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Sheldon finally achieved his goal in 1917. After a flurry of last-minute negotiations about railroad entry and hunting laws, and after crucial lobbying by the Boone and Crockett Club and the Camp Fire Club of America, Congress presented Sheldon with an approved bill. Immediately, document in hand, Sheldon hurried to the White House, hoping to speed up the signing process. On February 26, President Wilson at last approved the legislation to create Mount McKinley National Park. He invited the jubilant Sheldon to attend the official signing ceremony at the White House. Sheldon’s arduous treks across the Alaska Range over glaring snowfields in icy gales, counting caribou and Dall sheep, had paid off for America and the world. The U.S. government had finally recognized his vision of Mount McKinley—and the beautiful raw-bone foothills of the Alaska Range—as belonging to every citizen. Laws associated with the new national park complemented Sheldon’s vision: no market hunters, no gold prospectors, and no oil-field geologists would be allowed in the 2 million-acre wilderness.

But there were some problems. For one thing, Congress rejected the name Denali in favor of Mount McKinley National Park. Sheldon and others were annoyed. Congress also refused to appropriate new money to protect Mount McKinley from the poaching of wildlife and timber. All President Wilson and Congress had really agreed to was a template for protection. With no funds set aside for the long-term preservation of Mount McKinley, Sheldon knew, the Denali wilderness wouldn’t last long. Conservationist activism was a constant experience of tribulations. Disappointed, Sheldon tapped the Boone and Crockett Club for $8,000 so that the Department of the Interior could hire a superintendent for Mount McKinley.52

Because of Sheldon’s public promotion of Mount McKinley, tourists started trickling in—very slowly—to see it. Only seven visitors came to see the new national park in 1922.53 In 1923 the Curry Hotel opened in time for the park’s formal dedication. A scenic viewpoint—the “Regal Vista”—was established so that tourists could snap photographs of McKinley without an arduous hike.54

The only newspaper that seemed to care about the new national park was the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Not until 1924, when roads and concessions were built, did the number of visitors increase. Stephen Mather lobbied aggressively for congressional allocations to help the park develop infrastructure. A log structure (looking rather like a strip mall) became the tourist gateway of McKinley Station; it comprised a roadhouse, a general store, a post office, a public garden, and little log motel cabins to rent. The Alaska Railroad, working closely with the National Park Service, printed up attractive brochures and extolled the run from Seward to Fairbanks as the “Mount McKinley Route.”55 As the historian Alfred Runte noted in National Parks: The American Experience, the new park met the major preservationist criterion of the era: “monumentalism.”56

Sheldon also achieved, like Muir before him at Glacier Bay, the promotion of discovery and recreation in Alaska for tourists of tomorrow. A later cult of wilderness enthusiasts wanted to explore Alaska’s boundless forests and glaciers. Colonel A. J. “Sandy” Macnab and Frederick K. Vreeland—of the Camp Fire Club of America—represented the new breed of outdoors enthusiasts, eager to make a permanent mark as conservationists in Alaska. After World War I, Americans, aglow with victory, discovered Alaskan mountains and rivers as a leisure-time destination. Aviation now made “doing Alaska” feasible for rich people from the East Coast. Colonel Macnab, who served under General Pershing in France, had supervised a rifle school there, outside Le Mans. Under his leadership more than 200,000 U.S. soldiers a week learned how to use a Springfield .30-06 rifle. After the war Macnab, based in Camp Benning, Georgia, dreamed of Lake Clark, Alaska—where the Dall sheep,