Park Ranger - History

History

The term ranger first appeared in 13th-century England.

The term ranger seems to correspond to the Medieval Latin word regardatores which appeared in 1217 in the Charter of the Forest. Regardatores was later rendered as rangers in the English translations of the Charter. However, others translate regardatores as regarders. For example, the fifth clause of the Charter of the Forest is commonly translated thus: "Our regarders shall go through the forests making the regard as it used to be made at the time of the first coronation of the aforesaid King Henry our grandfather, and not otherwise." A "regard" is considered to be an inspection of the forest.

The earliest letter patent found mentioning the term refer to a commission of a ranger in 1341. Documents from 1455 state that England had “all manner and singular Offices of Foresters and Rangers of our said Forests”.

One of the first appearances of ranger in literature is in Edmund Spenser's poem The Shepheardes Calendar from 1579: " walk not widely, as they were wont, for fear of rangers and the great hunt."

Rangers were royal officials employed to "range" through the countryside providing law and order (often against poaching). Their duties were originally confined to seeing that the Forest Law was enforced in the outlands, or purlieus, of the royal forests. Their duties corresponded in some respects with that of a mounted Forester.

In North America rangers served in the 17th and 18th-century wars between colonists and Native American Indian tribes. Rangers were full-time soldiers employed by colonial governments to patrol between fixed frontier fortifications in reconnaissance providing early warning of raids. In offensive operations, they were scouts and guides, locating villages and other targets for task forces drawn from the militia or other colonial troops. During the Revolutionary War, General George Washington ordered Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Knowlton to select an elite group of men for reconnaissance missions. This unit was known as Knowlton's Rangers, and was the first official Ranger unit for the United States, and are considered the historical parent of the modern day Army Rangers.

The word was resurrected by Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from the old British use for the wardens who patrolled the deer parks and forests in England.