Who doesn’t love a birthday?  On August 25, let’s all celebrate the 107^th birthday of the National Park Service!

On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act, creating a new federal bureau within the Department of Interior to protect the 35 existing parks.  It was called the National Park Service.  The purpose of the new agency, according to the legislation that created it, is “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife 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.”  However, the story of the National Park Service actually began long before then, and it involved two other U.S. presidents.

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant designated Yellowstone as the first national park and placed it under the control of the Secretary of the Interior. Then, in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt enacted the Antiquities Act, which gave presidents the authority to create national parks, monuments, forests, and reserves. During his presidency, Roosevelt established 5 national parks and 18 national monuments.

After the passage of the Organic Act in 1916, management of national parks fell to the National Park Service; in 1933, an executive order also transferred control of national monuments and certain military sites to the Park Service.

Today, the National Park Service manages and protects 425 sites in all 50 states.  This amounts to more than 85 million acres of natural spaces and historic sites. The largest national park is Wrangell – St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska. It encompasses over 13 million acres! The smallest national park, at only 0.2 acres, is Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in Pennsylvania. In recent years, national parks have received more than 300 million visitors annually, and as additional sites are added to the National Park System, that number will only grow.

If you want to join in the anniversary celebrations, you can attend a special event at a nearby park unit (like this one at Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park) or share #YourParkStory on social media. The National Park Service website also has many ideas of how to celebrate!

As Pulitzer Prize winner and environmentalist Wallace Stegner said, “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” At Jefferson National Parks Association, we are so proud to support these American treasures, and we wish the National Park Service a very happy birthday!