Yellowstone, the world's first national park
- Date
- 1 March 1872
- Category
- Environment & climate
- Region
- United States
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On 1 March 1872 President Ulysses S. Grant signed the act establishing Yellowstone National Park in the territories of Wyoming and Montana, creating the first federally protected national park in the world.
The legislation set aside more than two million acres of geysers, canyons and wildlife as a public reserve "for the benefit and enjoyment of the people", withdrawing the land from private settlement and resource exploitation. Coming amid the rapid industrialisation and frontier expansion of the post-Civil-War era, Yellowstone embodied a new idea: that governments should preserve outstanding natural landscapes for their scenic, scientific and recreational value rather than treat all land as a commodity. The concept spread quickly. Within a generation national parks and reserves were created in Australia (Royal, 1879), Canada (Banff, 1885), New Zealand (Tongariro, 1887) and elsewhere, making the national park one of the most widely exported institutions of the modern conservation movement. Yellowstone helped catalyse a broader nineteenth-century environmental awakening, alongside figures such as John Muir and the founding of bodies devoted to wildlife and wilderness protection. The model would eventually shape protected-area policy across the globe and underpin the twentieth-century growth of conservation and tourism alike.
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Empires active in 1 March 1872
- German Empire1871 CE – 1918 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
Related environment & climate events
- Eruption of Mount Tambora and the Year Without a Summer10 April 1815 (climactic eruption); global cooling through 1816
- 1931 Central China FloodsJune–August 1931
- The Dust Bowl1930–1940 (peak 1934–1936)
- Laki Fissure Eruption and the Mist Hardships Famine8 June 1783 – 7 February 1784
- Bhopal Gas DisasterDecember 2-3, 1984
- The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster1986
Further reading
The wider story
A New Green History of the World
The classic accessible account of how environment and climate have shaped human history.
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