>>2820121
Because becoming a national park is a political process, and that process and the idea of parks has changed overtime since they started. To become a park some place generally needed a few things
>land with some tourist-draw feature
>either still federal land without development or few enough homesteaders theyre easy to bully out
>an impending threat of development or gatekeeping or destruction of the land
>a national interp campaign to get the public to care about the land
>buy in from local business and political interests
>and then for congress to actually do the thing
Parks didnt happen in the east because the east was already settled and developed and whatever natural features that did draw people, like niagara falls, had already been turned into tourist traps
There are plenty of places out west that had campaigns to become parks but never happened, and theres a long history of many of the parks first being national monuments.

Also because there are just more dramatic and stunning features out in the west. For americans in the late 19th into the 20th century, the forested hills of the east were commonplace and tame, but the huge canyons of the west and giant trees and things like geysers and glaciers and petrified wood were all so new and different

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How is it possible that there's no parks in these massive areas? How the fuck did gateway arch become a national park but nothing in Idaho or the…