The Designed Landscape of the North Dakota Badlands

Recommended reading:

The Designed Landscape of the North Dakota Badlands: Weldon and Marjorie Gratton, Faithful Stewards and Genuine Collaborators, by Steve C. Marten. North Dakota History, v. 80, no. 2, Summer 2015.

“Gratton’s successful career as a landscape architect for the National Park Service [NPS] yields insight into the historical period in which he worked (1934-1976), and to the design methods he used to interpret the powerful sublime landscape of the North Dakota badlands we see today….Gratton (and other designers with whom he collaborated) deferred to the power and character of the natural setting…his peers, a cadre of young transient recruits at the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps and Works Progress Administration (WPA) project site…left modern visitors a lasting gift that communicates landscape heritage in a powerfully evocative way.” “Throughout the 1930s State Historical Society Superintendent Russell Reid showed great initiative as the driving force behind the Society’s acquisition and development of parks and historic sites in all parts of North Dakota. Weldon Gratton maintained a close relationship to Reid, who served simultaneously as NPS ‘procurement officer’ for CCC and WPA work in the state. There was clearly a meeting of their two minds on the way materials should be used to integrate design and construction into historic, naturalistic settings without detracting from the main feature. Gratton’s design proposals, embodied in design drawings retained by the State Historical Society, reflect that shared understanding. A skilled landscape architect can ‘improve’ a natural landscape without visitors realizing that a designed intervention has been made. Though Reid held his own personal ideas about design, there can be little question that Gratton explored design and detailing in ways that contributed to Reid’s growth in understanding landscape design.”