Last updated: March 23, 2025
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Guide to the Herbert Maier Photo Albums
This finding aid describes the Herbert Maier Photograph Albums, part of the NPS History Collection. To search this guide for names, places, key words, or phrases enter Ctrl F on your keyboard (command key + F key on a Mac). Request an in-person research appointment or get more information by contacting the archivist.
Collection Overview
Collection Number: HFCA 3091
Creator: Maier, Herbert M.
Title: Herbert Maier Photograph Albums
Dates: 1924-ca. 1932
Extent of Collection: 2 EA
Language of Materials: English
Digitized Copies: This collection has not been digitized.
Conditions Governing Access: This collection is open to research use. Some of the images were created by NPS employees and are in the public domain. Copyright to Maier's images was transferred to the National Park Service as part of the donation. Refer also to our copyright & restrictions information.
Provenance: Donated to the NPS History Collection by Susan Maier.
Processing Note: This collection was processed and described by Nancy J. Russell in March 2025.
Rights Statement for Archival Description: This guide is in the public domain.
Preferred Citation: Herbert Maier Photograph Albums, NPS History Collection (HFCA 3091)
Location of Repository: NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry Center, PO Box 50, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425
Biographical Note
Herbert M. Maier was born January 2, 1893, to Max and Mary Hannah Maier in San Francisco, California. Growing up, his elementary school teacher regaled him with tales of her visit to Yosemite National Park. He attended Oakland High School, graduating about 1911. He went on to study architecture at the University of California at Berkeley and later at Heald's College of Engineering in San Francisco. As a college student in 1912, he began the first of several summers working at Camp Curry for the concession operator at Yosemite where his love for the Sierra backcountry grew. During this time, he met several influential men who were or would become leaders in the National Park Service (NPS), including Yosemite naturalist Ansel Hall. In a 1962 oral history interview Maier recalls the 1914 transition from US Army management to civilian stewardship at the park.
During World War I Maier served as a yeoman in the US Navy Reserves, returning from overseas in 1919. The 1920 US Census records his job as draftsman. That same year he drew maps to illustrate Hall’s Guide to Yosemite. By 1922 at least his friend Worth Ryder hired him to work for the Kings River Parks Company at Sequoia National Park. For a few years he served as department manager and architect in charge of the warehouse and housekeeping camps. Maier then spent a couple of years working with different architectural firms in the San Francisco Bay area.
By 1922 the need for a dedicated “fireproof” museum space at Yosemite National Park intensified due to the donation of a valuable Indian basket collection, increasing visitation, and creation of a ranger naturalist service led by Hall. Hall became a driving force in developing a new museum at Yosemite to replace what had been created earlier in the old Jorgensen Studio. He convinced Maier to make and donate sketches to illustrate Hall’s idea. By the summer of 1923 Hall had raised $7,000 for the new museum. The Yosemite Museum Association (later known as the Yosemite Natural History Association) was created to safeguard and manage those donations. Hall gained support from Dr. Hermon C. Bumpus, the first president of the American Association of Museums (AAM), who recommended the project to the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial Fund. Yosemite was awarded a $75,000 grant in 1923. AAM initially appointed Hall as executive agent during a leave of absence from the NPS; Maier served as his assistant and project architect.
The museum site was chosen by Thomas Vint of the NPS Landscape Design Office. Maier’s museum design fit with Los Angeles architect Myron Hunt’s vision for the Administration Building and Post Office, prototypes for what became known as NPS Rustic Style architecture. The Yosemite Museum’s exterior construction was completed in 1924, but another year was needed for exhibits design and installation. The two-story building was completed in 1925. The museum officially opened to the public on May 29, 1926, and on October 29, 1926, AAM transferred ownership of the building to the NPS. Maier’s Yosemite Museum is first building constructed as a museum in the National Park System. While construction of the museum was ongoing, Maier also drew plans for the Best, Boysen, and Foley Studios and for Glacier Point Museum and Lookout Station. Completed in 1925, the lookout was built with funds raised by the Yosemite Museum Association. It was the first trailside or “branch” museum.
The partnership between NPS, AAM, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation went on to construct museums in Yellowstone and Grand Canyon national parks and at Bear Mountain in Palisades Interstate Park in New York. In 1926 Maier became AAM’s executive agent as well as architect. After completing the Yosemite projects, Maier went to Bear Mountain followed by a few months in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In summer 1927 he went to Grand Canyon to design the Yavapai Point Trailside Museum (now the Yavapai Observation Station) at Grand Canyon. That building, completed in 1928, was the first museum and formal interpretive structure at that park.
