This WPA-inspired poster promoting Haleakala National Park in Hawai'i features a summit-to-ocean perspective, with silver swords playing against the colorful sunrise/Doug Leen

As the National Park Service approaches its 100th birthday celebration, you can mark the anniversary by looking into the past of the national park movement via original Works Progress Administration posters and more recently made replicas.

Doug Leen, once-upon-a-time a seasonal park ranger, is touring the country to tell the story behind the WPA posters and display the line of replicas his company, Ranger Doug's Enterprises, has produced.

From 1938 to 1941, the National Park Service commissioned the WPA posters for national park sites. The artists worked out of a facility in Berkeley, California, and the 14 designs they created were well-received. With the onset of World War II, however, production ceased and the posters were lost to history until the early 1970s, when Doug Leen happened upon an original at Grand Teton National Park. Fascinated with the artwork and the story behind it, Mr. Leen set out to learn more.

Just over 40 of these exceedingly rare national park posters have since resurfaced and are in National Park Service archives, the Library of Congress, and with private collectors. Through the course of two decades and extensive research, Mr. Leen has not only painstakingly reproduced the 14 original WPA designs but has also been working in collaboration with individual parks to create more than 25 new designs 'œin the style of' the WPA artists. The iconic prints sustain a rich artistic tradition and resonate with park and vintage graphics enthusiasts worldwide.

Through the Park Service anniversary next August, Mr. Leen is on the road, visiting gateway towns and other destinations to discuss the WPA posters. While he's already made some stops, the real road work starts at yearend, when he heads to Pasadena, California, to display the posters in conjunction with the Rose Bowl (the National Park Service is to have a float in the Rose Bowl Parade, but more on that later).

On December 29, 30, and 31, he'll be displaying the posters and giving talks at the Spirit Theater in the Pasadena Convention Center:

* Tuesday, December 29 @ 2 p.m.

* Wednesday, December 30 @ 10 a.m.

* Thursday December 31 @ 1 p.m.

"That's (the Rose Bowl) the official kick-off event and my trailer will be in the convention center for three or four days," he says. "After that, my general plan is to work the southern parks this winter, continue to the East Coast in the spring, return to the central Rockies in early summer, then to the Northwest parks ending up with Redwoods, Sequoia, Yosemite, then the Southwest again."

You can check the Ranger Doug website to see where Mr. Leen's trips will take him or follow him on Facebook.