Theodore Roosevelt, often called the conservation president, impacted the National Park System well beyond his term in office. He doubled the number of sites within the National Park system.
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During his very active presidency, Theodore Roosevelt established approximately 230 million acres of public lands between 1901 and 1909, including 150 national forests, the first 55 federal bird reservation and game preserves, 5 national parks, and the first 18 national monuments.
Theodore Roosevelt called President Grant the “father of the national parks” for signing into existence the first National Park in the U.S. In 1871 Congress allocated $40,000 (then a huge sum) to finance an expedition to an area called Yellowstone, a location that then was mainly known from traveler's stories.
But Roosevelt did not create Yellowstone. More than 30 years before his visit, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, establishing the first national park in the world.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park is an American national park of the badlands in western North Dakota comprising three geographically separated areas. Honoring U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, it is the only American national park named directly after a single person.
Although Theodore Roosevelt did not establish the National Park Service, his conservation activities as President of the United States created the foundation on which the agency was founded a decade later. The NPS today oversees more than 400 units, including national parks, monuments, and historical sites.
Roosevelt went on to strengthen the protections of public lands, campaigning on conservation for the Vice Presidency in 1900 and later as President, establishing the National Parks system that currently protects not just Yellowstone, but 85 million total acres of American lands.
What Is the State With the Most National Parks? That state with the most national parks is California, with nine of the nation's 61 national parks within its borders. The total acreage of these nine national parks in California is more than 6.3 million acres.
The smallest park is Gateway Arch National Park, Missouri, at 192.83 acres (0.7804 km2). The total area protected by national parks is approximately 52.4 million acres (212,000 km2), for an average of 833 thousand acres (3,370 km2) but a median of only 220 thousand acres (890 km2).
A bill creating the first national park, Yellowstone, was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872, followed by Mackinac National Park in 1875 (decommissioned in 1895), and then Rock Creek Park (later merged into National Capital Parks), Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890.