In 1928 Yellowstone National Park received a $118,000 grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation for the development of educational activities in the park. Maier spent the next four seasons at the park designing trailside museums at Madison Junction (1929), Norris Geyser Basin (1929), Old Faithful (1929), and Fishing Bridge (1931), plus as Maier noted in his oral history “half dozen interpretive shrines at important points of scientific interest.” Although the Museum of Thermal Activity at Old Faithful was razed in 1971, Yellowstone’s three surviving Maier museums were designated National Historic Landmarks in 1987. Weather meant that Maier could only work about seven months each year in Yellowstone. During the winters he worked at the Buffalo Museum of Science designing historical and archeological dioramas.
Funding for the Yellowstone projects were expended by spring 1933 and the Great Depression prevented any similar projects from being developed. In May 1933 NPS Director Horace Albright offered Maier a position with the NPS State Park Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) program. He immediately accepted the position of regional officer for ECW Region 7 in Denver, Colorado. In 1934 he moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma when the district headquarters was relocated. In 1936 he moved to ECW Region 3, also in Oklahoma City. The work during these years focused on state park development. In 1935 Maier was appointed to the board of directors of the National Conference for State Parks, a position he held for 17 years.
In August 1937 he became regional director of the NPS Region III in Oklahoma City. He was appointed associate regional director in October 1937 but continued to function as acting regional director until January 1939. He moved to Santa Fe when the office was relocated. In March 1940 Maier transferred to the NPS Western Regional Office in San Francisco as associate regional director. He held that position through September that year, when he became assistant regional director.
Maier kept four volumes of photographs and drawings of the museums and other buildings which he called "The Library of Original Sources." He encouraged people who worked for him to carefully study them. It’s possible that the volumes of drawings were Park Structures and Facilities (1935) and Park and Recreation Structures (1938) which feature Maier’s museum designs.
During World War II the regional office staff was cut from 125 to 13. Maeir and his remaining staff conducted an “on-the-shelf planning program for developments to be executed after the war.” In 1955 Maier was appointed to the first NPS Mission 66 advisory board.
Maier married Susan Eleanore Gibson, whom he met when they were both students in Berkeley, on June 9, 1927. They went on to have three daughters. He was a member of the American Planning and Civic Association, National Council of State Parks, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and Save-the-Redwoods League. In 1952 he received the merit award for conservation from the California Conservation Council. From 1958 to 1960, he served as a member of the Technical Advisory Council for the California Outdoor Recreation Survey. In March 1961 Maier received the Distinguished Service award from the US Department of the Interior. He retired from the NPS in 1962 but was reappointed a collaborator, allowing him to continue to pursue his interests in the park and conservation field.
Herbert Maier died February 23, 1969, in Oakland, California.
Sources
-- (1926, January 9). “Clovis Engagement Announced at Party.” The Fresno Bee (Fresno, California), p. 5.
--. (1937, July 21). “Two Ex-Californians Win Advances in Park Service.” Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California), p. 4.
-- (1969, February 25). “Conservationist Herbert Maier Dies.” Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California), pg. 18.
Harrison, Laura Soullier. (1986). “Norris, Madison, and Fishing Bridge National Historic Landmark Architecture in Parks Nomination.” National Park Service Southwest Regional Office: Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Lewis, Ralph H. (1993). Museum Curatorship in the National Park Service, 1904-1982. National Park Service: Washington, DC.
Maier, Herbert. (1926, July 3). “The Purpose of the Museum in National Parks; Yosemite has the Newest and Best in the System.” Stockton Evening and Sunday Record (Stockton, California), p. 6.
Maier, Herbert. (1962, October 28). Oral History Interview with S. Herbert Evison. NPS Oral History Collection (HFCA 1817). NPS History Collection: Harpers Ferry, WV.
National Park Service. (1991, May 1). Historic Listing of National Park Service Officials. National Park Service: Washington, DC.
Scope and Content Note
Two loose-leaf albums of photographs entitled “National Park Projects Volume I” and “National Park Projects Volume II,” consisting of varying sizes of black and white photos adhered to pages largely without captions. These albums may have been part of Maier’s “Library of Original Sources.” Volume I features projects at Yosemite National Park (Glacier Point Lookout, Yosemite Museum, Foley Studio, and Boysen Studio), Palisades Interstate Park in New York (Bear Mountain Trailside Museum), Grand Canyon National Park (Yavapai Point Museum) and Yellowstone National Park’s Old Faithful Museum and Madison Junction Trailside Museum. Volume II features projects at Yellowstone’s Norris Geyser Basin Museum, Yellowstone Lake [Fishing Bridge] Museum, and outdoor theatres and nature shrines. Subjects include construction work, construction workers, exterior views of completed buildings, interior views, exhibits, scenic views, and photo studios of concession operators. People depicted include Herb Maier, Dr. Hermon C. Bumpus, Kenneth Chorley, and unidentified rangers and visitors.
Although Maier is presumed to be the photographer for many of these images, some are copies of known NPS photos, including those by NPS chief photographer George A. Grant and Yosemite naturalist Dorr G. Yeager, or commercially available images.
Arrangement
Arranged by Maier's volume number.
Container List
BOX 01
National Parks Projects Volume I
National Parks Projects Volume II
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