With Yellowstone being made the nation’s first national park by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1862 and Theodore Roosevelt later establishing five others with the National Park Service (NPS) in 1916, new additions to the 63 parks across the U.S. have grown increasingly rare in the modern age.
West Virginia’s New Valley Gorge is the country’s newest national park, having received a formal designation in December 2020.
In the two decades between 2004 and 2025, only five others joined the list, which saw its main period of expansion between the 1870s and 1940s: Great Sand Dunes in Colorado, Pinnacles in California, Gateway Arch in Missouri, Indiana Dunes in Indiana, and White Sands in Mexico.
The full title of “national park” is reserved for larger areas of untouched land. Other designations such as national historic site, national monument, and national forest are assigned to smaller sites that hold either natural or cultural significance.
As of 2025, the NPS managed 433 official sites across the country in total.
Why is a congressman trying to make a part of Florida a national park?
At the end of August, Congressman Randy Fine (R-Fla.) embarked on a push to get the Ocala National Forest in the southern part of Florida designated as an official national park. The country’s largest contiguous sand pine scrub forest, Ocala also has multiple natural streams that make it a popular site for swimmers and kayakers.
In the bill that he filed in Congress, Fine says that taking Ocala from a national park site to a full park will “commemorate our Florida springs and the surrounding areas on a level like the Everglades or Yellowstone or Yosemite” and recognize the area as “something unique not just to Florida but to the country,” while also giving the area an economic boost by driving tourism.
Even so, the proposal has already run into controversy — local resident Bobbie Jo Dameron created a Change.org petition, signed by over 6,600 people within 48 hours of being posted — over what he argues will lead to “unsustainable tourism and commercialization in the Ocala National Forest.”
Image source: Ocala National Forest
“Threatens the long-term health of one of Florida’s most ecologically sensitive regions”: petition
Specific issues brought up include increased litter and soil erosion that comes from larger number of visitors as well as infrastructure that would need to be replaced in order to meet the demand for larger numbers of tourists.
“While we value public access to natural spaces, this bill threatens the long-term health of one of Florida’s most ecologically sensitive regions,” the petition reads. “The Ocala National Forest is already federally protected and funded through the U.S. Forest Service, conservation grants, and strategic partnership agreements.
“Additional legislation promoting tourism is not only unnecessary but also dangerous to the fragile ecosystems, endangered species, and quiet rural communities that call this area home.”
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All this comes as the Trump administration targets national parks with widespread budget cuts and firings.
The 2026 budget that Congress passed at the start of July takes $1.2 billion in funds from the NPS — that in turn have resulted in crowding and decreased availability of services in many popular parks.
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