History of the National Park Service (United States)
Arrowhead of the National Park Service
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| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Employees | 21,000 |
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| Parent agency | Department of the Interior |
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| Website | www.nps.gov |
Since 1872 the United States National Park System has grown from a single, public reservation called Yellowstone National Park to embrace over 450 natural, historical, recreational, and cultural areas throughout the United States, its territories, and island possessions. These areas include a diverse varieties of areas —National Parks, National Monuments, National Memorials, National Military Parks, National Historic Sites, National Parkways, National Recreation Areas, National Seashores, National Scenic Riverways, National Scenic Trails, and others.
The national park idea has been credited to the artist George Catlin. In 1832 he traveled the northern Great Plains of the United States, where he became concerned about the destruction of the Indian civilization, wildlife, and wilderness as eastern settlements spread westward. He wrote, “by some great protecting policy of government... in a magnificent park... a nation’s park, containing man and beast, in all the wild[ness] and freshness of their nature’s beauty!”
Catlin’s vision had no immediate effect. In the east, romantic portrayals of nature by James Fenimore Cooper and Henry David Thoreau and painters Thomas Cole and Frederick Edwin Church began to compete with prevailing view of wilderness as a challenge to overcome. Slowly unspoiled nature and spectacular natural areas of the West became better known, the idea of saving such places became of interest.
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