With the National Parks celebrating their 100th anniversary, and gas prices low, it may be the prefect year to plan a road trip to one of the 58 National Parks.
“The Centennial will celebrate the achievements of the past 100 years, but it is really about the future,” the National Park Service has on its website. “It’s about kicking off a second century of stewardship for America’s national parks and for communities across the nation.”
NPS was created by an Act of Congress August 25, 1916. Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 as the nation’s first national park.
The mission of the NPS is to preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations. The National Park Service cooperates with partners to extend benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world.
An estimated 307.2 million visitors filled parks in 2015. The most visited national park is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which draws more than 10 million visitors annually, twice as many as the second most popular park in the country, Grand Canyon, which had 5.5 million visits in 2015.
Other top visited parks include Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, Yosemite in California, Yellowstone covering 2.2 million acres in three states, Zion in Utah, Olympic in Washington state, Wyoming’s Grand Teton, Acadia in Maine, and Glacier National Park in Montana.