Alford Milford Turner (1868-1944) received the Pugsley Silver Medal in 1931 “for his services as field secretary of the Connecticut State Park and Forest Commission,” Born in 1868, in Linchfield, Connecticut, Turner came from illustrious lineage.  One forefather was an early settler in America, migrating from England in 1636.  Other family members were founders of the town of Northfield in 1760.  This heritage was not something Turner took lightly, as was later reflected in his dedication to preservation and conservation in Connecticut.   

His academic training began at Wilbraham Academy, Massachusetts, and culminated with a degree in civil engineering from Yale in 1890.  After graduation he had short experiences as a school teacher in his home town and then with the Erie Railroad in New Jersey, before returning in 1892 to work for the engineering firm of Albert B. Hill of New Haven laying out trolley lines and “bits of State roads”.  He left the firm in 1905 and ventured into the business world, where he joined the Connecticut White Lime Company.  By 1913 he was in business for himself. 

In 1909, the Connecticut legislature created a temporary state park commission and charged it with preparing a plan for acquiring and organizing parklands.  In 1911, the state accepted its first gift of a park property at Mount Tom and perhaps in response to this, in 1913 the legislature authorized a permanent park commission.  The commission held its first meeting in September 1913 the legislature authorized a permanent park commission.  The commission held its first meeting in September, 1913, and recognized the need to employ a full-time person to determine criteria by which the suitability of potential areas for state parks could be evaluated. 

They hired Turner as temporary field secretary in March 1914.  Fortunately for Connecticut, his temporary appointment evolved into a 28 year stay until his retirement in 1942.  Turner undertook one of the first state park surveys in the U.S. and his report, published in the infancy of the state park movement, became a classic model for others to follow.  Similarly, his biennial reports of the commission’s work were widely read by others involved in state parks. 

In his 1917 biennial report, Turner reflected on how his interest in state parks was aroused: 

I failed to pay much attention to the matter of State Parks until early in 1914. Then I took a walk along the Connecticut shore, rubbed my eyes, and cogitated, or at least made the attempt. I began to bear testimony from others, who, like myself, “used to” go clam-digging, picnicking, or camping, along the shore, on the river, or among the lakes and mountains, but had been driven out from this or that familiar spot all over the State. I found whole lakes and mountain-tops in the possession of individuals who had bought and paid for them, and could enjoy them only by excluding everybody else. I found the shore of Long Island Sound an almost endless row of individual vagaries, nondescript caricatures of habitation, alternating with miles of sea-walls, land-walls, and hedges, behind which towered huge piles of granite, brick, or concrete, which I judged also to be habitations, though the casual democratic eye might frequently conclude otherwise.  

I tried to imagine the changes of the next thirty years, and still future thirties, and very gradually I began to perceive that natural scenic beauty and the unrestricted private ownership of land are things apart, and quite incompatible. That is, the small landowner fairly clogs the landscape with his wooden dreams, and the big one walls it up.  

It was one thing to establish a few state parks, but something else to plan, develop and operate them effectively.  One important consideration was to think of parks in terms of a system, rather than as just a set of separate, unrelated properties.  Turner pioneered this system approach in a 1914 report to the Connecticut legislature which discussed such factors as natural sustainability, distribution, size, accessibility and level of development of park properties.  Other states subsequently built on Turner’s ideas, but his report became the point of departure for others. 

He started acquiring land for state parks almost immediately after he was appointed.  By the end of World War I, the commission had acquired thirteen properties totaling 5,960 acres.  However, the war took a toll on park budgets, and by 1918 virtually none of the parks were open for public use.  As Turner believed that a park was not a park “until it was used and enjoyed” his immediate post-war efforts were reoriented to persuade the commission and legislature to invest in making the new properties accessible to the public.  In 1919, which is the first year in which records were kept, 6,440 people picnicked and camped on the parks then in existence.  By 1923 this had increased to 313,871 visitors and by 1937 visitation reached 2.77 million at 37 state parks incorporating 14,036 acres. 

Turner believed that the parks should be kept as natural as possible with only those minimum facilities which are absolutely necessary for the convenience of users.  He said: 

So long as man is born with eyes and ears and arms and legs, he will continue to use them in various ways, and it turns out that some of those ways are impossible to him in the city.  At the end of a week, or a month, or a year, or in some cases, possibly a lifetime, the city sights and sounds and pavements become unbearable and a rest and contrast become as necessary as sleep at night.  To the fortunate few who may have a country house or a shore cottage with an automobile or so, the problem is easy.  What for the rest?  The dry highway and the ‘no trespass’ sign. 

When Turner was initially hired, he undertook personal inspection of every inch of Connecticut shoreline between Rhode Island and New York.  Later, he explored the inland portions of the state in similar detail, thus giving him intimate knowledge of where good parkland could be found.  This knowledge also earned him the respect and trust of the commission.  His suggestions were generally accepted.  Nevertheless, Turner always respected the role of the commission and worked under its guidance. 

He foresaw the contemporary problems of external factors intruding on the integrity of a park reiterating George A. Parker’s insight that “When you are in a park, all that you see is in the park” (Parker was the pioneering parks director in Hartford, Connecticut). Turner observed:  

Lawyers will never understand this; they believe only in certain time-honored forms of incantation adopted in their so- called instruments of conveyance, which are all very well in their way, but tell us noting of the blue dome overhead, or the form and distance of the sky-line.  

He believed that a “corollary of state parks” was that the landscape of streets should be softened by trees and landscaping: “We are still distinguishing sharply between highways and parkways, though there is now no physical reason why a large percentage of our highways should not also become parkways.” 

Turner was widely recognized and admired for his sound philosophy and farsighted innovations in the field.  This status was exemplified by his appointment by Stephen Mather to the first ten person executive board which was formed to launch and guide the National Conference on State Parks.  His unrelenting passion and commitment for state parks made Turner an outstanding advocate for them. 

Indeed with Richard Lieber and William Welsh (although he administered a single project at the Palisades Park rather than a state system), Turner was in the vanguard of state park leaders in the first third of the twentieth century.  Turner and Lieber both established exemplary park systems in their respective states and left enduring legacies that are perhaps unequalled among state park directors. 

In 1942, Turner retired at the age of 74.  He died in 1944, and his ashes were placed in one of the state parks that he loved so much.  An appropriate finale for a man, which connected him to the land that was his home and his passion.  A state park was named after the Turner family’s ancestral name and connection to the area in recognition of his contributions (and those of another founding family, the Humiston’s).  Hence, it was called Humiston Brooke State Park.  This naming reflected Turner’s own rules for naming parks.  He felt that preference should be given to names that included natural features appearing on maps in current use.  When family names for parks were adopted he believed they should have historical significance.