The image at the center of the sheet is a detail of the 1-cent Yosemite stamp issued in 1934, rendered here in light brown.

In 1864, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Act which granted the seven-mile Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees to the state of California to manage “for public use, resort, and recreation…inalienable for all time.” After the war, Americans saw how the railroad was destined to reshape the American West, and the Northern Pacific Railroad became one of the strongest proponents of creating national parks. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill that established more than two million acres as Yellowstone National Park — the world’s first national park.

By the early years of the 20th century, the West was dotted with new national parks, all of them formed, like Yellowstone, from large swaths of the public domain. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which was meant to protect archaeological sites, ancient artifacts, and objects of scientific interest. Roosevelt also used it to protect large areas from lease or development with an eye toward later converting them into parks. Roosevelt also named Devils Tower in Wyoming the first national monument and designated more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon a national monument, a prelude to it becoming a national park. Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson would later follow his lead, creating monuments that later became national parks.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the “Organic Act” that created the National Park Service. Its mandate was “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” The act integrated all parks and monuments into a single federal system with its own administration, a common mission, and a director to serve as a permanent advocate in Washington, D.C.

Over the years, the National Park Service has grown with the times. The invention of the automobile inspired countless Americans to drive across the county to visit parks, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought the War Department’s historic battlefields, monuments and parks under National Park Service management in 1933, along with monuments in Washington, DC, and other monuments managed by the Department of Agriculture.

Today the grand and scenic parks of the American West remain iconic and important sites, but the definition of a park has expanded, with the National Park Service now overseeing historical parks and sites, national monuments, battlefields and military parks, recreation areas, seashores, parkways, lakeshores and more. Each year, more than 275 million people visit a national park, where they find that some parks tell human stories at a human scale, from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, while others protect and preserve beautiful places and irreplaceable natural wonders and provide opportunities for adventure, relaxation and fun.

Our national parks have been honored numerous times on U.S. postage. Ten stamps were issued in 1934 to promote “National Park Year,” one stamp was issued in 1966 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service, and eight colorful stamps were issued in 1972 to celebrate the centennial of Yellowstone, the world’s first national park. Various other stamps have featured individuals, organizations, and places associated with parks, and photographs of several parks appeared on recent Scenic American Landscapes stamps for use on international mail.

In 2009, the U.S. Postal Service worked closely with the National Park Service to publish The Grandest Things: Our National Parks in Words, Images, and Stamps, a richly illustrated 116-page hardcover book that explores how our national park system began, the changes it has endured, and the astounding array of sites it includes. Still available for sale by the U.S. Postal Service, The Grandest Things comes with eight Scenic American Landscapes stamps and the 8-cent National Park Centennial stamp from 1972 featuring Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. The back of the book features spaces to collect all parks-related stamps, as well as blank spaces for future issuances.