Imagine it's 1890. Settlers are headed west in droves, carrying their lives with them into a land of ambiguous hope (funny how they're called settlers when they were the ones that wouldn't settle for where they were).
There are hardly any rules or regulations to abide by -- traffic laws, housing encampments, destruction of property. You couldn't trust anyone.
This "looking out for me" mentality is most shameful in its interaction with the native landscape and inhabitants, the exploitation and disrespect of such leading to much needed reparations centuries later.
It was in 1819 when the first act of recognition to preserve these lands came to fruition. Congress established that Yellowstone was a public park under the control of the Secretary of the Interior, though it would take several decades for rules and regulations to really be enforced. This caused a spark for national parks to be created all around the world; a desire by the masses to care for something so beautiful and deserving.
As with anything new, the management was fairly ad-hoc and run by various groups and organizations, until the National Parks Service was put into place in 1916.
Over 430 parks exist in the US today, though personally I've only visited about a dozen. As a kid we went to Yosemite a couple times, and these photos I took on a more recent trip in 2022. It's funny when I graduated with my associates degree in humanities, one of the common jobs listed for it was a forest ranger, and I think there is still an era in my life that I'll get to be a steward for nature in these majestic parks we roam.
Source: www.nps.gov
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