After graduation, he worked for the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. Albright became a legal assistant to Stephen Mather when Mather became Assistant Secretary in charge of National Parks, and later assisted Mather when the National Park Service (NPS) was established in 1916. As legal assistant, he helped acquire land for several new national parks in the east. When Mather became ill, Albright managed the NPS as acting director. He later served as superintendent of Yellowstone National Park and, for a short time, Yosemite National Park. On October 18, 1922, he was elected Associate Member of the Boone and Crockett Club, a wildlife conservation organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell, in 1887.
On January 12, 1929, Albright succeeded Mather as the second director of the NPS and held the post until August 9, 1933. He next worked for the U.S. Potash Corporation and U.S. Borax and Chemical Corporation, serving variously as director, vice president, and general manager. During this time, the Albrights lived in New Rochelle, New York. In 1937, Albright's portrait was painted by artist Herbert A. Collins.[2]
The nation's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was awarded to Albright by President Jimmy Carter on the 64th anniversary of the National Park Service. President Carter announced the award in August 1980, and the medal was presented on December 8 by Assistant Secretary of the Interior Robert L. Herbst, in a ceremony at Van Nuys, California.[6]
^Biography of Herbert Alexander Collins, by Alfred W. Collins, February 1975, 4 pages typed, in the possession of Collins' great-great grand-daughter, D. Dahl of Tacoma, WA.
^"Horace Albright Dies. Founded Park Service". New York Times. March 29, 1987. Retrieved 2009-09-30. Horace Marden Albright, a conservationist who was a co-founder and second director of the National Park Service, died of heart failure early yesterday at a convalescent home in Los Angeles. He was 97 years old.
^"National Park Service Co-founder Dies," Yosemite 49(1):4 (Spring 1987).
Becher, Anne, and Joseph Richey, American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present (2 vol, 2nd ed. 2008) vol 1 online p. 15.
Swain, Donald C. "Harold Ickes, Horace Albright, and the Hundred Days: A Study in Conservation Administration." Pacific Historical Review 34.4 (1965): 455–465. online
Swain, Donald C. "The Passage of the National Park Service Act of 1916." Wisconsin Magazine of History (1966): 4–17. online
Swain, Donald C.Wilderness defender; Horace M. Albright and conservation (U of Chicago Press, 1970) online
Swain, Donald C. "The National Park Service and the New Deal, 1933-1940." Pacific Historical Review 41.3 (1972): 312–332. online
Albright, Horace M. as told to Robert Cahn; The Birth of the National Park Service; The Founding Years, 1913–33; Howe Brothers, Salt Lake City, Utah; 1985.