Southwestern Monuments Association

Southwestern Monuments Association was a nonprofit cooperating association created in 1938 to support the interpretive work of the National Park Service across southwestern monuments. Sources from Western National Parks Association and the National Park Service describe it as beginning at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument in Arizona, where staff saw a need for better publications and educational support for visitors.

Early accounts connect the association with park naturalist Dale King and the wider Southwest Monuments Group led by Frank Pinkley. The organization started with very modest funds and focused on producing and selling low-cost guides, with proceeds going back into publications and other materials that could help visitors understand the cultural and natural history of the sites.

As its partnerships expanded beyond monuments, the association later became Southwest Parks and Monuments Association, and in 2002 it was renamed Western National Parks Association. That makes Southwestern Monuments Association less a single personal author than the starting identity of a long-running park-support organization whose publications helped shape how generations of visitors learned about the parks of the American Southwest.