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This articulation meshed perfectly with the Sierra Club’s standard, the idea of a challenging nature without visual human intervention that had great aesthetic value. The pattern that dominated the first century of American conservation had been set, and fire and the army’s response to it played a role in reinforcing those designations. Despite such efforts, destruction of timber in and near the park continued, much of it left lying around, creating a possible fire hazard. Agricultural development within the park brought barbed wire, which further divided the land and limited the impact of military patrols.

Glacier’s entire appropriation during its first year of existence was a mere $,, a sum so small that its application to combating the fires would have exhausted it in a matter of days. 50 By early August, the fires were so overwhelming that Henry S. Graves, Pinchot’s successor at the Forest Service, asked for the assistance of the army at Glacier. Among the troops sent to the park was Company K of the allAfrican-American Twenty-Fifth Infantry under command of Lieutenant W. S. Mapes. While other soldiers in the park found themselves with difficult but manageable tasks, Company K found itself doing the most difficult work.

While Stephen Mather and Horace Albright worked to increase appropriations, the pressure on national parks, newly iconic for the well-off public of the s, increased. Despite the popularity of the parks and their managing agency, the NPS budget did not allow for comprehensive management. 7 As a result, the NPS had to fight fire with funds from its general appropriation. Unlike the Forest Service, which received congressional authorization in May  to overspend its budget on firefighting, National Park Service officials had to divide their meager funds among worthy projects of all kinds, knowing full well that a major fire would require that they shelve projects to pay its cost.