152 Rasul A. Mowatt is a professor in the Department of American Studies and the Depart- ment of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Studies at Indiana University. Please send correspondence to ramowatt@indiana.edu Special Issue Journal of Park and Recreation Administration https://doi.org/10.18666/JPRA-2019-9674 Volume 38, Issue 3, Fall 2020, pp. 152–172 A People's History of Leisure Studies: The Great Race and the National Parks and U.S. Forests Rasul A. Mowatt Executive Summary For some time, researchers have discussed the relationship of the National Park Service (NPS) and other parks, parks and recreation, and outdoor recreation entities’ cultural engagement through a lens of needed and improved management that emphasizes cul- turally diverse outreach programming, but that also is aimed at a greater awareness of social marginality and the preponderance of racial preferences. While Santucci, Floyd, Bocarro, and Henderson (2014) particularly explored the potential infuence of the organizational culture of the NPS for maintaining a traditional culture resistant to di- versity-related changes as an efort on truly diversifying its stafng, programming, and outreach, there has never been a call to examine the historical infuences of the culture of the NPS, the United States Forest Service (USFS), the overall environmental move- ment, and even our very conception of outdoor recreation within the leisure studies and recreation service provision literature. What is presented here is a discourse-histor- ical approach of authored texts as primary sources of conservationist, preservationist, and interpretation legends, Giford Pinchot, Madison Grant, and Charles M. Goethe (among others). Te article calls into question as to how their natural history, bio- logical anthropology, and preservationist ideological lens infuenced their philosophi- cal articulation of conservation, preservation, and interpretation. In particular, Grant worked on matters of preservation synergistically in tandem with his eugenics beliefs, as chiefy articulated in the eugenicist tome, Te Passing of the Great Race (1916a). Tis seminal eugenics text informed Western interests in racial nativism, and highlighted the intersection of conserving “the best” in nature and among humanity. While Grant and Goethe’s relationship with eugenics has had more exposure, there has not been a