The History of National Parks Posters & The Impact of the WPA
These striking prints didn’t just market destinations; they established an idea of national parks for Americans, many of whom had never had the chance to see other parts of the United States and the beauty it holds. Many of these ideals still influence domestic tourism today. The WPA and New Deal art reminds us that visual language can play a powerful role in shaping how people value and interact with public lands.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) sought not only to provide employment but also to boost national morale through cultural initiatives. Posters became an accessible way to connect Americans with both work opportunities and the nation’s scenic treasures.
The WPA and the Federal Art Project:
Origins of the WPA (1935–43): The WPA and Federal Art Project emerged as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s more ambitious programs implemented during the ‘New Deal’ reforms of the 1930s, which aimed at addressing widespread unemployment and resolving some of the turmoil that resulted from the Great Depression. The impact of the WPA and Federal Art Project was widespread, and not only meant to stimulate the visual arts in the United States, but also encouraged travel, tourism, and education, all in an effort to bring the USA out of the great depression.
They weren’t meant to be precious objects. And I think that’s the best part of it all. The Works Progress Administration posters, those flat planes of color advertising national parks, concerts, job fairs, and literacy drives. They were made cheaply in government print shops during the lean 1930s. Thick paper, silkscreen, a handful of bold pigments. They were tacked up in post offices, taped to library walls, or nailed on the side of a depot. Most were thrown out. A few survived, by accident really, and now they carry an aura far beyond their humble beginnings.
Picture it: America staggering through the Depression, soup lines bending around the block, and here comes this strange outpouring of public art. Funded by Washington, but carried out by thousands of working artists who desperately needed a paycheck. The Federal Art Project, tucked under the larger WPA umbrella, hired painters, lithographers, and illustrators to churn out designs that felt simultaneously modern—sharp lines, simplified landscapes, a whiff of Art Deco—and yet warm and reassuring. You could argue that the whole enterprise was equal parts social safety net and soft propaganda. Show the people something to believe in, something beautiful, while keeping artists from starving.
And the subjects? They weren’t abstract. They shouted: Go see Yellowstone. Enroll in night classes. Visit the exhibition down on Main Street. They were civic to the core. I’d call them billboards for democracy, although maybe that’s a little sentimental. But still, there’s a sense that the posters were stitching together a national identity at a time when the country felt frayed.
Oddly enough, the style looks almost hip again. Minimalist before “minimalist” became a marketing buzzword. If you are searching for it, some are available online (perhaps that’s how you ended up here, see our high-quality reproduction prints, printed on fine art paper to ensure the highest quality: https://thevestigeskeeper.com/collections/high-quality-reproduction-prints) or walk into a trendy coffee shop in Brooklyn, you’ll see reproductions pinned up, framed like fine art. It’s ironic, considering that the originals were never meant to be collectible. They were disposable tools of public communication. Yet now, precisely because so few escaped the trash bin, they’ve become scarce and prized.
I sometimes wonder if people back then actually looked at them closely or if they just blurred into the wallpaper of everyday life. Maybe a farmer heading to the post office would glance at a poster announcing a folk concert and think, “That’s nice, but I’ve got chores.” Still, even if ignored, they seeped in, creating a visual rhythm of civic life.
So yes, a short chapter in American visual culture, born of hardship, preserved by accident, revived by nostalgia. Not flawless art. Not timeless masterpieces. But vibrant echoes of a government trying, in its own clumsy way, to remind folks that beauty, opportunity, and a shared national story still existed. That’s what makes the WPA Projects and New Deal initiatives so great, it still has an impact today.
Design and Style:
It’s the look that hooks you first. The WPA posters didn’t whisper, they hollered—thick blocks of red or ochre, mountain ridges reduced to flat silhouettes, a single sans-serif word planted like a flag. No clutter, no fine filigree. Just enough information that you could catch the gist while waiting for a train or hustling down a city street. That was the trick: boldness as clarity, simplicity as invitation.
And funny enough, that pared-down approach hasn’t aged into obsolescence. It still feels fresh. You’ll see riffs of it on modern travel ads, in those cheeky tourism boards trying to lure you to Utah or Maine. The WPA aesthetic left fingerprints everywhere—graphic designers today still toy with the same contrasts, the same stripped-to-the-bone landscapes, the same eye-catching color play.
Of course, they weren’t working in a vacuum. The artists—many of them young, broke, and a little desperate—were soaking up the prevailing winds of global design. Modernism, Art Deco, even bits of Bauhaus thinking slipped into the government shop rooms. Angular lettering, rhythmic geometry, forms that look both futuristic and oddly rooted in tradition. The posters managed to be utilitarian notices and at the same time small echoes of international avant-garde.
I’ve always thought that’s part of their magic. They were public service announcements, sure, but they carried an edge of the cosmopolitan. Like the government accidentally hired the cool kids. And maybe that contradiction—an official federal program producing posters that wouldn’t look out of place in Paris or Berlin—is what gives them their timeless, slightly rebellious charm.
Implementation:
You didn’t have to buy a ticket to an art gallery to see them. They were right there in the thick of daily life. Whether pinned to a bulletin board in your local post office, plastered around a train station, or tacked inside a school corridor, The WPA ensured those images of canyons, geysers, and mountain ridges hit the widest possible audience. People who had never left their county lines suddenly had Yosemite staring them down as they bought stamps.
And the effect? You could measure it in car miles and park admissions. Families who once thought the national parks were luxuries for the wealthy began to see them as affordable adventures. The posters, with their punchy colors and straight-to-the-point slogans, translated the grandeur of the parks into something approachable: family-friendly, even patriotic. They made wilderness look like a destination worth saving up for, worth protecting, worth claiming as part of a collective identity.
So yes, they functioned as advertisements. But they were also cultural breadcrumbs, leading Americans toward a shared sense of heritage tied not to monuments or battlefields alone, but to rivers, forests, and wide-open skies. All that from sheets of inked paper pinned to the walls where ordinary life happened.
The Legacy of National Parks posters:
Due to the posters being printed in such small runs, they were often discarded after use. In terms of scarcity, I quote an excerpt from an article published at the NPS: “There are five surviving copies of this poster: three in the Grand Canyon National Park museum collection, one at the Library of Congress, and one in a private collection.” - Regarding the WML’s poster of the Grand Canyon, circa 1938. Surviving copies are highly sought after and prized by collectors and museums alike. (We have a high-quality copy of the WML Grand Canyon poster for sale in our catalog.)
Conclusion:
These posters embody the fighting spirit of Americans during a dark and desolate time in the United States. The formation of the WPA, and the New Deal initiatives helped citizens, businesses, and tourism alike to begin turning the tides against the great depression. These initiatives are still present today, and have become a testament to the resilience and perseverance of the United States. Thank you for reading my latest blog post.
Blog Photo: Lower falls of the Yellowstone River. U.S. Information Agency (American, 1953-1999)