National Park Service Celebrates 100 Years

 

NPS logo.jpg (59329 bytes)2016 marks the centennial of the National Park Service. The NPS is an agency "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such a manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

Although we are celebrating 100 years of the National Park Service this year, artist George Catlin, famous for his paintings of Native Americans, in 1832 first expressed the idea of land being preserved for everyone. He pondered what impact America’s westward expansion would have on the Native Americans, the wildlife and the wilderness he so much enjoyed.

Nothing happened with Catlin’s idea until 1864 when President Abraham Lincoln signed an act of Congress to transfer the federally-owned Yosemite Valley and nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the State of California on condition that it would "be held for public use, resort, and recreation … inalienable for all time." Then in 1871 the Senate Public Lands Committee presented a park legislation bill to Congress, using Yosemite as a precedence, to protect the Yellowstone region, keeping it in federal custody and unavailable for development. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill into law in 1872, creating Yellowstone National Park as the world’s first of many to come.

Once the proverbial ball started rolling, Congress continued the preservation path with an act in 1875 making most of Michigan’s Mackinac Island a national park. (In 1895, the Federal Government turned it back over to the State of Michigan for development as a State park.). Sequoia and Yosemite became national parks in 1890, Mount Ranier in 1899, Crater Lake in Oregon in 1902, Wind Cave in South Dakota in 1903, Mesa Verde in Colorado in 1906, Glacier in Montana in 1910. You can see the progression.

There was a plethora of others all before August 25, 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service to oversee the already established national parks. The NPS was directed by the legislation to "conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

President Theodore Roosevelt was one of the park system’s greatest patrons. During his administration (1901-09) he created five new parks, as well as 18 national monuments, four national game refuges, 51 bird sanctuaries, and over 100 million acres of national forest.

Today, according to the NPS, twenty-seven states and the territories of American Samoa and the United States Virgin Islands have national parks. The total area protected by national parks is approximately 51.9 million acres. The NPS employs more than 20,000 alongside about 221,000 volunteers in 412 national parks, monuments, battlefields, military parks, historical parks, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, recreation areas, scenic rivers and trails, and the White House.


Back to Table of Contents