‘National Parks,’ in the traditionally understood sense

Proposed cuts to the Park Service's budget suggest a misunderstanding of the agency’s evolving mission

A majestic landscape in the traditionally understood sense, in Glacier National Park (John Clayton photo)

In last week’s 2026 budget proposal, President Donald Trump sought to cut $900 million from the operations budget of the National Park Service—40 percent of the agency’s annual funding. Explaining why, the document said, “The National Park Service responsibilities include a large number of sites that are not ‘National Parks,’ in the traditionally understood sense.”

I believe these potential cuts would be disastrous. (Congress traditionally alters Presidential budget proposals, so these could be considered more of a statement of Presidential priorities than a funding certainty. Troubling either way.) Furthermore, I believe these cuts arise from the administration’s misunderstanding—or perhaps willful ignorance—of the mission, culture, and history of the Park Service.

Then again, plenty of generally well-informed readers often know less about the basics of the Park Service than advocates might assume. So here is a primer, in the form of a natural story.

The United States began setting aside majestic landscapes in 1872, with Yellowstone. Yosemite, Sequoia, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake followed over the next 30 years. The political process was haphazard, budgets nearly nonexistent, and operations often farmed out to other agencies.

But the 1910s See America First movement, fueled by patriotism and automobiles, brought national parks a high tourist profile. Wealthy adventurers who might otherwise have gone to Europe were especially drawn to national parks with the outbreak of World War I in Europe. Thus the National Park Service was founded in 1916, to bring the parks a unified mission, organizational structure, and meaningful budgets.

Over the last hundred-plus years, the agency has become one of the best-loved arms of the federal government. It’s full of honorable people doing righteous work. It facilitates a great deal of happiness and fulfillment for a wide swath of Americans. For citizens and international visitors alike, national parks have become the landscapes that represent America’s strength and glory.

Nevertheless, the agency has acted as political scientists would predict: with ambition. Founder Steve Mather knew that to get eastern Congresspeople to vote for his budgets, he needed eastern parks. His work led to Acadia, the Great Smokies, Shenandoah, and the Everglades. These differed from the traditionally understood sense in that they were not in the West, not necessarily majestic mountains, and not “pristine” (that is, unfamiliar to white people). The residents dispossessed to create these parks included not only Indigenous people but also poor whites.

The agency also expanded in mission: in 1933 it took over national battlefields, cemeteries, and other military parks. These differed from the traditionally understood sense in that they were not about nature. They were about patriotism. As their visitors shifted from veterans to general members of the public, their function, staffing, and operations shifted as well.

With the 1930s rise of ecological sciences and the 1935 founding of the Wilderness Society, Americans became increasingly concerned about the dangers of tourism overdevelopment. Thus parks such as Olympic, Kings Canyon, and Big Bend differed from the traditionally understood sense in that they represented a shift from pleasing tourists to preserving ecosystems. This decades-long shift affected all parks, but it’s easiest to see in the relatively minimal roads and hotels on the maps of these 1930s–40s parks.

But the agency didn’t ignore recreationists. Indeed it established National Recreation Areas, often centered on lakes created by federal dams. I’m most familiar with Wyoming’s Bighorn Canyon and Flaming Gorge—and to be honest, they strike me as massive subsidies for the powerboating industry. I don’t have a problem with that; I like both powerboaters and these diverse places. But if the goal is cost-cutting, these parks, in the words of the budget document, “receive small numbers of mostly local visitors and are better categorized and managed as State-level parks.” In other words, their differences from the traditionally understood sense make them leading candidates for culling—despite their importance to rural economies and conservative-leaning powerboaters.

The current set-up is not perfect. There may well be sites that don’t deserve national park status, much like Mackinac National Park (1875–1895, now a state park) or Sullys Hill National Park (1904–1931, now a wildlife refuge). However, the other five decommissioned national parks—including Platt National Park (1906–1916), now part of the Chickasaw National Recreation Area—continue to be run by the Park Service, so traditional decommissioning may not yield much savings.

National Seashores, National Lakeshores, National Preserves, National Historic Sites, National Memorials, National Parkways, National Wild and Scenic Rivers… the Park Service now manages more than 400 sites, in 18 different types. Each site was consecrated by Congress. (The exception is National Monuments, which are created by the President rather than Congress. But Theodore Roosevelt created the first National Monument in 1906, ten years before Mather created the National Park Service, which is to say that National Monuments are among the best examples of “National Park Service responsibilities… in the traditionally understood sense.”)

I suppose it’s possible that Congress will decide that it has spent the last century wrongly expanding the Park Service’s scope. Maybe Congress will see the Park Service—at 1/15^th of 1 percent of the federal budget—as the key that unlocks fiscal restraint. If so, I hope Congress will explicitly decommission these sites, rather than taking the cowardly route of simply zeroing out their budgets. I can’t believe that any of this is what voters want, although I’ve been wrong in such beliefs before.

But if it’s true that America wants to turn back the Park Service’s clock, I think the important question is: To when? Which sites make the cut, and why? Joshua Tree (park status 1994)? Arches (park status 1971) and Canyonlands (park status 1964)? Cape Cod (a National Seashore from 1961)? Gettysburg (a National Cemetery and Military Park, run by the Park Service since 1933)? To me, these may not be “‘National Parks’ in the traditionally understood sense,” but they are certainly national treasures, symbols of America’s strength and glory. They Make America Great Still, and deserve far better than what this proposed budget provides.