View beautiful Sandstone Falls at New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
NPS, giving the agency a 70% approval rating for its management of the park system. Surveys also show that the national parks get a 95% overall approval rating from visitors. “The public looks upon national parks almost as a metaphor for America itself,” says Loren G. Fraser, chief of the NPS Office of Policy. Since the National Park Service’s Centennial in 2016, marking its 100th year of operations, America has been blessed with four new national parks. They include Gateway Arch National Park , in St. Louis, Missouri (2018); White Sands National Park , New Mexico (2019); Indiana Dunes National Park , Indiana (2019); and, just dedicated in February 2021, New River Gorge National Park & Preserve , in West Virginia. So let’s take a closer look at America’s newest national parks, beginning with the 63rd and newest of them, New River Gorge. Tucked away in the original COVID-19 stimulus package passed by Congress in December 2020 was a pleasing bit of “pork” that resulted in the designation of New River Gorge National Park & Preserve. Situated in southeastern West Virginia, this rugged 73,000-acre stretch of Appalachian canyon land
If you’re brave, attack the rapids on the New River.
AMERICA’S NEWEST NATIONAL PARKS By Dave G. Houser It was back in 1916 when President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Organic Act with a mission to administer, preserve and protect the nation’s then-fledgling network of 14 national parks and 21 national monuments. Following more than a century (105 years) of progress, the National Park Service (NPS) today oversees a network of 423 national parks, monuments, historical parks, battlefields, military parks, seashores, lakeshores, recreation areas, scenic rivers, and trails—in every state, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa. Visitation to America’s national parks in 2019 reached 327.5 million and contributed more than $40 billion to the nation’s economy. Meanwhile the National Park Service operates on a skimpy annual budget of less than $3 billion. That’s roughly the cost of one-and-a-half B-2 Stealth bombers. The public clearly appreciates the
AMERICA’S NEWEST NATIONAL PARKS
COAST TO COAST FALL MAGAZINE 2021
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