Preservation Nation

What exactly IS a National Park, you might ask?

Hold on! Let's stop right there. Let me say, before we go any further, that I am not a good writer. Want to know which AP exam I didn't pass in high school? Yep. English. I LOVE to read, but I suck at writing. Do I put a comma here, use a semi colon there, capitalize this??? I don't know! And honestly, I'm too lazy to look it up. Yes, I realize I work at a PR firm where writing is the shit, but I'm an artist. So screw it. I don't know if "National Parks" needs to be capitalized, but it's MY BLOG, so I make the decisions.

Here's what Wikipedia says (If it's on Wiki, you KNOW it must be true): The United States has 58 protected areas known as national parks, which are operated by the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior. National parks must be established by an act of the United States Congress. The first national park, Yellowstone, was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, followed by Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890.

Congress is continually adding and removing parks from this list (which is a growing controversy). The most recent park was added in 2004, so most likely my list will grow and change in the years to come.

Unfortunately, there are very few National Parks in the southeast.  The most famous, of course, is the Smoky Mountains National Park. There are a handful of smaller parks east of the Mississippi, but, for the most part, they are all out west. Which makes this little project of mine tough. There are eight in Alaska alone. Eight!! And there's one in the American Samoas. (I'll probably have to leave that one until I find me a sugar daddy.)

Want to learn more about the National Parks? The easiest way is to go the the National Park Service website. For a government website, it's actually pretty informative.

For an in-depth history of the parks (and a generally amazing documentary), check out Ken Burns' film "The National Parks: America's Best Idea".

And if you're like me, and all you want to do is look at pictures, head on over to Amazon. I hear they have some books there.

Wherever they are located, the National Parks are this country's last bit of wilderness. So yippee ki-yay mother-earth lover!