Library Exhibit Celebrating NPS Centennial Includes Items from the Harold Selesky Travel and Tourism Collection

Native American Arrow Point shield of the National Park Service“100 Years of the National Park Service” exhibit

Date: Wednesday, August 03, 2016
Time: All Day
Location: Pearce Foyer, 2nd floor Gorgas Library

The beginning of the National Park Service as we know it today didn’t spring into being with the establishment of the first national park by the U. S. Congress on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone National Park, the first park in the United States and widely held to be the first national park in the world, was established by an act of Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, forty-four years before the creation of the National Park Service on August 25, 1916. Then in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order which consolidated all federally owned parks, monuments, cemeteries, and memorials into a single National Park System.The mission of the National Park Service is to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.

The exhibit highlights several collections held in the W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library of Division of Special Collections, including the Wade Hall stereo cards and photographs collections, the Willie T. White papers, the Woodward family papers, the Frank R. Hill travel journal, and the Harold E. Selesky travel and tourism collection. The exhibit is free and open to the public during regular library hours.

Contact Info: Martha Bace, mabace@ua.edu, 205-348-6388