Horace M Albright (1890-1987) received the Pugsley Gold Medak for his work in the National Park Service. He was born in Bishop, California and graduated with a law degree from the University of California in 1912. He went to Washington in 1913 as a 23 year old to clerk for a year for one of his former professors at the University of California who had been appointed an assistant secretary of the Interior Department.Soon after the bill creating the NPS had been passed in 1916, Mather collapsed and was confined to a sanitarium for several months. Thus Albright became acting director and ran the NPS during 1917.
In 1919, Albright at the age of 29, moved from WAshington D.C to become the frist civilian superintendent of Yellowstone while remaining friled assistant director of the NPS. His job at Yellowstone was to make the park available to the campers to build the campgrounds and to improve the roads which had been bulit for stage coaches.The conservation movement in those days had almost no interest in historic preservation but Albright held that as the American heritage was made up in equal parts of the unique grandeur of its geography and the heroic deeds of the people.