The National Park Service is celebrating its 100th birthday today with events across the U.S. including the creation of a giant, living version of its emblem in Washington, D.C., a naturalization ceremony on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and an outdoor concert at Yellowstone National Park.The centennial comes as the agency that manages national parks as well as historic places welcomes a new national monument and nature forces some changes in the party in the West.
This photo provided by the National Park Service shows people on the National Mall in Washington, looking toward the World War II Memorial, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016, creating a giant, living version of the National Park Service emblem. Participants used brown, green and white umbrellas to create the emblem.
(Tim Ervin/National Park Service via AP)
More than 1,000 kids and adults used brown, green and white umbrellas to create a living version of the park service emblem on the National Mall, which the agency photographed from a helicopter above. The emblem contains elements symbolizing the major facets of the national park system. A Sequoia tree and bison represent vegetation and wildlife, mountains and water represent scenery and recreation and the arrowhead shape represents history and archaeology. The first 1,000 participants were allowed to keep their umbrellas and got T-shirts commemorating the event.
In honor of the centennial anniversary, we looked through our archive and made a selection of photos of U.S. National Parks though the years.
A group on horseback travel up a path at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, June 8, 1938. (AP Photo)
This Oct. 22, 2012 photo shows a view from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
In heavy timber in Rainier National Park, Washington, members of the Civilian Conservation Corps are at work, July 3, 1933, on forest fire prevention, trail building and soil erosion program laid out by the National Park Service. Company 930, made up of Washington State boys, is shown in its camp at Tahoma Creek, the first C.C.C. camp to be established in the park, July 3, 1933. (AP Photo)
Mount Rainer is seen at dawn Monday, Jan. 2, 2012, from Seattle, some 50 miles away from the national park. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
Photographers approach close to the Cuthbert bird rookery on Cuthbert Lake in Florida’s Everglades, June 29, 1953. This is one of the few remaining rookeries in Florida. Herons, egrets, ibis, pelicans and spoonbills are nesting in this one. (AP Photo)
A great egret sits on top of a dead tree in the Florida Everglades, near South Bay, Fla. Friday, Jan. 14, 2005, as the sky turns darks as a thunderstorm moves across the area. (AP Photo/J. Pat Carter)
Three hikers pause to rest near firefall ledge on the ledge climb to Glacier Point from Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park in California, July 8, 1952. In background is famed Half Dome, chief landmark of the Valley. (AP Photo/Ernest K. Bennett)
In this Jan. 14, 2015 photo, shows El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
View of Fisherman in river with mountains in background on 1961 in Yosemite National Park. (AP Photo)
Some of the patients of the Yosemite National Park Naval Convalescent Hospital try their hand at trout fishing in the Merced River which runs through Yosemite Valley, Calif., August 12, 1943. In left background, the North Dome rises 7,531 feet. At right, Half Dome rises 8,852 feet. (AP Photo/Ernest King)
This April 2013 photo shows giant sequoia trees dwarfing a visitor in Merced Grove in Yosemite National Park in California. Sequoias are among the largest, oldest trees on earth. (AP Photo/Kathy Matheson)
Fire ate out the inside of this giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, California, shown Aug. 7, 1948, yet it bears foliage like a normal tree. (AP Photo)
This Saturday, March 26, 2016 photo shows the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley, Calif. In the summer Death Valley is one of the hottest places on earth. Even in spring, it’s about as hot many other places are come August, with April and May temperatures ranging from the 70s to just over 100. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Death Valley is shown Dec. 17, 1932. In the distance are the Funeral Mountains. Aside from an occasional tourist and prospector, there are few inhabitants in this region. (AP Photo)
In this Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016 photo, wildflowers bloom alongside the road near Badwater Basin in Death Valley, Calif. Death Valley National Park is awash in color from fall rainstorms that provided the needed start to produce a wintertime super bloom of wildflowers for the first time since 2005. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Lots are on sale on the Mojave Desert for $570 and up, shown 1955. A Joshua tree, member of the lily family which lives for hundreds of years, on the lot costs $25 extra. (AP Photo)
The sun sets behind joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, in Twentynine Palms, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
An American wild bison buffalo, its head crusted with ice and snow, looks up at a human visitor to wintry Yellowstone Park while foraging for food in deep snow in Wyoming, March 2, 1979. (AP Photo/Gary Guisinger)
In this photo taken, Saturday, May 21, 2011, a tourist walks along the boardwalk at Midway Geyser Basin inside Yellowstone National Park, Mont. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
In near freezing weather, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt stop to admire the Great Falls in Yellowstone Canyon, Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, Sept. 26, 1937. (AP Photo)
This Dec. 23, 2011 photo shows the Upper Geyser Basin at sunset in Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. (AP Photo/Matt Volz)
Geologist Rick Hutchinson watches over a spurt of activity from one of his charges – a steam hole in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Aug. 4, 1978. Hutchinson is a “thermal ranger” for the park – he takes water samples, charts eruptions, monitors temperatures of the park’s estimated 10,000 thermal features. And he helps fish out coins, cans and other junk that visitors fling into the geysers. (AP Photo/John Kuglin)
In this photo made Dec 20, 2006, stars trails streak across the sky in a 75-minute time-exposure at Acadia National Park, Maine. (AP Photo by Robert F. Bukaty)
The aurora borealis rises high above the Alaska Range Sunday, Sept. 3, 2006, in Denali National Park, Alaska. Forecasters from the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute are predicting several days of very high aurora activity this weekend with displays that could reach as far as Salem, Ore., and Chicago, Ill. (AP Photo/M. Scott Moon)
Aerial view of Big Bend Country, Texas in 1969. This is part of the “America the Beautiful” series. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams)
A coyote peers through the high grass in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Brecksville, Ohio Tuesday, June 1, 2004. Though numerous in rural areas in Ohio, coyotes flee from the presence of humans. (AP Photo/Jamie-Andrea Yanak)
A mountain rises above surrounding glaciers, in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska Thursday, March 13, 2008. (AP Photo/Chris Miller)
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