By: Grace Wright
March 1, 1872 was the day Yellowstone National Park became officially approved by the U.S. congress. The founding of Yellowstone National Park helped start the wave of new parks in over 100 different nations and 1,200 parks.
After Yellowstone became a National Park there were many different monuments and new National Parks, but the issue was that depending on where it was located, it was managed by many different government departments; this made things complicated. The 3 departments involved were: the Department of the Interior, the War Department and the Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture.
On August 25, 1916 an act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson creating the National Park Service. It was a new department responsible for protecting the 35 parks and different monuments that the Department of the Interior was responsible for. It wasn’t until 1933, when an executive order transferred 56 monuments and military sites from the two other departments, that all of the National Parks fell under 1 department These steps have been most important to help build the National Park Systems we know today.
One person who was very important to these steps was Theodore Roosevelt. He was known as the “Conservation President”, he impacted the system well beyond his life. When he was president in 1901-1909 he doubled the number of parks known. He established 5 parks in his time, Crater Lake in Oregon, Wind Cave in South Dakota, Sully’s Hill in North Dakota, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and Platt in Oklahoma. Some of these are not here today but they have still made an impact.
The National Park system in the U.S. includes 400 areas that cover more than 84 million acres in the 50 states but also the District of Columbia, Guam, Virgin Islands and many more.
The National Parks still strive to meet the goals of protecting the diverse cultural and recreational resources, being an advocate and helping to preserve our natural world. The National Park Service employs more than 20,000 people and they care for 400+ National Parks and monuments.
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