| Stephen Tyng Mather | |
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Stephen Tyng Mather |
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| Born | July 4, 1867 San Francisco, CA[1][2] |
| Died | January 22, 1930 (aged 62) Brookline, Massachusetts[3] |
| Occupation | businessperson, naturalist, first Director of the National Park Service |
| Spouse | Jane T. Floy of Elizabeth, NJ in 1893 |
| Children | Bertha Floy Mather |
| Awards | Public Welfare Medal (1930) |
Stephen Tyng Mather (July 4, 1867 – January 22, 1930)[4] was an American industrialist and conservationist. As the president and owner of the Thorkildsen-Mather Borax Company, he became a millionaire. With the journalist Robert Sterling Yard, Mather led a publicity campaign to promote the creation of a federal agency to oversee National Parks, which was established in 1916.
In 1917 Mather was appointed as the first director of the new agency, the National Park Service, within the United States Department of the Interior, and served until 1929. He created a professional civil service organization, increased the numbers of parks and national monuments in the system, and established criterion for adding new properties in a systematic way.
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Stephen Tyng Mather was born in San Francisco, and named for the prominent Episcopal minister Stephen Tyng of New York, whom his parents Joseph W. Mather and Bertha Jemima Walker admired. He was educated at the private Boys' High School in the city. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1887.[2] Soon after that, the family moved to New York, where his father was a senior manager of Pacific Coast Borax Company.
He married Jane Thacker Floy of Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1893. They had one daughter, Bertha Floy Mather. In 1906, Mather became the sole owner of the Mather Homestead in Connecticut, which had been built by his great-grandfather about 1778. He and his family used it during the summers and he regarded it as his true home.[2]
Mather worked as a reporter for the New York Sun until 1893. There he met and befriended Robert Sterling Yard, also a reporter, and served as best man at his wedding in 1893.
Mather started working for the Pacific Coast Borax Company at its headquarters in New York, where his father was administrator. Borax was a component of a variety of detergents and compounds, and was mined in California. In 1894 the younger Mather moved with his wife to Chicago, where he established a distribution center for the company.[2] In this role, he proved vital in advertising and sales promotion for the company, and in particular is credited with the idea of adding the label "20 Mule Team Borax" to the company's product, which subsequently became a household name throughout the country.[5]
In 1898 Mather helped a friend Thorkildsen in starting another borax company. After suffering a severe episode of bipolar disorder in 1903 and having his salary withheld during extended sick leave, Mather resigned from Pacific Coast and joined Thorkildsen full time in 1904. They named their firm the Thorkildsen-Mather Borax Company. They built their company into a prospering business, whose success made them millionaires by 1914. This gave Mather the financial freedom to pursue other projects.[2]
Traveling with his wife Jane in Europe in 1904 renewed Mather's longtime interest in nature. Seeing the parks of Europe and their accessibility, Mather was inspired to work to preserve more parkland in the US, to encourage new transportation methods to reach them, and to protect scenic resources and natural areas for all the people.[2]
Mather was active in many groups: the Chicago City Club and Municipal Voter's League. In 1904 he joined the Sierra Club, and climbed Mount Rainier with some of its members the following year. He was active in the group and made numerous allies who helped support the creation of the National Park Service. In 1916 the Sierra Club made him an honorary vice-president.[6]
Beginning in 1913, when Mather wrote to the Secretary of the Interior, Franklin K. Lane, and deplored the state of the parks, he began building support for better management of the system by the federal government.[7] In 1915, Lane appointed Mather as his assistant to work on the parks issues. At the time, the government owned 14 parks and 18 national monuments, many administered by Army officers or political appointees, as battlefields were among the first parks designated. He used his personal funds to Robert Sterling Yard to work with him on publicizing the great resources of the parks. Mather was effective in building support for the parks with a variety of politicians and wealthy corporate leaders; he also led efforts to publicize the National Parks and develop wider appreciation for their scenic places among the population.[7] He appointed Yard as head of the National Park Education Committee to coordinate their various communication efforts.
In 1916 the National Park Service was authorized by Congress and approved by the president. Mather helped establish the new federal agency to protect and manage the national parks, together with a new appreciation for the parks. In addition, he professionalized management of the parks, creating a cadre of career civil service people who were specialists in a variety of disciplines, to operate and manage the parks while preserving their natural character.[7]
In 1917 Mather was appointed Assistant Secretary of Interior and head of the National Park Service. Due to his success in working with leaders of various groups and the Congress, he served until 1929. He believed that magnificent scenery should be the first criterion in establishing a national park, and made efforts to have new parks established before the lands were developed for other purposes.
He introduced concessions to the national parks. Among the services they sold were basic amenities and necessities to park visitors, plus aids for studying nature. Mather promoted the creation of the National Park to Park Highway.[8] He also encouraged cooperation with the railroads to increase visitation to normally remote units of the National Park System. He believed that once more of the public had visited the parks, they would become supporters for the fledgling agency and its holdings. By the time he left his position, the park system included 20 national parks and 32 national monuments. Mather also had created the criteria for identifying and adopting new parks and monuments.[2]
Periodically disabled by bipolar disorder (manic-depression), Mather had to take some leaves from work. In January 1929 he suffered a stroke and had to leave office. He died a year later.
Stephen Tyng Mather / July 4, 1867 – January 22, 1930 / He laid the foundation of the National Park Service, defining and establishing the policies under which its areas shall be developed and conserved unimpaired for future generations. There will never come an end to the good that he has done.
Other types of places were named for him:
| Preceded by not applicable |
First Director of the National Park Service 1917–1929 |
Succeeded by Horace M. Albright |
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