Last updated: February 13, 2024
Article
50 Nifty Finds #44: All in Jest
Historically jesters were associated with royal courts, not national parks. Yet for a brief period in the late 1950s the National Park Service (NPS) had its own ranger caricature to speak truth to power. Part mountain man stereotype and part voice for field staff, “One Lick R. Evergreen” wore an exaggerated ranger uniform, attended conferences, and submitted comments to NPS newsletters.
Creating the Character
Director Conrad Wirth asked Dan Beard, superintendent of Everglades National Park, for ideas to add humor to the upcoming Park Development Conference. Held at Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks in September 1957, the conference theme focused on Mission 66, Wirth’s construction and facility improvement program. Beard created the character “One Lick Rotation Evergreen,” better known as One Lick R. Evergreen, to represent the viewpoints of employees in the field. It was variably spelled One Lick, One-lick, or Onelick.
The character needed a distinctive outfit. Karl T. Gilbert, assistant chief ranger at Everglades, created the “uniform.” The coat was repurposed from Dan Beard’s closet. The left sleeve features the NPS arrowhead patch and 10½ oversized white service stars representing 53 years in the NPS. An oversized Stetson hat was created by enlarging the brim of a standard hat with cardboard. The NPS leather hatband gave it an official look. Leather puttees, or leg wraps, which were eliminated from the standard NPS uniform in 1936, were also included. Making the metal park ranger badge, stamped with One Lick’s GS-2/3 grade, took more effort as Gilbert couldn’t simply repurpose an “off the shelf” item. Tan plastic glasses with a large fake nose, red wig, and brown beard with mustache and sideburns completed the look.
John G. Lewis, superintendent at Isle Royal National Park, portrayed One Lick, who made his first appearance on the last day of the conference at Grand Teton. Almost all NPS superintendents, five regional directors, chiefs of the eastern and western offices of design and construction, most park concession operators, Director Wirth, and several invited guests were present for his debut. One Lick stomped into the room and threw his saddle at a startled Laurence Rockefeller's feet before he got on stage. Although his full remarks aren’t included in the meeting minutes, Beard later recorded the gist of them. Using the jester’s privilege to talk and mock freely without being punished, he demanded to know who put “that big hay barn” (Teton Lodge) in the middle of his elk range and went on to make observations about NPS staff, the Mission 66 program, and the NPS in general.
He was an instant success.
A Living Caricature
Following the meeting, Beard sent a letter to Wirth to discuss One Lick’s future. He proposed,
We had a little fun at our conference with the not-too-mythical “Park Ranger, GS-2/3” who was a sort of a living caricature of the Service. I use the word “caricature” because, as all newspapermen know, such an approach can be more powerful than the best editorial. It seems to me that old One Lick with his grassroots philosophy is a guy worth saving. He may not be very erudite or well shaven, but his uninhibited outlook can be quite penetrating … My only word of caution is that if anyone has to write a ‘report’ about it Evergreen will never come off the hills again!
Beard proposed a few rules to “keep the old gopher alive and under control.” In addition to being anonymous as an actor or writer, Beard suggested Associate Director Eivind T. Scoyen check Evergreen’s utterances “on the outside chance they might be too barbed.” He put together a plan to "guide and nurture" the character over the next two years because “the Evergreen idea is something with a light touch that can contribute to an esprit de corps.”
Recognizing the work involved in keeping One Lick alive, Beard proposed that, until the next conference, he, Lewis, Scoyen, and “Tiny” Semingsen of Wind Cave (who was the editor of the Employee and Alumni Association newsletter known as “The Stephen Mather Family Newspaper”) would be One Lick, “but not as a ‘committee’ because that implies a report.”
Having received positive feedback on his portrayal, Lewis agreed with Beard’s plan to keep One Lick alive. On October 30, 1957, he wrote to Beard suggesting a couple of catchy column titles for One Lick to use in the newsletter:
-
Needles from Evergreen
-
One-lick and a Promise
-
From a Fir Place
On December 11, 1957, Scoyen approved Beard’s plan, noting that "he must be kept alive and should stir up enough fuss now and then so that NPS employees will not forget him." Scoyen was also “glad to check his utterances with the understanding that this does not make me responsible for everything he says!”
