Father Bernard R. Hubbard was a Jesuit priest and professor of geology at Santa Clara University in California, who had been exploring Alaska's volcanoes and glaciers every summer season since 1927 and writing about them in best-selling books and in publications such as National Geographic and the Saturday Evening Post. Intrigued by the Alaska Peninsula's volcanoes, he first visited the Aniakchak region in 1930. Hubbard and four companions arrived at the mouth of the Aniakchak River in June 1930. They used a open motorboat to boat up the river, then explored the caldera, finding fumaroles in the crater. They returned in 1931 in time to document (somewhat inaccurately) the aftermath of the May eruption. In 1932 Hubbard and pilot Frank Dorbrandt flew into the caldera and landed on Surprise Lake. Hubbard's dramatically written but mostly accurate descriptions of the region appeared in the New York Times and captured popular imaginations, publicizing the Aniakchak region for the first time. A follow-up article by Barrett Willoughby in the Saturday Evening Post entitled The Moon Craters of Alaska discussed Hubbard's expedition to Aniakchak and nearby Mount Veniaminof in greater detail. National Park Service director Horace M. Albright and his then-assistant Arno B. Cammerer saw the stories and started preparation of documents to proclaim a national monument under the Antiquities Act. After the proposed boundary was altered to exclude regions thought by the USGS to be potential oil sources, the proposed monument was circulated among other federal and territorial agencies for comment. Although there was no particular objection to the monument, there was no strong push for the designation, and the Aniakchak project was shunted aside in favor of a proclamation expanding Katmai National Monument.