A premature death is always a tragedy, but there still exists the
feeling that the National Park Service lost a future director when Roger
Toll died unexpectedly in 1936. He was born October 17, 1883, in
Denver, Colorado, the son of a pioneer Colorado family, and educated at
Denver University and Columbia University earning a degree in civil
engineering. Following graduation in 1906, he traveled around the world
and started working in Boston for the Massachusetts State Board of
Health. In March 1908, he worked in Washington, D.C., with the Coast
and Geodetic Survey, and for a short time, surveyed the coastline of
Cook Inlet in Alaska. In 1908 Toll returned to Denver, becoming chief
engineer of the Denver City Tramway Company. During World War I, he
served in the army and reached the rank of major.
According to Horace Albright, Toll "had come around the Interior
Department to talk about national parks" while working in D.C., and
Albright had kept in touch with him even after Toll had left the army
and moved to Hawaii. During a trip to the islands in the spring of
1919, Albright suggested that Stephen Mather contact Toll as a possible
candidate for the vacant superintendent's position at Mount Rainier
National Park. (Mather was impressed with young Toll and hired him for
the job.) Toll joined the National Park Service in May 1919, and two
and 1/2 years later, he transferred as superintendent to Rocky Mountain
National Park. On February 1, 1929, Toll followed Horace Albright as
Yellowstone's superintendent and field assistant to the director.
Roger Toll's legacy to the National Park Service lay not so much in
his superintendencies, but in his superb firsthand investigations and
reports on proposed areas to the park system. He maintained an office
in Denver, working from there in the off-season each winter on the
inspection of proposed parks and monuments, boundary extensions, and
other concerns. Several of the areas which benefited from Toll's work
include Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Big Bend, and the Everglades. Horace
Albright credited Toll with having "explored, photographed and
described in reports most of the canyons of the Colorado from the
headwaters in the Rockies to the California line." In early 1936,
Toll served on a commission, along with George Wright, Conrad Wirth, and
Frank Pinkley, among others, to investigate the possibility of
establishing international parks, forest reserves, and wildlife refuges
along the Mexican-American border. On February 25, while on their way
to investigate the Ajo Mountains in Arizona, both Toll and George Wright
were killed in an automobile accident nearing Deming, New Mexico. Toll
left behind a wife and three children.