Soon after the discovery of Helmcken Falls, a park was suggested to preserve the waterfall. Nothing happened, so in 1925 the B.C. Auto Club started a campaign to establish a park around the falls. The Minister of Lands, Duff Pattullo, was not interested and rebuffed the club by stating that the falls were there and could not get away, so why bother setting up a park. In the mid-1930s, there were more recommendations for a park at Helmcken Falls. Finally the government began to listen, mostly because a new Minister of Lands, Arthur Wellesley Gray, was interested in parks and recognized the growing need to preserve special places in British Columbia. In 1938, Gray and his Chief Forester, Ernest Manning, created Tweedsmuir Provincial Park in the Coast Mountains near Bella Coola and Hamber Provincial Park in the Rocky Mountains. In 1939, a forest ranger near Clearwater, Bill Noble, recommended a park and on November 28, 1939, Gray passed an Order-in-Council creating a huge park around most of the drainage basin of the Clearwater River. He named the park for himself (Wells was his nickname). In 1941, he and Manning were working on establishing a new park in British Columbia's Cascade Mountains when Manning was killed in a plane crash and that park was named E.C. Manning Provincial Park. Tourists and hikers of the 21st century owe much to the vision of Gray and Manning. The original park, when created, did not include Trophy Mountain or the Flourmill Volcanoes, and originally included the Pendleton Lakes in the west. In 1986, the Pendleton Lakes were eliminated from the park while the former two areas were added to the park.