The whole story here folks:
Yellowstone, after 30 years of doing business, has elected not to carry any of my WPA reproductions. Instead they are selling this horrible off-shore knock-off calling it WPA.
This is their replacement–although as I post this, they have taken it down.
This is the original artwork for comparison with the DOI and NPS spelled out. We sell these to parks for $2 and this apparently too much to ask.
When I discovered two original prints in 2014, I offered the park the original WPA colors in poster form but they preferred my orange/blue 10:1. So, instead of reprinting the original design and colors, they felt they had to make the 20% change to avoid copyright–this is the people running Yellowstone Forever. Plagiarists.
As this develops, the YF took this item down from their website (yellowstone.org) but still sell what looks like a Christmas tree ornament for $19. But that’s not all.
Some background: About 10 years ago, a woman, Colleen McGovern, called me and like many other calls I’ve received, beat around the bushes about my product line. I knew she was fishing and had an idea that she wanted to make sure I wasn’t already producing–in her case, maps. Today her business–Outdoor McGovern–is doing very well. Colleen is smart and has a good product line. I shared everything I knew about NPS marketing, invited her to attend the annual APPL (now PLA) trade-show and showed her the ropes. One stipulation was that she couldn’t copy any of my product line; this is a courtesy thing. Meanwhile, I donated my private collection to the NPS Archives and the DOI Museum collection–thus putting this art back into the public domain. I knew that people would start smearing this art on everything–and they are. A simple Google search of “WPA National Park” will bring forth thousands of people with very limited imagination. Colleen is among them. She now has smeared this art on socks (yes, the kind you put on your feet), blankets, mugs, and more…..and the Yellowstone park not only carries these items, they have dropped the actual silk-screen reproductions and refuse to carry my book which describes the story of how this art came about. This is what the people at Yellowstone Forever now foist off on the public.
Let me be clear to my customers, that for decades, I have refused to smear this art on other products keeping the art as art. And I silk-screen these prints–all hand done and worthy of frames, not thumbtacks. I have recently entered the magnet market–simply because if I didn’t, others would. And these are still miniature works of art:
Here adorning my 1952 Chambers model 90C gas range in Alaska complete with venison stew!
Some history of the YF: Back in 1995 when I first found the black & white negatives (at Harpers Ferry West Virginia), I republished both Yellowstone images and offered them to the Yellowstone Association–then the cooperating association the park authorized to run their bookstores (note: they were then called bookstores). Mary Flaming, who was the executive director showed me the door, so I went to Hamilton Stores the park concessionaire for 88 years–a cold call–knocked and John Grieve invited me in, spent about 2 hours looking at my marvelous discovery, and gave me five of his top stores. He shook my hand three times as he walked me out to the parking lot. I built expensive displays and Ham Stores sold $60,000 worth of prints the first season! That’s their profit.
I went back to the Association–and pointed out to Mary, that they were missing out and the profits could go to the parks. Again, I was shown the door and this went on for five years or about $300,000 worth of lost sales. These were the folks running our National Park Bookstores–no business sense.
With the turn of a Presidential Election, Hamilton Stores got booted out of Yellowstone–a political favor that is common. The Curry Company in Yosemite–same thing. The huge corporations today that run the concession side of park infrastructure (hotels, gas stations, grocery stores, etc.) are Xanterra, Delaware North, and Aramark. In general they do a great job. I just stayed at El Tovar while waiting for an audience at Grand Canyon (same issue–they prefer sock over books) which is a first-rate experience–run by Xanterra. Their gift stores are superb–and I went home with some old Fred Harvey dish patterns–hold this thought……
During the 2016 NPS Centennial or thereabouts, the Yellowstone Association (bookstores) and the Yellowstone Foundation (a money raising organization) merged into what is now known as Yellowstone Forever and all hell broke loose. The gist was that they brought in a bunch of high-falutin business managers, gave themselves all high salaries and almost bankrupted the organization. You can read more about this debacle here.
Flash forward to Yellowstone today. It’s been about 30 years of doing business with YA, now YF and they were my top customer with annual profits to the park of about $100,000. This is nothing to sneeze at. My product line–is probably the most durable product the parks have ever sold and it continues to build. Suddenly, in 2025, they abruptly quit ordering and they won’t return phone-calls.
Let me state here–that I am retired, my next birthday is my 80th. I was once a park ranger and always will be to some extent. I fully support parks but am very disappointed with the lack of transparency and communication with the youngsters running these cooperating association. In fact it’s downright rude not to return a phone-call. This business will once again, move across the street to the concessionaire which is a $100,000 loss for our parks…..annually. History repeats itself.
Bookstores used to have strict guidelines as to the quality of merchandise they sell. Today, it’s all out the window–parks sell anything that will turn a buck and their “ceiling” is a trinket that costs less than $14.95. They have entered the clothing markets, sell junk tee-shirts, ball-caps and all the other trash that the gateway communities sell. Here are some examples:
It used to be you could buy Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guides to Animal Tracks in our bookstores. Not today.
Shameful.
I’m putting together an OpEd piece to run in the NYT and trying to get a social media movement of signatures across the country for Congress to get off their collective behinds and start funding our National Parks at 100%–no excuses. When this happens, this schlock will disappear…..or will it?
Keep scrolling for the shoddy stuff now sold in park bookstores and on the internet that purport to interpret our National Parks (I will be adding to this list):
No books! And I like this one found on the internet. This summarizes the ignorance of the the up-coming vendors to our parks (this is not Yellowstone)…..
