How North America Learned to Protect Wild Places

Established on March 1, 1872, it was the first area in the world formally set aside by a national government as a national park. It also sits atop the Yellowstone Caldera, which supplies roughly half of the world geothermal features, including Old Faithful.

Canada first national park began in 1885 as Rocky Mountains Park after hot springs were found near the present Banff townsite. Today Parks Canada manages it and it anchors the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.

Established in 1890 on top of a state-managed grant Abraham Lincoln signed in 1864, Yosemite shows protection being passed from state to federal care. John Muir advocacy for its granite cliffs and sequoia groves helped found the American conservation movement.

Proclaimed on September 24, 1906 under the new Antiquities Act, it was the first national monument in the United States. The NPS source says so directly, and the tower is sacred to multiple Plains tribes, who know it as Bear Lodge.

Set aside as Mount McKinley National Park on February 26, 1917, it was renamed and greatly enlarged in 1980. The 1980 expansion added a preserve where sport hunting is allowed, so one landscape now holds two levels of protection.

Protected first as a forest reserve in 1893 and a national monument in 1908, it became the 15th national park on February 26, 1919. Protection came in stages here, and the canyon walls expose nearly two billion years of geological history.

Established on December 6, 1947, it protects the southern twenty percent of the original Everglades and shelters the Florida panther, American alligator and American crocodile side by side. It now carries UNESCO World Heritage, Biosphere Reserve and Ramsar designations.

Congress gave it wilderness protection in 1978 after decades of lesser designations dating to the 1920s. Motorized watercraft and logging are prohibited, so its lakes are reached chiefly by canoe along routes used for centuries.

Created by Congress in 1980 and renamed in 1984 for Senator Frank Church, it is the largest contiguous wilderness in the continental United States outside Alaska. It is closed to roads and motorized vehicles.

Land-use agreements reached in 2006 and finalized in 2016 placed most of this coastal forest off limits to industrial logging. The rest is managed jointly with First Nations governments, a newer model of protection built on agreement.