Up for auction "Landscape Architect" Conrad L Wirth Hand Signed First Day Cover Dated 1965.

ES-6548E

Conrad

Louis Wirth (December 1, 1899

– July 25, 1993) was an American landscape architect, conservationist, and park

service administrator. He served as the director of the National Park Service (NPS)

between 1951 and 1964. Wirth was born in Hartford, Connecticut,

where his father Theodore was park

superintendent. Seven years later, Theodore moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he became superintendent of the

Minneapolis Park System. Conrad Wirth grew up in the Theodore

Wirth House, the home built by the Park system for his father,

surrounded by city park. Conrad earned a Bachelor of Science degree in

landscape gardening from Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University

of Massachusetts Amherst). He first came to the Washington, D.C.,

area to work for the National

Capital Park and Planning Commission, and he joined the NPS in 1931.

With the coming of the New Deal he supervised the

service's Civilian Conservation

Corps (CCC) program in the state parks. His administrative

ability made him a successor to Director Arthur E. Demaray, whom he served as associate director before

advancing to the top job in December 1951. Wirth's crowning achievement

was Mission 66, a 10-year, billion-dollar program to upgrade park

facilities and services by the 50th anniversary of the NPS in 1966. Wirth

submitted his resignation to President John F. Kennedy in the fall of 1963 and left the

directorship in early 1964, after recommending George B. Hartzog Jr. as

his successor. He went on to supervise the Interior Department's CCC program. A

member of the National Geographic

Society's Board of Trustees, he was also active in conservation and

Park Service alumni affairs. He died in his sleep in 1993. The M/V Conrad

Wirth, a 25-car ferry was named for him. The 112-ft. vessel was built in

1970 for the North Carolina Department of Transportation Ferry Division to

cross Hatteras Inlet between Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands on

the outer banks of North Carolina