National Park Service
100 Years of Service, Protection and Support
with 28 different designations: 128
historical parks or sites, 81 national
monuments, 59 national parks, 25
battlefields or military parks, 19
preserves, 18 recreation areas, 10
seashores, 4 parkways, 4 lake shores,
and 2 reserves. The Wrangell-St.
Elias National Park and Preserve is
the largest park with 13.2 million
acres and the Thaddeus Kosciuszko
National Memorial is the smallest
at 0.02 acres. Mojave National
Preserve with 1.6 million acres
(and growing) is the 3rd largest
national park/preserve in the lower
48 states.
Lassen Volcanic National Park
On August 25, 2016, the National Park Service
turns 100! President Woodrow Wilson signed the
Organic Act on August 25, 1916 that established
the United States National Park Service (NPS).
Congress had previously established Yellowstone
National Park as the nation’s (and the world’s) first
national park on March 1, 1872, but it was not until
the passage of the Organic Act that full protection
of park lands became law. President Wilson or the
parks’ first stewards could not have imagined that
their dream of landscape and wildlife preservation
for future generations would grow into a vast
network of parks, forests, monuments, battlefields
and coastline that have become some of the most
photographed, painted and visited destinations in
the world.
In those formative years, the NPS managed 35
national parks and monuments. Today, the National
Park System covers more than 84 million acres,
12
THE DESERT LIGHT
|
Centennial Edition
More than 305 million people
visited national parks in 2015, and
the forecast for the 2016 Centennial Year indicates
visitation will easily exceed the 2015 numbers.
“The increasing popularity of our national parks
comes as we are actively reaching out to new
audiences and inviting them to explore the depth
and breadth of the national park system,” said
National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis
recently. “Record visitation tests the capacity of
the park system and challenges parks to continue
to provide great experiences for all visitors,” Jarvis
said. “Park managers are adjusting to make sure
they have sufficient staff to provide interpretive
programs, answer visitor questions, respond to
emergencies and to keep restrooms, campgrounds
and other facilities clean. “
It’s a heavy and increasing workload. The National
Park Service has a paid staff of approximately
22,000 to 25,000 or about .00026 employees per
acre, and a budget smaller than the City of Austin
Texas. Volunteers, through the Volunteers in Parks
(VIP’s) program and National Park Service Friends
groups provide millions of additional work hours
to support the legislation that sparked a dream into
reality one hundred years ago. Friends Groups,