Debates often break out about drilling for oil or mining for minerals over protected lands or wildlife refuges. Supporters of the operations value the materials extracted over the impact on the land, while those who oppose emphasize the loss of habitat and distress to the animals the extractions will cause. Lost among the debates is a startling fact: 27% of land in the U.S., over a million square miles in total, is considered federally protected. A lot of them are within 58 designated national parks, managed by an agency that does not get a lot of attention.

On this day, August 25, in 1916, the National Park Service was created as part of the Department of the Interior. President Woodrow Wilson, who signed the bill to establish the agency, gave it a mandate “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

The NPS counted among its supporters many civic and political leaders. J. Horace McFarland, the founder of the American Civic Association was one. As were Secretaries of the Interior Walter Fisher and Franklin K. Lane, along with Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson. Many of them campaigned to establish the national parks as a places of spiritual inspiration.