The National Parks, Monument and other Sites of the United States had been put under the protection of the National Park Service, which service came into existence on 25 August 1916, when then President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Organic Act, and having its headquarters in Washington, D. C, within the main headquarters of the Department of the Interior. That federal bureau would be responsible for maintaining all of the parks and monuments that would be under the direction of the department. Since the creation of this government agency, the National Park Services had come to expand to over 433 separate park units,² more than 150 related areas and other programs which assist in conserving the natural and cultural heritage of this land for the purpose of benefiting people now and in the future.

The 433 individual park units managed by the National Parks Service contain more than 85 million land acres (132,812 square miles), 68,561 archeological sites, 43,162 miles of shoreline, 27,000 historic structures, 21,000 buildings, 12,250 miles of trails, 8,500 miles of roads and 121.6 million objects in museum collections, all of which are to be found within the park units in all fifty states, the District of Columbia and US territories. Within the current parks service, there are some nineteen primary naming designations and eleven other designations, of which the most are commonly referred to as just Parks.

For the full list of naming designations, please click the down arrow for the next section on this page.

Southwest of Hawaii