Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
100 YEARS OF SERVICE
In 1915, the Interior Department was responsible for the management of 13
national parks—including Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier—and 18 na-
tional monuments across the country. With no manpower outside of Wash-
ington D.C., however, the department relied on the U.S. Army to be on the
ground in Yellowstone and the California parks to enforce regulations against
hunting, grazing, and vandalism, and to develop park roads and buildings.
The other parks and monuments were superintended by civilian appointees,
many of whom lived more than a day's travel from the parks and monu-
ments they were protecting. Without oversight, conflict was unavoidable.
Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy Valley was dammed in 1913, to the heartbreak of
preservationist John Muir and others.
Prominent Chicago businessman Stephen T. Mather criticized the lack of man-
agement, and Interior Secretary Franklin K. Lane invited him to advise on park and
monument-related matters. Mather hired a young Horace M. Albright to be his prin-
cipal aide. Together the men worked to unite the once-divided conservationists and
the strict preservationists, like Muir, by focusing on the parks' value as tourist-driven
economic powerhouses. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson created the
National Park Service.
Mather was the first director of the National Park Service and Albright was his
assistant director. The men continued to promote the idea that greater visitation to the
parks would ensure their ultimate survival. The Park Service began to allow cars in
all the parks and encouraged hotels, museums, and park-related publications. During
the Great Depression, under Roosevelt's New Deal, the National Park Service super-
vised thousands of young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps who worked tire-
lessly in the parks on everything from infrastructure to trail-building. The number of
parks, and the resources within those parks, continued to grow.
Since 2006, national parks across the country have hosted listening sessions and
welcomed comments about their own vision and goals for the 2016 centennial of
the National Park Service. Visit the National Park Service website (
www.nps.gov
) to
learn about special celebrations in Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National
Parks, as well as parks and monuments across the country.
