimic the originals or original works he himself created for the parks that didn’t get WPA posters before World War II, when the posters faded out of import and disappeared into boxes and desk drawers.
credit to popularmechanics.com