Lassen Volcanic National Park WPA Poster, 1938

The story of this poster

Lassen Peak erupted between 1914 and 1917, the last volcano in the contiguous United States to do so until Mount St Helens, and the park created around it in 1916 made that eruption its identity. Don Powell’s 1938 poster for the Ranger Naturalist Service shows the peak doing what visitors came to hear about: a black-and-grey column climbing out of the summit into an ochre sky, above the dark pines and the still water of Manzanita Lake, where the Loomis Memorial served as park headquarters.

Like the rest of the series it was silkscreened at the WPA Federal Art Project’s Western Museum Laboratories in Berkeley, in an edition small enough that only a handful of originals are known. The lettering lists what the rangers offered — lectures, hikes, motor caravans, campfire programmes, information — and the season, late June to mid-September.

The Library of Congress scan carries the sheet’s wear and a few small losses at the edges, which we have kept. The ochre and mauve inks, which fade unevenly on these posters, have been rebalanced to sit together as they were printed, without brightening them beyond the original.

Printed to order on archival matte paper, framed in the country of delivery, and offered only at sizes that fit the sheet exactly.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration: trimmed the mount board and scanner margins, balanced levels while keeping the silkscreen's flat inks and paper tone (90% of the original colour retained), removed dust and specks, and applied gentle sharpening. Creases, edge wear and registration slips of the original screen printing are kept where they belong to the object; nothing is redrawn.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.