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Yosemite National Park
Yosemite's Yosemite Valley was set aside for protection in 1864, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act — the first time the US federal government had ever set aside natural scenery specifically for public preservation, predating Yellowstone's 1872 designation as a full national park by eight years and establishing the legal precedent that made later national parks possible. Naturalist John Muir's advocacy for the valley through the late 19th century was instrumental in Yosemite's eventual 1890 designation as a national park, and Muir's specific campaigning — including a famous 1903 camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt inside the park — helped directly shape Roosevelt's broader conservation agenda during his presidency. The park's granite formations, including El Capitan and Half Dome, have made it one of the most significant rock-climbing destinations in the world, and El Capitan's roughly 3,000-foot vertical granite face has hosted numerous historically significant free-climbing achievements, including Alex Honnold's 2017 free solo ascent without ropes, later documented in the Oscar-winning film "Free Solo." Yosemite's combination of being the first landscape the US government ever protected, its direct role in shaping John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt's conservation legacy, and its status as one of the world's most significant rock-climbing destinations has made it one of the most historically foundational national parks in the entire system.
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Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, established in 1934, is consistently the most visited national park in the entire United States by a wide margin, drawing well over 12 million visitors annually — more than double the visitation of the next most popular park — a status driven substantially by its free admission and its position within a day's drive of a huge share of the eastern US population. The park straddles the border between Tennessee and North Carolina, and its name comes from the natural blue-tinted haze that often settles over the mountains, produced by volatile organic compounds released from the region's dense forest vegetation rather than pollution, a genuinely natural atmospheric phenomenon. The Great Smoky Mountains hold one of the most biodiverse temperate forest ecosystems in the world, home to more tree species than all of Northern Europe combined, along with a synchronous firefly species whose brief, coordinated flashing display each early summer has become its own significant seasonal tourist draw requiring a separate lottery-based viewing permit. Great Smoky Mountains National Park's combination of being the most visited national park in the country, its naturally occurring blue haze, and its exceptional forest biodiversity has made it the essential accessible-wilderness entry point for a huge share of the American population that might never otherwise visit a national park at all.
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