Happy Birthday, National Park Service! Here's 27 Photos That Prove You Only Get Better With Age

PHOTOS: Happy Birthday, National Park Service!

Today, August 25, 2014, is the National Park Service's 98th birthday. The National Park Service was established in 1916 with the responsibility of protecting and managing all existing parks (only 35 at the time) as well as any future parks and monuments set aside by Congress.

After 98 years protecting 401 parks comprised of more than 84 million acres, NPS deserves some recognition. In honor of the special day, we asked you to share your best park photos with us. We got a ton of submissions, and we hope you'll keep 'em coming! Post to our Flickr group or tag your Twitter and Instagram photos with #HappyBirthdayNPS.

P.S. Today the National Park Service is offering free admission to all parks, so get out there and enjoy (and take some awesome photos)!

arches npsArches National Park by Dan Anderson

rocky mountain npsRocky Mountain National Park by Roving Vagabond

tetons national park npsGrand Teton National Park by Wayne Bierbaum

morning glory npsYellowstone National Park by Dan Anderson

glacier national parkGlacier National Park by Daryl L. Hunter

point reyes national seashorePoint Reyes National Seashores by Roving Vagabond

yosemite national parkYosemite National Park by Mauricio Fernandez

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore #HappyBirthdayNPS cc: @NatlParkService @PureMichigan @SleepingBearNPS pic.twitter.com/uiPAsummIv

— Hilary Ayers (@hilraiser) August 20, 2014

Did we mention there are over 400 National Parks to explore? But some of them get more visitors than others. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Grand Canyon National Park and Yosemite National Park were the most visited parks in 2013. If you want to expand your horizons, here are six lesser known parks to explore:

Great Basin National Park

Great Sand Dunes National Park

Capitol Reef National Park

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Biscayne National Park

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Want to contribute? Tag your photos with #HappyBirthdayNPS on Twitter and Instagram and they'll appear in the widget below!

Before You Go

Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park

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