National Park Service Targets New Generation With 'Find Your Park' Campaign

By Dennis Lambert
Published: Monday, March 30, 2015 - 10:43am
Maria Springs/KJZZ
The Grand Canyon.

The National Park Service celebrates its centennial next year and an effort is being made to introduce a new, more diverse generation of Millennials and children to the national parks.

First Lady Michelle Obama and former First Lady Laura Bush will co-chair the campaign called "Find Your Park." The goal to keep the parks relevant to visitors for the next 50 or 100 years. 

Many of the facilities, like a 70-year-old water pipeline at the Grand Canyon, date back a half-century or more and are badly in need of repairs.

While 292 million people visited the national parks in 2014, the visitors tend to be older and whiter than the population overall.

A campaign in the 1950s invited veterans and their families to visit the parks and they came, with their kids, in droves. Those Baby Boomers are the parks’ base of support today. The question is who will be the next generation of supporters.

The hope is that resetting the parks for the next century will generate the support to get the needed funds to repair the system’s infrastructure.