The National Park to Park Highway was an

auto trail The system of auto trails was an informal network of marked routes that existed in the United States and Canada in the early part of the 20th century. Marked with colored bands on utility poles, the trails were intended to help travellers in ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in the 1910s and 1920s, plotted by A. L. Westgard. It followed a large loop through the

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

, connecting twelve National Parks: * Rocky Mountain National Park *

Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowston ...

* Glacier National Park *

Mount Rainier National Park Mount Rainier National Park is an American national park located in southeast Pierce County and northeast Lewis County in Washington state. The park was established on March 2, 1899, as the fourth national park in the United States, preservi ...

Crater Lake National Park Crater Lake National Park is an American national park located in southern Oregon. Established in 1902, Crater Lake is the fifth-oldest national park in the United States and the only national park in Oregon. The park encompasses the caldera of ...

Lassen Volcanic National Park Lassen Volcanic National Park is an American national park in northeastern California. The dominant feature of the park is Lassen Peak, the largest plug dome volcano in the world and the southernmost volcano in the Cascade Range. Lassen Vol ...

Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park ( ) is an American national park in California, surrounded 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 an ...

* General Grant National Park (now part of Kings Canyon) *

Sequoia National Park Sequoia National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California. The park was established on September 25, 1890, and today protects of forested mountainous terrain. Encompassing a vertical relief ...

Zion National Park Zion National Park is an American national park 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 ...

* Grand Canyon National Park *

Mesa Verde National Park Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. Established ...

History

In 1914, Secretary of the Interior

Lane In road transport, a lane is part of a roadway that is designated to be used by a single line of vehicles to control and guide drivers and reduce traffic conflicts. Most public roads (highways) have at least two lanes, one for traffic in each ...

entered into an agreement with the Office of Public Roads to develop road access to

Glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as ...

, Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks.Wilderness by Design: Landscape Architecture and the National Park Service By Ethan Carr, pg 133, 1999 When Stephen T. Mather became involved with the National Parks, he invited the Office of Public Roads Engineer T. Warren Allen to speak at the 1915 Berkeley National Parks Conference. Mather had concerns over letting the Office of Public Roads develop highway systems within the National Parks. While Allen's approach to public roads saw no difference between National Forests and

National Parks A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individua ...

, his involvement was an early indication of the public interest in driving. It was the following year that Mather joined the campaign for the ''Park to Park Highway''. The ''National Park-to-Park Highway Association'' was formed in 1916 and began promoting roads and roadway improvements in the Northwest and Rocky Mountain states. Other Highway Associations had been supporting a variety of routes linking the scenic wonders of the western National Parks. In 1915, a Denver group of motorists took off on a journey from Rocky Mountain National Park to

Yellowstone Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowston ...

. The Wonderland Trail Association was already promoting the next segment of the journey from Yellowstone to

and then westward to Mount Rainier. In 1917, the Parks Highway Association began marking the route from Glacier to Mount Rainier and added a southern segment to

Crater Lake Crater Lake ( Klamath: ''Giiwas'') is a volcanic crater lake in south-central Oregon in the western United States. It is the main feature of Crater Lake National Park and is famous for its deep blue color and water clarity. The lake partly fill ...

. By 1919, there were annual meetings of the National Park to Park supporters. That same year, Charles Goodwin was assigned as Superintendent at Glacier. Here, he began to work on developing potential routes through the park. When Mather's preference for an east-west link across the park was made known, he began looking for a route to link the two sides that would complement the Park-to-Park Highway. This route would become the

Going-to-the-Sun Road Going-to-the-Sun Road is a scenic mountain road in the Rocky Mountains of the western United States, in Glacier National Park in Montana. The Sun Road, as it is sometimes abbreviated in National Park Service documents, is the only road that trave ...

. By 1920, eleven states were involved in the Park-to-Park Highway program. The proposed route would cover of roads and numerous feeders to and from the various National Parks.Park-to-Park Plans to Enter Eleven States; The Highway Magazine, Volumes 9–12 By Armco Drainage Products Association, Armco Drainage & Metal Products, Inc; pg 11, 1920

Notes

External links

Map of the National Park-to-Park Highway from 1924

National Parks Traveler: The National Park to Park Highway

2009 PBS documentary
{{authority control Auto trails in the United States National parks of the United States 1916 establishments in the United States