Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks (Fodor's) - Fodor's [60]
Whatever persuasive prose Hedges used is not certain, but persuade them he did. A year later, one of these explorers was in the House of Representatives promoting the park plan. Also lobbying for Yellowstone were artist Thomas Moran, photographer William Henry Jackson, and U.S. Geological Survey director Ferdinand Hayden, who’d been appointed by Congress to lead an expedition to Yellowstone to validate the rumors of its otherworldly features. Congress was more than convinced of its merits to be preserved, and in early 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the bill creating Yellowstone National Park.
The 1890s saw the creation of several more national parks, as well as the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, which led to our first national forests. In 1906 the Antiquities Act passed, which allowed presidents to name national monuments. That same year, President Theodore Roosevelt established Devils Tower as the first such site, making Wyoming the home of both the first national park and first national monument.
Pioneering conservationists like Robert Underwood Johnson and John Muir advocated for further preservation of Western treasures. Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892 and is often called the father of the National Park System, greatly influenced Theodore Roosevelt, who went on to establish five national parks.
THE BIRTH OF THE NATIONAL PARK SYSTEM
By 1916 the Interior Department oversaw 14 national parks. In order to streamline the management of the national parks and monuments, President Woodrow Wilson approved legislation creating the National Park Service, or NPS. The mission of the new agency under the Interior Department was "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the 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."
While Washington made these lands protected, railroads made visiting them a reality. Thousands traveled west to such national parks as Grand Canyon, Glacier, Yosemite Valley, and Crater Lake, and stayed in the extravagant lodges constructed by the railroad companies.
GROWING PAINS
The parks initially had operated on the premise of preservation and visitor enjoyment, but by 1932, the park concept had expanded to include educational components with the formation of the NPS’s Naturalist Division. The naturalists were assigned to interpret park features to the public through educational outreaches. The park system had also begun to rethink its wildlife management practices.
The 1930s brought a core of hardy workers to the nation’s parks and forests through the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. A total of 41 work camps were set up within the national parks.
As the country’s population continued to grow, and society learned more about the environment and the effects of the Industrial Revolution, there was a need to take additional steps to retain pristine wilderness and historic areas. Congress addressed this in the 1960s and early ’70s with a host of legislative measures: the Wilderness Act (1964), National Historic Preservation Act (1966), Clean Air Act (1967), Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (1968), National Environmental Policy Act (1969), and the Endangered Species Act (1973).
NATIONAL PARKS TIMELINE
1872 Yellowstone National Park becomes the world’s first national park.
1890 Sequoia, Yosemite, and General Grant (later part of Kings Canyon) become national parks.
1902 President Theodore Roosevelt establishes his first of five parks, Crater Lake.
1903 Theodore Roosevelt makes Wind Cave the country’s seventh national park, and the first