Arno B. Cammerer (1883-1941) received the Pugsley Gold Medal in 1938. He was born in Arapahoe, Nebraska in 1883, the son of Lutheran pastor. Financial problems in his family forced him to quit high school and he left Nebraska and went to Washington D.C. He graduated from Law school in 1911. He started with in the federal government in 1904 as a clerk in the Treasury Department; was promoted to private secretary to the assistant secretary of the Treasury and then became assistant secreatry of the National Commission of Fine Arts and first secretary of the Public Buildings Commission of the Congress.
Cammerer consolidated political support for the NPS, frustrated attempts to compromise the integrity of the parks and secured significant appropriations for park development. He took advantage of many ooportunities using New Deal money and programs to develop the parks and move the NPS much further along in the direction set by Mather and Albright. Although the National Park System did not grow as fast under Cammerer as it had under precedecessors, it did see the addition of nearly 30 new parks with over five million acres of land. Cammerer's contributions to the NPS were honoured with the naming of the Mount Cammerer in Great Smoky National Park, which he had played a prominent role in acquiring.