Beard’s concern that One Lick might take things too far was born out by the fact that six of the first eight quips that Lewis submitted for Evergreen’s “colyum” were rejected by Scoyen. These are recorded in the One Lick Evergreen file in the NPS History Collection. While it’s easy to understand why comments directed at President Eisenhower or the US Congress would have been nixed, time has dulled the barbs, and many of the humor’s references have little meaning today.
Traveling Jester
One Lick submitted comments and photographs after special assignments, like the months he spent at Everglades National Park in 1958. When he couldn’t be at a conference in person, he sent his greetings by telegram.
He made repeated appearances at the 1959 Biennial Visitor Services Conference held at Colonial National Historical Park. Ye Dailye Ranger, a newsletter distributed at the conference, featured One Lick daily. He arrived by boat on the York River as “an unidentified stranger, thought to be some kind of park ranger.” The next day’s newsletter reported, “The pessimists were right. It was old One Lick Evergreen in that boat.” Estimated to be 100 years old, he took to the microphone to call out the “young squirts” running around “as if they know anything about parks!”
The last edition of the conference newsletter reported,
One Lick Evergreen, who burst through a cordon of rangers yesterday to enter Phi Beta Kappa Hall, bullied the conferees with stories of several high-toned Park Service administrators who had won superior performance awards.
He went on to mock NPS architecture under Mission 66 but his “outbursts were met with derision by the entire group of conferees (only John Lewis wasn’t there, as far as we could see) and Old One Lick escaped from the mob by a side door. Two park rangers caught him and locked him in the stocks.
The Dean of Park Rangers
In April 1958 C. Ray Vinten, then superintendent at Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, wrote a song for One Lick. He later called it one of his “original songs of my more stupid years.” Vinten recalled that he wrote the song “to perpetuate the memory of the dean of all park rangers One Lick R. Evergreen.” Sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas, it went like this:
First verse:
He's a ranger of rangers and he's not afraid of strangers,
he hides up in the mountains and comes out once a year.
His whiskers red and curly, his muscles big and burly.
He's poison to the ladies but loved by grizzly bears.
Chorus:
Oh, he's a friend of all the wilderness, he lives on nuts and berries.
He's the roughest coot you've ever seen, and his name is Onelick Evergreen,
and his name is One Lick Evergreen
Second Verse:
He's a civil service wonder, who got in thru a blunder,
a GS-5 on paper, for 37 years.
He's never fresh or flirty, his hat is wide and dirty.
He'd rather walk than ride. And he smells on the gamey side.
Vinten gave One Lick a grade increase, as the previous year he was a GS-2/3.
Heading to the Hills
After a couple of years, One Lick headed back to his beloved mountains for good. Before he left, he became an official member of the NPS Employee & Alumni Association.
One Lick was gone but evidently not forgotten by those who knew him. The menu for the dinner meeting of NPS retirees, held September 12, 1978, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was dedicated to “Honoring the Memory of One Lick Evergreen.”
Sources:
One Lick Evergreen file (HFCA-01366). NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry, WV.
--. (1959, December 2). “Craft Sighted on York River.” Ye Dailye Ranger. Assembled Historic Records of the NPS (HFCA 1645), NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry, WV.
--. (1959, December 3). “Onelick Evergreen is Here.” Ye Dailye Ranger. Assembled Historic Records of the NPS (HFCA 1645), NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry, WV.
--. (1959, December 4). “Evergreen Jeopardizes Conference.” Ye Dailye Ranger. Assembled Historic Records of the NPS (HFCA 1645), NPS History Collection, Harpers Ferry, WV.
--. (1978, March). “One Lick Evergreen.” Courier: The National Park Service Newsletter. Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 11. Available online at http://npshistory.com/newsletters/courier/courier-v1n4.pdf