Dorothy Waugh (artist)

Dorothy Waugh (September 23, 1896 - March 20, 1996^[1]) was an American artist, illustrator, landscape architect, and author best known for creating a series of posters promoting national and state parks in the 1930s. Her work for the National Park Service (NPS) in designing posters is considered influential in the early use of graphic art by a federal agency to promote public lands.^[1]

Waugh was born in Burlington, Vermont^[1] to Mary (née Mary Vail) and Frank Albert Waugh.^[2][3] Her father was a landscape architect.^[3] Among her four brothers were Frederick V. Waugh,^[2] an agricultural economist; Albert Waugh,^[2] a provost at the University of Connecticut (1950–1965); and Sidney Waugh,^[2] a sculptor and glass designer.^[4][5] Waugh often sat in on her father's classes on landscape architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1916, she enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) only to be interrupted by the entry of the United States into World War I.^[3] Waugh also studied at the Massachusetts School of Art, the Museum School of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Ecole des Beaux Arts d'Orleans, the John Herron School of Art, and the Trenton School of Art.^[1]

In 1921, Waugh took a position as a landscape artist in Cleveland.^[6] In 1925, she and her brother Sydney exhibited works at an exhibition at Massachusetts Agricultural College.^[7] In the winter of 1925–1926, Waugh studied landscape art in southern Italy.^[8] Upon returning to the United States, she took a job with a landscape architecture firm in New Orleans.^[8]

By 1927, Waugh had returned to art school in Chicago.^[9] In 1928, she graduated from SAIC with honors in 1928.^[10] After graduating from SAIC, Waugh worked in Chicago at illustration, copywriting, and design for publishers and advertising firms.^[3] Waugh moved to New York City in 1931 to work as an artist and an author.^[11] Later that year, Henry Holt and Company published her book, Among the Leaves and Grasses,^[12] an illustrated children's book about common insects.^[13] The book's success encouraged Waugh.^[3]

Conrad Wirth had studied with Waugh's father Frank while earning his Bachelor of Science degree in landscape gardening from Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst).^[14] Wirth joined the National Park Service (NPS) in 1931.^[15] With the coming of the New Deal, he supervised the service's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) program in the state parks. Many CCC participants could not interpret blueprints or the accompanying directives.^[15] To address this he hired Dorothy Waugh in August 1933^[15] to develop simplified diagrams and instructions for constructing basic park structures.^[14] Waugh produced Portfolio of Comfort Stations and Privies (1934) and Portfolio of Park Structures and Facilities (1934).^[16] During this time she also drew color illustrations for Recreational use of land in the United States: Part XI of the Report on land planning (1934).^[1]

Due to the scale and importance of this effort for the CCC, Waugh went from being the sole NPS employee working on the project to hiring and leading a team of male draftsmen. Additionally, the government hired architects to supervise the building projects who added their own drawings as needed.^[17] This meant that her portfolios were followed by manuals in which Waugh had an advisory role, but no longer was contributing drawings.^[1]

In 1933, the Roosevelt administration designated 1934 as the "National Parks Year."^[18] This allowed for a small budget to create a marketing campaign for the National Parks. Waugh designed posters for the campaign, although she was hampered by the small budget for materials that required her to execute her design on the first try.^[19] By late summer of 1934, she had produced "a set of six colorful posters depicting national park scenes."^[20][21] In 1935, Waugh produced another five posters, with recreation the theme for two, cultural heritage for two, and wildlife preservation for the fifth.^[1]

• Among the Leaves and Grasses. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1931. OCLC 509732.
• Warm earth. London: Oxford University Press. 1943. OCLC 2538122.
• "Parklets: Gardens of Eden for Those Who Cannot Go to a Real Park". Landscape Architecture. 37 (2). American Society of Landscape Architects: 56–56. 1947. ISSN 0023-8031. JSTOR 44660160. OCLC 82518310.
• Muriel Saves String. New York: D. McKay Co. 1956. OCLC 1036773757 – via Internet Archive.
• A Handbook of Christmas Decorations. New York: Macmillan. 1958. OCLC 949981517 – via HathiTrust. 2011 edition: ISBN 978-1-258-21994-9
• Festive Decoration the Year Round. New York: Macmillan. 1962. OCLC 894729993 – via Internet Archive.
• Emily Dickinson's Beloved: A Surmise. New York: Vantage Press. 1976. ISBN 978-0-533-01945-8. OCLC 2392674.
• Emily Dickinson Briefly. New York: Vantage Press. 1990. ISBN 978-0-533-08762-4. OCLC 23364008.

• Kcrmarik, Katie (2021). "Women of the Federal Art Project Poster Division". In Levit, Briar (ed.). Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History. Hudson, New York: Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 32–41. ISBN 978-1-64896-083-3. OCLC 1288004270.
• Lambert, Kirby (1996). "The Lure of the Parks". Montana: The Magazine of Western History. 46 (1). Montana Historical Society: 42–55. ISSN 0026-9891. JSTOR 4519858. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
• McClelland, Linda Flint; National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) (1993). Presenting Nature: The Historic Landscape Design of the National Park Service, 1916-1942. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service, Cultural Resources, Interagency Resources Division, National Register of Historic Places. ISBN 978-0-16-045136-2. OCLC 623778578 – via HathiTrust.
• Resnick, Mark H. (2025). Blazing A Trail: Dorothy Waugh’s National Parks Posters. Rochester, New York: RIT Press. ISBN 978-1-956313-35-2. OCLC 1525856669.
• United States (1934). Portfolio of Park Structures and Facilities. OCLC 6427092.
• United States National Park Service; United States National Resources Board Land Planning Committee (November 1934). Recreational use of land in the United States: Part XI of the Report on land planning. Washington: United States Government Printing Office. pp. 6, 9, & 11. OCLC 1440236622 – via HathiTrust.

• Poster House exhibit - Blazing A Trail: Dorothy Waugh’s National Parks Posters - September 27, 2025–February 22, 2026
• Diddy, Julia (March 25, 2023). "Dorothy Waugh: Artist Created 1930s National Park Service Posters". Nice News. Retrieved October 23, 2025.