Recipient Biography

Bronze Medal- Harold C Bryant


 

Harold C. Bryant (1886-1968) was awarded the national level Pugsley Medal “for his outstanding work in guiding people afield, organizing an administrative structure upon which the interpretive program of the parks is based, and in recognition of his successful pioneering efforts to make the science, scientific, and historic heritage of the country meaningful to its people.” He was born in Pasadena, California. He received an undergraduate degree in zoology/ornithology, and a MS and Ph.D. in zoology and paleontology from the University of California, Berkeley. He was one of the country’s most active figures in familiarizing people with the outdoors. As a close friend of Mather and Albright, the “fathers of the parks,” he was one of the principal architects of the development of interpretation in national parks. After graduation, Bryant joined the staff of the University of California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

From 1914 to 1930, as part of his academic credentials with strong public sympathy, Bryant first drew attention to himself in the California Fish and Game Commission as the editor of the new journal California Fish and Game, where he took over in the spring of 1914, when he pulled together an impressive list of writers, teachers, and nature professionals, and museum specialists, to write on the state of nature in California.Glacier fell through, leaving Bryant and Goethe to consider more seriously the feasibility of local options, Yosemite among them. As it turned out, however, the first nature guide satellite camp would be staged at Lake Tahoe. During the summer of 1919, Bryant delivered what could boost his confidence to try Yosemite Valley, and the response was quite good, boosting California. For ten years, Bryant spent his summers in this work and served without cost to the federal government. In 1925, Bryant was named as the first director of the Yosemite School of Field Natural History to train park naturalists.