March 1 · This Day in America
President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, and the world has its first national park. No nation had ever done this before: taken two million acres of geysers, canyons, and bison and set them aside not for a king or a company, but for everyone, forever. The law's own words still ring — the land is "dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." It was a radical idea, almost an American one: that the country's most astonishing places belong to all of us, including the people not yet born. The idea would spread to nearly every nation on the planet. It started with a signature, six months after explorers came back babbling about a valley where the ground breathed steam.
Source: www.nps.gov
Also on this day · 1961
Two months into his presidency, John F. Kennedy signs Executive Order 10924, creating the Peace Corps. The pitch was simple and almost reckless: send young Americans abroad, not with weapons but with skills, to live alongside people who had only read about the United States. Tens of thousands volunteered. The idea that service could be a kind of patriotism took root and never left.
Source: www.archives.gov
“for the benefit and enjoyment of the people”Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, 1872