The first effort by any government to set aside such protected lands was in the United States, on April 20, 1832, when President Andrew Jackson signed legislation to set aside four sections of land around what is now Hot Springs, Arkansas to protect the natural, thermal springs and adjoining mountainsides for the future disposal of the US government. It was known as the Hot Springs Reservation. However no legal authority was established and federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877.

The next effort by any government to set aside such protected lands was in the United States, when President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on June 30, 1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias (later becoming the Yosemite National Park) to the state of California:

Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, California, USA.

In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the world's first truly national park. When news of the natural wonders of the Yellowstone were first published, the land was part of a territory. Unlike Yosemite, there was no state government that could assume stewardship of the land, so the Federal Government took on direct responsibility for the park, a process formally completed in October 1, 1890. It took the combined effort and interest of conservationists, politicians and especially businesses - namely, the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose route through Montana would greatly benefit by the creation of this new tourist attraction - to ensure the passage of the legislation by the United States Congress to create Yellowstone National Park.

The 'dean of western writers,' American Pulitzer prize-winning author Wallace Stegner has written that national parks are 'America's best idea,' - a departure from the royal preserves that Old World sovereigns enjoyed for themselves - inherently democratic, open to all, "they reflect us at our best, not our worst." [1] Even with the creation of Yellowstone, Yosemite, and nearly 37 other national parks and monuments, another 44 years passed before an agency was created in the United States to administer these units in a comprehensive way - the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). Interestingly, it was a businessman, Stephen Mather, who pushed hardest for the creation of the NPS, writing then-Secretary of the Interior Franklin Knight Lane about such a need. Lane invited Mather to come to Washington, DC to work with him to draft and see passage of the NPS Organic Act, which was approved by Congress and signed into law on August 25, 1916.

The number of areas now managed by the National Park Service in the United States consists of 391 different sites, of which only 58 carry the designation of National Park.

Following the idea established in Yellowstone there soon followed parks in other nations. In Australia, the Royal National Park was established just south of Sydney in 1879. In Canada, Banff National Park (then known as Rocky Mountain National Park) became its first national park in 1885. New Zealand had its first national park in 1887. In Europe the first national parks were a set of nine parks in Sweden in 1909. Europe has 370 national parks at the moment.[2]

After World War II, national parks were founded all over the world. The Vanoise National Park in the Alps was the first French national park, created in 1963 after public mobilization against a touristic project.

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