August 2018 - Sneak Peek

Rejected design.
Devils Tower stamp source of design.
delegations of both Wyoming and South Dakota, it chose to
honor Devils Tower. Despite what Gregg said, any request
from the National Park Service for an Antiquities stamp
would lack the political clout necessary, and the Post Office
tended to look askance at requests coming from within the
government.
Pushed by “Pappy” and State Senator Al Harding, the
Wyoming legislature piled on the pressure. After liaising with
Bernd in June 1955, senators Frank Aloysius Barrett (1892-
1962) and Joseph Christopher O’Mahoney (1884-1962) adopted
a cunning strategy. First, they convinced their Senate
colleagues to provide the Devils Tower National Monument
with the means to purchase more land in order to develop
camping and other facilities. Once they had Devils Tower on
the agenda, Barrett was easily able to lobby successfully for a
postage stamp. By the following January (1956) he had convinced
26 of his colleagues to support the idea.
Meanwhile, Edwin Keith Thomson (1919-1960), the sole
Wyoming member of the House of Representatives, had not
been idle. He not only pushed for a commemorative stamp
but also provided Post Office authorities with a picture of the
tower that could be used as the basis for a design.
By early 1956 Barrett was able to inform “Pappy” that
“our chances have improved a great deal” and that the authorities
were leaning toward June 8 as the date of the firstday-of-issue
ceremony. He cautioned that the final decision
had yet to be taken and hinged on a successful outcome of
a meeting between his secretary and Assistant Postmaster
General Albert Robertson, which was to be held on February
27. The decider, he maintained, was an assurance to the
authorities that Devils Tower
and Sundance had the necessary
infrastructure to support
what they assumed would be
a large influx of tourists, philatelists
and curious members
of the public for a first-day
ceremony. Bernd took up the
cudgels and wrote two letters.
In the first he said that the two
communities had ample resources, and in the second and
cheekier missive he wrote that this was despite the fact that
Congress had hitherto starved them of funds.
These pledges were enough for Postmaster General Arthur
Summerfield to announce on June 5 that a postage
stamp would be issued to mark the 50th anniversary of the
establishment of the Devils Tower National Monument. Given
the lateness of the announcement, the date of issue was
put back to the more logical date of September 24, which
corresponded to Roosevelt’s proclamation establishing the
national monument.
Following a long-established tradition, the Post Office
Department asked the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to
come up with a suitable design for the postage stamp. Armed
with a photograph of Devils Tower furnished by the Information
Branch of the National Park Service, and others from the
archives, Charles Chickering, the Bureau of Engraving and
Printing designer, set to work to produce a model. Two very
similar compositions were submitted for consideration by
the Bureau of Engraving and Printing on June 26. The postmaster
general selected what he regarded as the more suitable
design the following day.
The Design Itself
Overall, the design of the stamp disappointed some commentators.
Its saving grace was the adoption of a vertical format
eminently suitable to conveying the majesty of the tower.
There also is too much text and too much variation in
typeface for a successful, unified, uncluttered composition.
Centered across the top of the vignette is the wording “U.S.
Postage” in white-faced Gothic. The wording “50th Anniver-
AUGUST 2018 / AMERICAN PHILATELIST 769