National Park System

National Park System. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant designated 4.2 million acres of public land in Wyoming as Yellowstone National Park.Thus began a vast park system eventually administered by the National Park Service, established in 1916 within the Department of the Interior. By the 1990s, the NPS oversaw 54 national parks and 112 national historic sites and historical parks, along with an array of national memorials, monuments, battlefields, seashores, parkways, scenic trails, and recreation areas.

The origins of the national‐park idea go back to the earlier growth of urban parks. Starting with New York City's Central Park in 1857, many cities created parks to provide healthful recreation for their residents. This goal, in turn, influenced the wilderness‐preservation movement. The first legislation aimed at preserving a wilderness area, California's Yosemite Grant of 1864, setting aside the Yosemite Valley, was explicitly intended to provide healthful leisure for Californians. The valley was protected on the condition that it be kept open to the public. This goal of promoting public relaxation and enjoyment was reflected in the subsequent management of the valley and of Yosemite National Park (1890). The commissioners thinned trees and dredged lakes, for example, to make the valley more “park‐like.”

From the first, changes in technology profoundly affected the National Park System. Transcontinental railroads allowed easier access to parks, and the dry‐printing process made possible the mass production of photographs that enhanced park publicity. As the parks became democratized, urban, middle‐class tourists arrived in growing numbers. The rise of the automobile and a national highway system brought still more visitors. Managers at Yellowstone, Yosemite, and other parks responded by building more roads, hotels, and tourist facilities.

With more tourists came congestion and many of the problems associated with urbanization. By the 1950s, visitors were voicing unhappiness with park management because of overcrowding. By the 1990s, the parks and sites administered by the NPS were attracting upward of 250 million visitors annually, creating profound tensions between the dual goals of public access and wilderness preservation. However, the founders of the National Park System had from the first encouraged citizens to enjoy recreation in a newly “civilized” wilderness. The problems confronting America's National Park System at the end of the twentieth century were thus rooted, ironically, in the overwhelming success of the system's original goal: to provide outdoor recreation on a large scale to the American people.
See also Conservation Movement; Motor Vehicles; Muir, John; Parks, Urban.

Bibliography

Samuel P. Hays , Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920, 1959.
Alfred Runte , National Parks: The American Experience, 1979.

Michelle Lee Park