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On Aug. 8, 1906, President Teddy Roosevelt issued a proclamation changing the name of the Gran Cañón Forest Preserve – a whopping 1,851,250 acres whose Spanish name nods to the Gran Cañón del Colorado, the steep-sided result of one raging river – to the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve.
One decade later – on August 25, 1916 – President Woodrow Wilson signed an act that established our National Park Service, including 22 sites across Arizona.
Today, 425 national park sites (spanning more than 84 million acres) dot every state in the country, including the territories of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Guam.
– Hannah Van Sickle, The Arizona 100