On Aug. 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation that established the National Park Service within the Department of the Interior.
At that time, the Department of the Interior oversaw 14 national parks, 21 national monuments and the Hot Springs and Casa Grande Ruin reservations, according to the NPS. However, this network of units was disjointed, operating under no unified leadership.
Additionally, the units were vulnerable to private interests. Many of them exploited resources within the parks by hunting wildlife, grazing livestock and cutting down trees for lumber, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
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The many disparate units were unified into one integrated system, the National Park Service, with the Organic Act in 1916. Some of the largest proponents of this legislation included the National Geographic Society, journalists and railroad interests, the NPS said.
The legislation also created several roles to manage the NPS. One of which was that of an NPS director. The first was Stephen T. Mather, and then his successor Horace Albright. Both were also supporters of the Organic Act and were critical to its passage.
Over time, more units were placed under the purview of the NPS. In 1933, an executive order transferred 56 national monuments and military sites from the Forest Service and the War Department to the Park Service.
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According to the NPS, the action was “a major step in the development of today’s truly national system of parks – a system that includes areas of historical as well as scenic and scientific importance.”
Today, the NPS boasts more than 400 units of historical, scenic and scientific value in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and U.S. territories. Covering more than 84 million acres, the NPS is now managed by over 20,000 employees, according to the NPS.