The concept of a protected natural area under national ownership originated in the United States in 1870 with the establishment of Yellowstone National Park. Protecting areas of outstanding scenic beauty quickly grew into a cherished aspect of national policy. The National Park Service, created in 1916 to administer the national park system, has responsibility over more than 350 separate areas totaling about 81 million acres (32.5 million hectares), visited by nearly 290 million people annually. Besides famous and majestic national parks, the system also includes and preserves monuments, recreation areas, seashores, lake shores, parkways, forts, bridges and scenic trails as well as historic parks, sites and battlefields. State parks and municipal parks and playgrounds are equally diverse and sizable. New York City’s urban park system alone contains some 10,530 hectares.

As highways spanned the United States and automobile ownership was democratized, national parks changed from wildernesses or playgrounds for the wealthy to accessible and affordable vacation destinations for average Americans and foreign visitors. Crowds make cursory seasonal visits, peering at scenic vistas from car windshields: tours of the parks of the Southwest and West constitute family pilgrimages rivaling journeys to Disneyland and Disneyworld. Extended families use them as gathering places for reunions. Caravans and retired elderly people cruise between campgrounds redesigned for large recreational vehicles.

National and large state parks, as multiple-use enclaves, have become pivotal battlegrounds for the innate tensions between conservation and use. Dependent for their very existence on tourism and stimulated by public interest in nature and recreation, parks, paradoxically, are involved in a constant struggle to preserve natural beauty and wildlife by attempting to control use. Those interested in environmentalism, backpacking and preserving a more pristine wilderness become pitted against others who prefer to open parks to more recreational and year-round pursuits such as boating, fishing, hunting, rock climbing, recreational vehicles and mountain bikes. In the West, parks have also become controversial sites of animal management, fire control, grazing, forestry and subsurface rights.

Chronically under-funded by Congress, the Park Service must mediate these competing national impulses. Parks serve as classrooms providing educational programs on naturalistic, historical and environmental issues. Environmentalists seek presentations that encourage preservation and heighten awareness of pollution. Historians and minority groups want greater accuracy and socially inclusive historical explanations. Pressure to commercialize and privatize park facilities, meanwhile, is unrelenting. Corporate financial sponsorship of programs and capital improvements, which many view as intrusive, selfserving public relations, is a constant temptation. Lobbyists push porkbarrel projects and commercial development under the guise of improving parks. While Americans view national parks with reverence, they also regard recreational activities as a civic right. Hence, utilization policies must balance political pressure for special and narrow uses with simultaneous protection of a heritage for the future.