Daniel Ray Hull

Daniel Ray Hull (1890–1964), sometimes stated Daniel P. Hull, was an American landscape architect who was responsible for much of the early planning of the built environment the national parks of the United States during the 1920s. Hull planned town sites, designed landscapes, and designed individual buildings for the Park Service, in private practice, and later for the California State Parks. A number of his works are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Hull was born in Lincoln, Kansas on April 29, 1890, the son of O.U. Hull, and studied landscape architecture and city planning at the University of Illinois, receiving his degree in 1913. Hull was one of four students who studied intensively with civic planner Charles Mulford Robinson, who had published numerous texts on city planning. Hull received his Master of Landscape Architecture degree from Harvard University in 1914. Following a grand tour of Europe, Hull began to work in California. Hull had married Emma Dorothy Kammeger of Manhattan, Kansas., One of his first projects was the planning of the Montecito Country Estates subdivision in Montecito, California, working as well with Daniels, Osmont and Wilhelm in San Francisco. Daniels was at the time the Park Service's General Superintendent, and was in charge of a number of park improvement projects.

Hull was a U.S. Army officer during World War I, planning Army facilities in the Cantonment Division. From the Army, Hull moved to the National Park Service, which had been established in 1916 to assist chief Park Service landscape architect Charles Punchard. Punchard died in 1920 and Hull took over his position at age 30. The largest project in the Park Service at the time was the re-planning of the Yosemite Valley, and Hull moved there to oversee the work, assisted by a friend from his studies at the University of Illinois, Paul P. Keissig. At the same time, Hull initiated overall master planning projects for Yellowstone, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, and Mesa Verde national parks, as well as an overall plan for Yosemite. Hull's plans for Yosemite embodied the informal, natural principals promulgated by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.. In addition to master planning, Hull worked on specific projects such as the administrative district at Mesa Verde and the Ash Mountain headquarters complex at Sequoia. In 1920 Hull was assigned the planning effort for Grand Canyon Village, a large-scale town planning exercise that sought to establish order at the previously haphazard South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

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