American magazine, July 2016

expert
3 MINUTES ON . . . National Parks
Katie Orr, CAS/MA ’11
National Park Service historian
Education coordinator, Cultural Resources
Office of Interpretation and Education
Yellowstone was
established by
Ulysses S. Grant in
1872 as
the world’s first
national park. Its
founding began
an international
movement: today
more than 100 countries have
about 1,200 national parks or
equivalent preserves. Most
people know Teddy
Roosevelt played a role
in advocating for the early parks,
but the National Park
Service was created within
the Department of the Interior
by Woodrow Wilson
in 1916, which is
why this year is the
centennial.
The act Wilson
signed states that
the fundamental
purpose of the park
service is “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.”
When it started, the park
service was primarily preserving
large tracts. In the 1960s there
was a historic preservation
movement and a conservation
movement that came out of the
activism of the time. This year is
actually the 50th anniversary of
the National Historic
Preservation Act,
which gave the
park service the
power to create the
National Register
of Historic Places,
which is part of a national
program to coordinate and
support public and private
efforts to identify, evaluate, and
protect America’s historic and
archaeological
resources.
Today the
national park system comprises
410 sites and covers
more than 84
million acres.
The mission of its
more than
20,000
employees is to
preserve natural and cultural
resources. It does this by
educating the public and
promoting the idea
that these places
are valuable.
I love the mission, this idea
that there’s a concentrated effort
to keep intact not just natural
resources for the sake of what
their gold value is, but to create a
sense of meaning among citizens
in this country and give us
pride in our land,
history, and shared cultures.
Last year
more than 307
million
people visited the 879
park service visitor centers and
contact stations. Great
Smoky Mountains
is the most visited. The park
service is growing and evolving
with the American people. We
listen; we
react; we make
a real effort to
be relevant. There has been a
series of acts of Congress over
the years to create
new ways for the
park service to
preserve history
and natural
resources, so the park
service isn’t a monolithic,
unchanging institution. We’re
always growing and looking for
new ways of
doing things to
meet the needs
of contemporary life.
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