National Parks have been called "the best idea America ever had." George Catlin, noted painter of the American Indian, first expressed the national parks idea. In 1872, following exploration of the Yellowstone regions in Montana & Wyoming territories, Congress created Yellowstone National Park. Four more parks were created in the 1890's: Sequoia, General Grant (forerunner of King's Canyon), Yosemite, & Mount Rainer. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act creating the National Park System (NPS), which was responsible for protecting the 40 national parks & monuments then in existence. Though we use the term "National Park" in a general sense when referring to the individual units within the NPS, the classification system used by the NPS actually encompasses 19 separate designations. Some are descriptive listings, such as lakeshores, seashores, & battlefields, but others also include titles that can't be neatly catagorized because of the diversity of resources within them. The National Park System today is comprised of more than 380 areas covering more than 83 million acreas in 49 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, & the Virgin Islands. There are only 59 National Parks designated as such in the NPS.
We visited our first National Park on October 18, 2001. That park was the Grand Canyon here in our home state of Arizona. Not only did we visit the south rim, where the vast majority of visitors see the canyon, but we also took a long fire road back to the north rim. We thought that view was the most beautiful. Our next park didn't come until we visited the Petrified Forest on November 5, 2004. The next five we kind of spread out time wise and it was after these that we made up our minds that we'd like to visit all 59 of the National Parks in the National Park System. As of September 13, 2008 we had visited 53 of the 59 parks. We just returned home on September 16, 2014 after completing our "Bucket List" of all of the 59 National Parks. It was an amazing experience and one that is a dream of a lifetime completing a goal such as this. I have written more and have pictures on the Alaskan page on this website. There is also a page for our slideshow.
Thank you, America, for giving us the most beautiful places in the world to see and visit. You don't need to go overseas to see beauty, just stay here in this gorgeous Country of ours and see all the sights and wonders of nature.
Jeff & Muriel Emery