Gift guide
Vintage national park prints
Two kinds of national park print, both from the archive rather than a redrawing. The WPA posters of 1936–1939 — Zion's Great White Throne, Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon in pink, the bighorn rams at sunset — are works of the federal government, public domain, restored from the Library of Congress's 300-dpi scans of surviving originals. And the older, rarer thing: the US Geological Survey sheets that mapped Yellowstone in 1912, Yosemite in 1909 and Mount Rainier in 1914, drawn by the surveyors who walked the ground. A poster reads as art from across the room; a survey map rewards a foot away. Together they are the wall of a cabin.
Zion National Park WPA Poster, 1939
Yellowstone National Park WPA Poster, 1938
Grand Canyon National Park WPA Poster, 1938
The National Parks Preserve Wild Life WPA Poster, 1936
Yellowstone Topographic Map, 1912
Yosemite Topographic Map, 1909
Mount Rainier Panoramic Map, 1914
Acadia Bar Harbor Topographic Map, 1904
Great Smoky Mountains Topographic Map, 1934
Lassen Volcanic National Park WPA Poster, 1938
See America WPA Poster, 1936
Yellowstone Panoramic Map, 1915
Three tips
- Pair a park's poster with its survey map — Yellowstone 1938 over Yellowstone 1912 — and the second framed print is 10% off.
- Posters are offered only at sizes that fit their sheet exactly, so 12×16 and 18×24 are the sizes; survey maps go to 24×36.
- Black frames suit the posters' stencil lettering; natural oak suits the brown-and-green USGS palette.