The United States has 60 protected areas known as national parks that are operated by the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior. National parks must be established by an act of the United States Congress. A bill creating the first national park, Yellowstone, was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, followed by Mackinac National Park in 1875 (decommissioned in 1895), and then Rock Creek Park (later merged into National Capital Parks), Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890. The Organic Act of 1916 created the National Park Service "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and 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." Many current national parks had been previously protected as national monuments by the president under the Antiquities Act before being upgraded by Congress. Seven national parks (including six in Alaska) are paired with a national preserve, areas with different levels of protection that are administered together but considered separate units and whose areas are not included in the figures below.
Criteria for the selection of national parks include natural beauty, unique geological features, unusual ecosystems, and recreational opportunities (though these criteria are not always considered together). National monuments, on the other hand, are frequently chosen for their historical or archaeological significance. Fourteen national parks are designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS), while twenty one national parks are designated UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BR). Eight national parks are designated in both UNESCO programs.
Twenty-nine states have national parks, as do the territories of American Samoa and the United States Virgin Islands. California has the most (nine), followed by Alaska (eight), Utah (five), and Colorado (four). The largest national park is Wrangellâ€"St. Elias in Alaska: at over 8 million acres (32,375 km2), it is larger than each of the nine smallest states. The next three largest parks are also in Alaska. The smallest park is Gateway Arch National Park, Missouri, at approximately 192.83 acres (0.7804 km2). The total area protected by national parks is approximately 52.2 million acres (211,000 km2), for an average of 870 thousand acres (3,500 km2) but a median of only 229 thousand acres (930 km2). The most-visited national park is Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, with over 11.3 million visitors in 2017, followed by Arizona's Grand Canyon, with over 6.2 million. In contrast, only 11,177 people visited the remote Gates of the Arctic in Alaska in the same year.
A few former national parks are no longer designated as such, or have been disbanded. Other units of the National Park Service (417 altogether) are broadly referred to as national parks within the National Park System.
National parks
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See also
- List of areas in the United States National Park System
- List of the United States National Park System official units
- History of the National Park Service
- List of National Monuments of the United States
- List of U.S. National Forests
- List of World Heritage Sites in the United States
References
External links
- Official website of the National Park Service
- Find a Park by the NPS
- The National Parks: America's Best Idea by PBS
- Visitor use statistics
- America's Natural Heritage - The Essential Guide to the National Parks by the Washington Post
