The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government, within the U.S. Department of the Interior. The service manages all national parks; most national monuments; and other natural, historical, and recreational properties, with various title designations. The United States Congress created the agency on August 25, 1916, through the National Park Service Organic Act. Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C., within the main headquarters of the Department of the Interior.
In 1934, a series of ten postage stamps was issued to commemorate the reorganization and expansion of the National Park Service.
NPS Preliminary Survey party, Great Smoky Mountains, 1931
Grand Canyon National Park, south rim of canyon.
Customs House at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site in Salem, Massachusetts
Yellowstone National Park is a national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular. While it represents many types of biomes, the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Ferdinand V. Hayden (1829–1887), an American geologist who convinced Congress to make Yellowstone a national park in 1872
Portrait of Nathaniel P. Langford (1870), the first superintendent of the park
Great Falls of the Yellowstone, U.S. Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories (1874–1879), photographer William Henry Jackson