YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — On March 1, Yellowstone National Park (YNP) will celebrate its 154th birthday. It was founded in 1872 as the first national park, not only in the U.S. but in the world.

According to YNP, humans have occupied the greater Yellowstone area dating back to the last ice age, between 13,000 years ago and 11,000 years ago. To this day, 27 listed Tribes have historic connections to the lands and resources now found within the park.

The National Park Service (NPS) writes that the foundation of YNP in the 19th century began a worldwide national park movement, and today more than 100 nations contain some 1,200 national parks or equivalent preserves. The NPS confirms on its website that the wonders of Yellowstone captured through William H. Jackson’s photographs, Thomas Moran’s paintings and Henry Wood Elliot’s sketches caught the attention of the U.S. Congress, which established the park just six months after the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 (led by geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden).

On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the YNP Protection Act into law. The NPS confirms that Nathaniel P. Langford, a member of the Washburn Expedition and advocate of the YNP Act, was appointed as the first superintendent, an unpaid position. The NPS writes that Langford entered the park only two times during five years in office, and protected the wildlife and other natural features without laws or money to build basic structures and hire law enforcement rangers.

“The Yellowstone Park is something absolutely unique in this world, so far as I know.”

President Theodore Roosevelt

After Langford was removed from the post in 1877, due to what the NPS calls “political pressure,” Philetus W. Norris was appointed the second superintendent and authorized appropriations by Congress “to protect, preserve and improve the park.”

According to the NPS, Norris constructed roads, built a park headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs and campaigned against hunters and “vandals.” Much of the primitive road system that Norris laid out remains as the Grand Loop Road today.

But what followed Norris’ removal, again due to what the NPS writes was “political maneuvering,” three successive superintendents and 10 assistant superintendents acting as police “could not protect the park. … Poachers, squatters, woodcutters and vandals ravaged Yellowstone.”

On Aug. 20, 1886, the NPS confirms the U.S. Army took charge of YNP, posting and enforcing regulations in the Park.

In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt embarked on the most extensive presidential visit to YNP.

“The Yellowstone Park is something absolutely unique in this world, so far as I know,” President Roosevelt wrote.

Finally, three decades after the Army took charge of the Park, the NPS Organic Act was passed by Congress and approved by President Woodrow Wilson on Aug. 25, 1916. Eventually, in 1929, President Herbert Hoover signed the first bill changing the park’s boundaries: The northwest corner to include a significant area of petrified trees, the northeast corner to be defined by the watershed of Pebble Creek, the eastern boundary to include the headwaters of the Lamar River and part of the watershed of the Yellowstone River.

In 1932, President Hoover also issued an executive order that added more than 7,000 acres between the northern boundary and the Yellowstone River, west of Gardiner, Montana, to provide winter range for elk and other ungulates.

The NPS acknowledges that visitors have “unparalleled opportunities” to observe wildlife in an intact ecosystem, explore geothermal areas that contain about half the world’s active geysers and view geologic wonders like the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River within YNP’s 2.2 million acres.

View photographs of early days in YNP here.

This story runs annually.