A friend of mine recently bought a popup camper and my husband is beyond envious. He has dreams of cramming all of us into an Airstream camper and driving cross country, checking out a host of national parks along the way. I am not totally averse to all parts of this plan since I happen to love camping and I love our national parks. But there’s something about “wide open spaces” and a camper that don’t mesh for me. I prefer a tent – a big tent – for camping. It just feels more authentic (though some might say crazy).
I’ve been thinking about the park system a lot lately (summer is coming). We’ve visited a number of our national parks but nowhere near the 394 that are located here. That’s a pretty astounding number if you think about it. It works out to nearly eight per state even though that’s a bit misleading since one state doesn’t have a national park at all (Delaware, in case you’re curious). Other odd trivia: the largest park is in Alaska (Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve) and the smallest park is in my home state of Pennsylvania (Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial).
Of course, if I had gotten my act together a little earlier, I might have planned to check some of the parks out this week. It’s National Park Week and to celebrate, all entrance fees will be waived through April 24, 2011. You can find a park near you here.
The National Park Service is, of course, part of the Department of the Interior. It was founded nearly 100 years ago by President Wilson in 1916. If that seems late to you, it’s because you’re probably familiar with our first national park, Yellowstone, which was established much earlier, in 1872.
The National Park Service (NPS) is funded by a combination of entrance fees, concessions and federal tax dollars. In 2010, the NPS budget was $3.16 billion. That same year, 281,303,769 visitors utilized the park system – that’s nearly the entire population of the United States (the US Census puts the estimated 2009 population at 307,006,550). If you do the math, as math geeks like me are wont to do, the budget works out to about $11 per visitor. That’s pretty amazing when you consider the amount of work it takes to preserve our green spaces, promote our history and celebrate our heritage…
I know there are a lot of taxpayers who don’t visit the parks and I would encourage you to make an effort to seek one out (you folks in Delaware can scoot up 95 to Philadelphia). It’s free for a couple more days… What could be better than that?
