From Joshua Tree to Great Sand Dunes, these 10 special places are protected today thanks to their female champions.
Women were the driving force behind the creation of many of our most popular national parks, yet few today are household names. Time to give credit where credit is due. From Joshua Tree to Great Sand Dunes, these national park sites simply wouldn’t exist as we know them today without the tireless efforts of dedicated women. Learn about the unsung heroes who made it happen.
Minerva Hoyt
Joshua Tree National Park, California
Minerva Hamilton Hoyt became enamored with the California desert after she moved to Pasadena with her financier husband in the late 1890s. The Mississippi native made frequent desert trips on horseback and created a desert garden at home. After her infant son and her husband died in quick succession, she found solace in the desert, sleeping in the open and listening to the wind blowing through Joshua trees. She became determined to protect the trees’ fragile ecosystem. To make people care about the desert, she decided to bring it to them and organized desert plant displays at flower shows from New York to London. After creating the International Deserts Conservation League, Hoyt focused on the area south of Twenty-Nine Palms for the creation of a national park. In 1930, she presented the idea to Horace Albright, then director of the National Park Service. He turned it down, but she continued to lobby the Park Service and President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself. On Aug. 10, 1936, the president relented, and Joshua Tree National Monument was created. (The park was redesignated as a national park in 1994.)
These 10 National Parks Wouldn’t Exist Without Women
Women were the driving force behind the creation of many of our most popular national parks, yet few today are household names. Time to give credit where credit is due. From Joshua Tree to Great Sand Dunes, these national park sites simply wouldn’t exist as we know them today without the tireless efforts of dedicated women. Learn about the unsung heroes who made it happen.
Minerva Hoyt
Joshua Tree National Park, California
Minerva Hamilton Hoyt became enamored with the California desert after she moved to Pasadena with her financier husband in the late 1890s. The Mississippi native made frequent desert trips on horseback and created a desert garden at home. After her infant son and her husband died in quick succession, she found solace in the desert, sleeping in the open and listening to the wind blowing through Joshua trees. She became determined to protect the trees’ fragile ecosystem. To make people care about the desert, she decided to bring it to them and organized desert plant displays at flower shows from New York to London. After creating the International Deserts Conservation League, Hoyt focused on the area south of Twenty-Nine Palms for the creation of a national park. In 1930, she presented the idea to Horace Albright, then director of the National Park Service. He turned it down, but she continued to lobby the Park Service and President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself. On Aug. 10, 1936, the president relented, and Joshua Tree National Monument was created. (The park was redesignated as a national park in 1994.)
These 10 National Parks Wouldn’t Exist Without Women
