The World's Oldest National Parks

National parks are important. They offer sanctuaries where people can retreat into nature even though buildings are going up all around them. You would think that this is something that we only recently started worrying about. However, it's been a concern for a long time. In fact, some of the oldest national parks in the world were established in the nineteenth century, long before a lot of people started worrying about the problems of urbanization.

The oldest established National Park is Yellowstone National Park located here in the United States. It was established back in 1872 right after the National Park Service was created. This was when people started to worry about the importance of protecting the nature that was starting to be destroyed by urban development.

Canada soon followed suit with its first National Park. Banff National Park was established in 1885. It was established because of a controversy over the land here. Hot Springs were discovered in the area and some people wanted to commercialize them whereas others wanted to keep them free for the public. Keeping beautiful land available for all people at low cost or no cost is a key reason that we have national parks.