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While McClurg and the association worked to raise awareness in Colorado, the association’s vice-regent, Lucy Peabody, lobbied hard for the cause in Washington, D.C. In 1901, their combined efforts paid off when a bill was introduced in Congress to designate the cliff dwellings as a national park. The bill died quickly, but it symbolized that the ruins had at last become a national issue. More than that, it officially entered the work of McClurg and the association into a wider discourse on the importance of prehistoric resources. The discovery of sites like Mesa Verde in the Southwest lay at the heart of a burgeoning awareness about the value of historical preservation in a young nation that had recently celebrated its 100th birthday.

In the ensuing five years, four separate bills were introduced for the protection of Mesa Verde, all of which failed. But eventual establishment of a national park appeared to be quite likely. At this point, McClurg made a decision that ever after clouded her role as founder of Mesa Verde National Park: She took a public stance against the creation of a park to be administered by the federal government, favoring, instead, a state park that would leave the Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association in control. McClurg’s motivations are subject to historical interpretation, but many have called it pure ego. It had become an obsession of hers, says Smith, but it was clearly that passion that allowed McClurg to persist as long as she had. As to her reasons for rejecting federal control, it’s impossible to be certain, because she didn’t record her thoughts for posterity.

McClurg had worked so hard for the protection of Mesa Verde, it’s possible she did not want the land controlled by a government that offered women no political voice. National parks generally refused to hire women rangers until well into the 1960s. But McClurg had seen the successful precedent set by Ann Pamela Cunningham and the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, who had preserved George Washington’s historic home in Virginia. The association continues to maintain and operate it. With this model in mind, McClurg bitterly resisted federal control of the cliff dwellings. But the movement she had begun had since taken on a life of its own. On June 29, 1906, Congress passed, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed, a bill creating Mesa Verde National Park. Because of her stance against the federal government, her work of nearly a quarter of a century went largely unheralded up-on creation of the park. But the legacy of McClurg’s devotion to Mesa Verde lies in the fruits of her labor. Along with leading to the creation of a federally protected park—the first one established for its cultural significance—her campaign prompted a national debate that yielded one of the United States’ most important pieces of preservation legislation: The Antiquities Act of 1906 began a federal policy of natural and cultural resources protection that remains to this day.

The work of Virginia McClurg and Lucy Peabody led to the creation of Mesa Verde National Park 14 years before their government deemed them qualified to vote for the nation’s president. And these women weren’t alone. They were part of a wider group of women who played leading roles in national park establishment, a list whose length extends much farther than its historical obscurity would suggest. In the early 1900s, Mary Belle King Sherman spearheaded progressive conservation leadership in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, whose several million members played a central role in the establishment of many parks—including Rocky Mountain and Grand Canyon National Parks—and were integral in the passage of the enabling legislation of the National Park Service in 1916. For her tireless leadership, Sherman earned the nickname “national park lady.” But there were many others, including Minerva Hamilton Hoyt, who traveled the world near the turn of the century to raise awareness about fragile desert plants and landscapes. Hoyt petitioned the federal government to protect a portion of the Colorado and Mojave Deserts—home of the Joshua tree, which had become a sought-after collectible plant and a source of lightweight wood. Hoyt’s lobbying, which included sitting on the White House steps until Franklin D. Roosevelt sent word of his support, led to the designation of Joshua Tree National Monument in 1936. Among the most well known of these women was Marjory Stoneman Douglas, whose extensive writings on the Everglades, including River of Grass published in 1947, ignited national awareness about the imperiled ecosystems of South Florida.