Administrative LawPARA 2231

July 15, 2010Mark David Mink

• National Park Service was created in 1916, through the “Organic Act,” signed by President Woodrow Wilson.

• Fundamental purpose is to “conserve the scenery, and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide or the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

NPS CREATION AND PURPOSE

• National Park Service covers 84 million acres, comprised of 392 areas including: 122 Historical Parks or sites

74 Monuments58 National Parks24 Battlefields18 Preserves18 Recreation Areas10 Seashores 4 Parkways 4 Lakeshores 2 Reserves

NPS Areas and Acreage

First National Park – Yellowstone National Park

Established March 1, 1872 – The as the nation’s and the world’s first national park.

Largest National Park – Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, consisting of 13.2 million acres.

Smallest unit – Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial consisting of 0.02 acres.

Yellowstone National Park

• Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park

• Kennesaw Mountain – National Battlefield Park

• Martin Luther King Jr. – National Historic Site• Chattahoochee River - National Recreation

Area• Ocmulgee National Monument• Andersonville – National Historic Site• Jimmy Carter - National Historic Site• Fort Pulaski – National Monument Site• Fort Frederica – National Monument Site

NPS - Georgia

• Cumberland Island National Seashore Georgia’s largest and southernmost barrier island 4000 years of human history Four major historic districts – 87 structures on

National Register of Historic Places Oldest known ceramics in North America Pristine maritime forests Undeveloped beaches Wide marshes 50 miles of hiking trails accessible only by foot

• In 1838, the United States government forcibly removed more than 16,000 Cherokee Indian people from their homelands in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia, and sent them to Indian Territory (today known as Oklahoma).

• The impact to the Cherokee was devastating. Hundreds of Cherokee died during their trip west, and thousands more perished from the consequences of relocation. This tragic chapter in American and Cherokee history became known as the Trail of Tears, and culminated the implementation of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which mandated the removal of all American Indian tribes east of the Mississippi River to lands in the West.

• Thirty-one forts were built for this purpose on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.

• The Appalachian Trail is a 2,175-mile long public footpath. Conceived in 1921 and completed in 1937, private citizens built the trail and thousands each year volunteer to maintain its footprint. 

• The A.T. is managed cooperatively by the National Park Service, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC), volunteers from 30 local A.T. Clubs, the USDA Forest Service, and other public land-managing agencies.

• From Maine’s Mount Katahdin and Georgia’s Springer Mountain, this footpath traverses scenic, wooded, pastoral, wild and culturally resonant lands through 14 of the eastern United States.

QUESTIONS?