The Importance of National Parks in the United States

As people began to explore more areas of the United States in the 1800s, they realized the need to preserve some of the nation’s natural resources, including its natural beauty. The first national park was Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872. Years later, President Theodore Roosevelt felt that many more areas of the nation needed to be preserved. He established a law called the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gave presidents the power to designate sites as national monuments. Roosevelt had a love for the outdoors and for conservation. He named many areas as national parks and monuments, such as Crater Lake in Oregon, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life. We must maintain for our civilization the adequate material basis without which that civilization can not exist. We must show foresight. We must look ahead.... There must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.