A black and white photo of an encampment around a hot spring in Arkansas.
Ral City was the name given to illegal encampments made in the Hot Springs Reservation. Credit: NPS Photo

If you asked 250 national park enthusiasts a simple question — whether or not Yellowstone was the first national park — less than half would answer correctly. 

I ran this exact test on my Instagram. The correct answer is that, technically, Yellowstone was not the first unit in our national park system to be protected by the federal government. 

An screenshot showing the results of an Instagram story survey.

Two of the parks in our national park system were protected before Yellowstone in 1872. One of them is a little-known and little-understood park in Arkansas. The other is just as famous as Yellowstone itself. 

The First Federal Reserve

In 1832, President Andrew Jackson established the Hot Springs Reservation in Arkansas. It was the first time a landscape was ever set aside for its preservation and future use.  

The reservation was created to preserve natural, non-volcanic hot springs in the Ouachita Mountains. They were believed to have therapeutic properties, used by Native Americans and settlers alike, for curing ailments that ranged from arthritis to alcoholism. 

Over the course of the 19th century, the federal government had to fight to properly control access to these springs. In many cases, squatters established encampments around the springs, causing conflict. You can learn more about how these conflicts arose and were handled in my book, A Short History of the National Parks: The Southeast

A black and white photo of an encampment around a hot spring in Arkansas.
Ral City was the name given to illegal encampments made in the Hot Springs Reservation. Credit: NPS Photo

In the early 1900s, the first director of the National Park Service, Stephen Mather, became obsessed with the Hot Springs Reserve and wanted to see it added to the national park system. In 1921, he got his wish and thermal pools and bathhouses built around them were re-designated as Hot Springs National Park

The Yosemite Grant

In the early 1800s, Americans were beginning to realize that the privatization of a natural wonder could ruin it. That is what had occurred at Niagara Falls, which was choking under the tourists, industry, grifters and scams on its banks. 

In the 1860s, it was agreed that this couldn’t be allowed to happen in California’s stunning Yosemite Valley. Somehow, it needed to be protected for the public and for posterity. 

At the time, most of the West was in the public domain, and the federal government was giving it away as fast as it could through laws like the 1861 Homestead Act. 

These laws posed a threat to the Yosemite Valley — basically anyone could make a homestead claim on the valley floor. It could very easily fall into private hands and end up like Niagara Falls. 

At this point in American history, there was no conception of a natural park to protect a landscape. There was no blueprint for what needed to be accomplished, so a new solution needed to be cleverly devised. 

Congress did just that, opting to pass legislation granting the reservation of the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa grove of giant sequoias to the State of California. This would prevent private settlement, but still keep it in the public domain, open and available for all Americans to enjoy. 

An 1888 map of the Yosemite Reserve
An 1888 map of Yosemite Valley. The borders of the 1864 Yosemite Grant can be seen drawn in a dotted line around the canyon. Credit: Yosemite Library

It was called the Yosemite Reserve, and Congress passed the legislation to create it on June 30, 1864. 

In 1890, through the advocacy of John Muir and Robert Underwood Johnson, Yosemite National Park was established, protecting the watersheds of the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers. It did not include the valley itself, which was still held by the state of California under the terms of the 1864 Grant. In 1905, again through the advocacy of John Muir, California’s grant was abolished and Yosemite Valley was unified with the surrounding national park. 

Will is a social studies teacher from Michigan who moonlights as an American conservation historian. He graduated from Calvin University with degrees in history, education, and classics, degrees he employs...