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, stating that there were no benefits to protecting waterfalls which "wouldn't go away". 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, an Order-in-Council was approved, creating a huge park around most of the drainage basin of the Clearwater River. The park was named for Gray (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. In 1940, just after the park was created, Chess Lyons (namesake of Mount Lyons) and his assistant, Huntley Campbell (namesake of Mount Huntley/Huntley Col) thoroughly surveyed the park and produced a detailed report with photos. Lyons and Campbell are responsible for about a quarter of its current place names, all carefully researched to remember settlers, prospectors, explorers, forest rangers, and other people who had lived and worked in the Clearwater Valley. 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.
