The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / The Parks
The lure of the national parks
Dorothy Waugh · National Park Service, 1934
What it is
A 1934 travel poster designed by Dorothy Waugh for the National Park Service, titled The Lure of the National Parks. It is one of her earliest poster designs for the agency.
Why it matters
This is government persuasion in the New Deal years, when the Park Service was working to turn public land into a public destination. Waugh's title makes the argument in one word: lure, not visit, not view. The poster was built to work on a post office wall or a station platform, catching a traveller who had not yet decided to go.
What to notice
Notice how the design is carried by simplified planes of flat colour with no wasted line, an economy meant to be read across a room.
Not a picture of a place, but a summons to one.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Designer
- Dorothy Waugh
- Format
- Travel poster
- Poster published
- National Park Service, 1934
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LC-USZC4-8221 / LC-USZC6-63; digital ID cph 3h00063
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
