| Director of National Park Service | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Appointer | President of the United States |
| Formation | 1917 |
| First holder | Stephen T. Mather |
| Website | nps.gov/aboutus/director.htm |
The Director of the National Park Service of the United States is nominated by the President and requires a Senate confirmation.
| # | Image | Name [2] | Term of office | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start | End | |||
| 1 |  | Stephen Mather | May 16, 1917 | January 8, 1929 |
| 2 |  | Horace M. Albright | January 12, 1929 | August 9, 1933 |
| 3 |  | Arno B. Cammerer | August 10, 1933 | August 9, 1940 |
| 4 |  | Newton B. Drury | August 20, 1940 | March 31, 1951 |
| 5 |  | Arthur E. Demaray | April 1, 1951 | December 8, 1951 |
| 6 |  | Conrad L. Wirth | December 9, 1951 | January 7, 1964 |
| 7 |  | George B. Hartzog Jr. | January 9, 1964 | December 31, 1972 |
| 8 |  | Ronald H. Walker | January 7, 1973 | January 3, 1975 |
| 9 |  | Gary Everhardt | January 13, 1975 | May 27, 1977 |
| 10 |  | William J. Whalen III | July 5, 1977 | May 13, 1980 |
| 11 |  | Russell E. Dickenson | May 15, 1980 | March 3, 1985 |
| 12 |  | William Penn Mott Jr. | May 17, 1985 | April 16, 1989 |
| 13 |  | James M. Ridenour | April 17, 1989 | January 20, 1993 |
| 14 |  | Roger G. Kennedy | June 1, 1993 | March 29, 1997 |
| 15 |  | Robert Stanton | August 4, 1997 | January 2001 |
| 16 |  | Fran P. Mainella | July 18, 2001 | October 16, 2006 |
| 17 |  | Mary A. Bomar | October 17, 2006 | January 20, 2009 [3] |
– |  | Daniel Wenk (acting) | January 20, 2009 | October 2, 2009 |
| 18 |  | Jonathan Jarvis | October 2, 2009 [4] | January 3, 2017 |
– |  | Michael T. Reynolds (acting) | January 3, 2017 | January 24, 2018 [5] |
– |  | P. Daniel Smith (acting) | January 24, 2018 [5] | September 30, 2019 [6] |
– |  | David Vela (acting) | October 1, 2019 [6] | August 7, 2020 [7] |
– |  | Margaret Everson (acting) | August 7, 2020 | January 20, 2021 |
– | Shawn Benge (acting) | January 20, 2021 [8] | December 16, 2021 | |
| 19 |  | Charles F. Sams III | December 16, 2021 [9] | January 20, 2025 |
– | Jessica Bowron (acting) | January 20, 2021 | Present | |
Yosemite National Park is a national park of the United States in California. It is bordered on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers 759,620 acres in four counties – centered in Tuolumne and Mariposa, extending north and east to Mono and south to Madera. Designated a World Heritage Site in 1984, Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, groves of giant sequoia, lakes, mountains, meadows, glaciers, and biological diversity. Almost 95 percent of the park is designated wilderness. Yosemite is one of the largest and least fragmented habitat blocks in the Sierra Nevada.
The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all national parks; most national monuments; and other natural, historical, and recreational properties, with various title designations. The United States Congress created the agency on August 25, 1916, through the National Park Service Organic Act. Its headquarters is in Washington, D.C., within the main headquarters of the Department of the Interior.
The National Mall is a landscaped park near the downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institution, art galleries, cultural institutions, and various memorials, sculptures, and statues. It is administered by the National Park Service (NPS) of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit of the National Park System. The park receives approximately 24 million visitors each year. Designed by Pierre L'Enfant, the "Grand Avenue" or Mall was to be a democratic and egalitarian space—unlike palace gardens, such as those at Versailles in France, that were paid for by the people but reserved for the use of a privileged few.
