| Western
Interpreters Association (WIA)
(Excerpted from "The History of Heritage Interpretation in
the United States" by Tim Merriman and Lisa Brochu)
 In
an audiotape70 provided to NAI as background on the
Western Interpreters Association, Chris Nelson tells
the story of Bill Knott coming to the Sacramento Junior
Museum, where Chris served as executive director, to
invite him to join his staff at the Oakland Parks and
Recreation Department and East Bay Regional Park District.
Chris moved from Sacramento to the East Bay area to
work in this unique parks program. Bill Knott believed
interpretation was a core role of their staff. At about
that same time the California State Park Rangers formed
a subgroup known as the California State Park Naturalists
Association.
As chief of interpretation at East Bay Regional Park District, Chris Nelson supported
the group but recognized that the group provided virtually no services for the
dues collected. Budget problems and the widely dispersed interpreters in the
state system in California made it difficult for the fledgling California State
Park Naturalists Association to function as an organization. Facing dues competition
with the well-established California State Park Rangers Association, the naturalists
subgroup was not destined to survive.
East Bay Regional Park staff organized a meeting of about 20 interpreters at
Folsom Dam in 1968 to talk about the need for a more specialized interpreters
group in the western United States. Chris related, “I think at that time
AIN probably had about eight paid members west of the Rocky Mountains. I think
most of those were on my staff. And the feeling that we should also be doing
something, or that we should maybe become an AIN chapter, took hold.”
They agreed to form an organization called Western Park Interpreters Association
(WPIA) at the Folsom meeting with Darwin Thorpe as president. A year later the
name was changed to Western Interpreters Association during a meeting at Tilden
Nature Area and Chris Nelson was elected as president. They started The Interpreter
as a newsletter and began to investigate chapter status with AIN in hopes of
one day merging the organization with AIN. Chris was also elected to the AIN
board of directors and served as vice-president from 1975 to 1977. Bill Knott
supported Chris’ many trips east to AIN board meetings due to his belief
in the importance of interpretation to their park system.
WIA’s birth led to a growing membership in California and along the west
coast. The organization grew to 120 members by 1973 when the distinctive logo
was adopted depicting half a wagon wheel with the circle completed by the branches
of a tree, showing both natural and cultural roots. The Interpreter became a
well-respected publication under the editorial expertise of Alan Leftridge and
attracted many AIN members to join WIA. Still nurturing the idea of merging AIN
and WIA, the boards of each organization agreed to a joint meeting at Asilomar
Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, California, in 1974. Hopes were dashed as
the two boards discussed how a merger might occur, as each group now had a significant
investment in its own ways of conducting business. Membership in WIA had grown
to 344 in that same year with students being one-third of the membership.
WIA was particularly successful in creating chapters based on localized geographic
areas. California had the Bay Area, Sacramento, Sierra-San Joaquin, Fire Mountains,
Southern Cal, San Diego-Border, and North Coast Chapters by the mid-1980s. Chapters
proliferated in other parts of the country and by 1986 included Oregon, Utah,
National Capital, Nevada, Centennial (Colorado), Oklahoma-Texas, Arizona, Midwest,
and Oklahoma. Chapter presidents served on WIA’s board of directors, but
with 80 percent of its members in California, the single state carried much of
the responsibility for the organization’s growth and management. Chapter
workshops and newsletters, like the regional services with AIN, were important
services for members and aided in growing the organization. Doug Bryce became
the organization’s executive manager, a role he also held with the California
Park Rangers Association, to maintain membership records and assist the board
with service delivery.
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