Visitors to Yellowstone National Park watch the eruption of the Grand Geyser in the park's Upper Geyser Basin. Established on March 1, 1872, in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, Yellowstone contains the greatest concentration of the world’s hot springs and geysers.

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Visitors drive through Shoshone Canyon in Yellowstone National Park. America’s—and the world’s—first national park, Yellowstone attracts three million visitors a year today.

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In this stereoscopic photograph, President Theodore Roosevelt stands at Glacier Point in California’s Yosemite National Park. One of the park system’s greatest patrons, Roosevelt established five national parks during his administration.

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A photo from the end of the 19th century captures a panorama of California’s Yosemite National Park, established in 1890. Naturalist John Muir led the crusade to establish the park. “No temple made with human hands can compare with Yosemite,” he wrote.

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A couple braves the edge of Overhanging Rock at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park. Hanging 3,000 feet (914 meters) above the ground, the rock is a favorite site for photographs and for visitors seeking a spectacular view of the Yosemite Valley.

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A photograph shows Ayer's Peak (left) and Cape Split at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Established as a national park in 1919, the Grand Canyon had previously been designated as both a forest reserve and a national monument. Today nearly five million people visit the canyon each year.

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A woman dares a closer look over the edge following a snowfall at the Grand Canyon. The side-by-side photographs give a single, three-dimensional image when viewed through a stereoscope.

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An early adventurer scales a wall of rock in Arizona's Grand Canyon. Though popular outlooks are often crowded with visitors, most of the park’s 1,904 square miles (4,931 square kilometers) are maintained as wilderness, and the more adventurous can hike the park’s many backcountry trails.

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Mules provide a surefooted ride along a high trail in the Grand Canyon. Mule rides are still popular today in the park.

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Visitors to Oregon’s Crater Lake relax in a boat near Wizard Island, a classic cinder cone named for its resemblance to a wizard’s hat. The deepest lake in the United States, Crater Lake is more than 1,900 feet (580 meters) deep. It sits in Mount Mazama, a dormant volcano in the Cascades.

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A black bear rummages through garbage pails on a wagon in Yellowstone National Park in this stereoscopic image. Both black bears and grizzly bears inhabit Yellowstone and can be seen between March and November.

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A man stands inside the Wawona Tree, a giant sequoia in Yosemite National Park’s Mariposa Grove. Cut in 1881, the tree’s tunnel attracted thousands of tourists wanting to pass beneath it in their vehicles. Weight from fallen snow caused the tree to collapse in 1969.

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A panorama photograph shows Balcony House, one of the highlights of Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. Overlooking Soda Canyon, the 40-room dwelling was built by a prehistoric people once called the Anasazi (now the ancestral Puebloans), who built their dwellings into cliff recesses around A.D. 1200.

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People navigate a trail on horseback in Van Trump Park, part of Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park. Established in 1899, the national park’s centerpiece is Mount Rainier, one of the world’s most massive volcanoes and the tallest peak in the Cascade Range.

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Stark Peak, now known as Grinnell Point, rises above a waterfall in Glacier National Park, Montana. Founded in 1910, Glacier National Park and its Canadian neighbor, Waterton Lakes National Park, are administered separately but cooperate in wildlife management and other areas.

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A panorama shows Lake Bryanthus and Mount Rixford at Kings Canyon National Park in California. Kings Canyon, established in 1940, and neighboring Sequoia National Park, established in 1890, began to be jointly administered in 1943.

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1 / 16

Visitors to Yellowstone National Park watch the eruption of the Grand Geyser in the park's Upper Geyser Basin. Established on March 1, 1872, in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, Yellowstone contains the greatest concentration of the world’s hot springs and geysers.

Grand Geyser, Yellowstone, Circa 1912

Photograph by Stereo-Travel Co., Library of Congress

Travel

Enchanting Vintage Pictures Show National Parks When They Were Young

When Congress created the National Park Service in 1916, Americans were just beginning to discover what writer Wallace Stegner called "the best idea we ever had."

Published April 3, 2018

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