Canyonlands National Park is a national park of the United States located in southeastern Utah near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into numerous canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their respective tributaries. Legislation creating the park was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 12, 1964.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 is an act that was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906. This law gives the president of the United States the authority to, by presidential proclamation, create national monuments from federal lands to protect significant natural, historic, or scientific features. The Act has been used more than a hundred times since its enactment to create a wide variety of protected areas.
A national recreation area (NRA) is a protected area in the United States established by an Act of Congress to preserve enhanced recreational opportunities in places with significant natural and scenic resources. There are 40 NRAs, which emphasize a variety of activities for visitors, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing, swimming, biking, horseback riding, and wildlife viewing, in areas that include multiple-use management for both conservation and limited utilization of natural resources. They have diverse features and contexts, being established around reservoirs, in urban areas, and within forests. Due to their size, diversity of activities, and proximity to population centers, NRAs are among the most visited units of the National Park System, with six among the thirty most visited sites.
Edwin Cole Bearss was a historian of the American Civil War, tour guide, and United States Marine Corps veteran of World War II.
Steamtown National Historic Site (NHS) is a railroad museum and heritage railroad located on 62.48 acres (25.3 ha) in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the site of the former Scranton yards of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). The museum is built around a working turntable and a roundhouse that are largely replications of the original DL&W facilities; the roundhouse, for example, was reconstructed from remnants of a 1932 structure. The site also features several original outbuildings dated between 1899 and 1902. All the buildings on the site are listed with the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Yard-Dickson Manufacturing Co. Site.
The Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, located in Plains, Georgia, preserves sites associated with Jimmy Carter (1924–2024), 39th president of the United States. These include his residence, boyhood farm, school, and the town railroad depot, which served as his campaign headquarters during the 1976 election. The building which used to be Plains High School serves as the park's museum and visitor center. When Carter lived in Plains, the area surrounding the residence was under the protection of the United States Secret Service. The residence is also the burial site of Carter and his wife, First Lady Rosalynn Carter (1927–2023); the residence and gravesites of the Carters will not open to the public until sometime after Jimmy Carter's state funeral and burial in January 2025.
The Statue of Liberty National Monument is a United States national monument comprising Liberty Island and Ellis Island in the states of New Jersey and New York. It includes the 1886 Statue of Liberty by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and the Statue of Liberty Museum, both situated on Liberty Island, as well as the former immigration station at Ellis Island, which includes the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital.
Arches National Park is a national park of the United States in eastern Utah. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 mi (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. The park contains more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches, including the well-known Delicate Arch, which constitute the highest density of natural arches in the world. It also contains a variety of other unique geological resources and formations. The national park lies above an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area.
Zion National Park is a national park of the United States located in southwestern Utah near the town of Springdale. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park has a unique geography and a variety of life zones that allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals, and 32 reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones: desert, riparian, woodland, and coniferous forest. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches. The lowest point in the park is 3,666 ft (1,117 m) at Coalpits Wash and the highest peak is 8,726 ft (2,660 m) at Horse Ranch Mountain. A prominent feature of the 229-square-mile (590 km2) park is Zion Canyon, which is 15 miles (24 km) long and up to 2,640 ft (800 m) deep. The canyon walls are reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone eroded by the North Fork of the Virgin River. The park attracted 5 million visitors in 2023.
Jonathan B. Jarvis served as the 18th Director of the United States National Park Service, confirmed by the United States Senate on September 25, 2009, and serving until his retirement on January 3, 2017.
Raymond David Vela is a parks administrator who is the former acting director of the United States National Park Service.
P. Daniel Smith is a longtime United States government administrator who is a former acting director of the U.S. National Park Service in the first Trump administration.
Margaret Everson is an American lawyer who served as the acting director of the United States National Park Service for six months and the acting director of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for 15 months during the first Trump administration. She is the only person to have headed both the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service.
The home of Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, president and first lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981, is located at 209 Woodland Drive in Plains, Georgia, United States. It is the only house that the Carters ever owned, and they occupied it from 1961 until Rosalynn's death in 2023 and Jimmy's the following year. They are now buried on the property.