In 1872, when Ulysses S Grant created the world's very first national park, it was surprisingly easy to do.

No one in the world had really created a national park before, and so they just basically draw a big square and say

everything within this square is a national park. But managing the world's first

national park.

Now that was new territory.

Early on when people are going, they needed to eat and they would shoot

elk in the park to feed themselves.

And there's a question of can you shoot an elk in the park or not is that is that

a appropriate use of a national park or not.

This is Carl Jacobi co-director of Columbia University's Center for the Study of

Ethnicity and Race. And as you may have expected, the big square to which he is

referring was Yellowstone National Park.

When it was created, it still hadn't been entirely surveyed and explored by white men.

But according to those who had been there, it was incredibly beautiful. One of the most active volcanic areas in the country,

replete with waterfalls, geysers, mountain peaks, and home to one of the last surviving

herds of wild buffalo. But it was also, at the time, incredibly remote. So we're not

talking about opening up Disneyland here. It's very far from a railroad is very

distant and so the only people who could really visit it

other than the native people who obviously don't know it's been turned into a park

were very wealthy tourists who could do the equivalent of sort of a multi-month long safari you'd have to go to the closest railhead and then you know

Rent horses and so the first year 1872 I believe there's something like 200 to 400 tourists who go to the park at all.

Two to 400 tourists in a park that spanned some 3.5,000 square miles.

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