Arts, Culture and Education Featured Places

Parks

Since 1916, the American people have entrusted the National Park Service with the care of their national parks. With the help of volunteers and park partners, we safeguard these more than 400 places and share their stories with more than 275 million visitors every year. Find a few of those stories here and then Find a Park to find more of all Americans' stories.

Arts in the Parks/Parks for the Arts: From the sculptural gardens at St-Gaudens in New Hampshire to the Kolb Studio in Grand Canyon National Park, explore some of the special areas that are protected for their role in telling the story of the arts in America.

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: Hubbell's has been serving Ganado selling groceries, grain, hardware, horse tack, coffee and Native American Art since 1878.It is the oldest operating trading post on the Navajo Nation.

Glen Echo Park: This park began in 1891 as a National Chautauqua Assembly "to promote liberal and practical education." By 1911, it transformed into DC's premier amusement park for "whites" until citizens demanded and achieved an integrated park in 1961. Today, the National Park Service operates the site and, with the help of the Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture, offers year-round cultural and recreational activities.Find detailed documentation of the Spanish Ballroom, documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS).

Little Rock Central High School is recognized for the role it played in the desegregation of public schools in the United States. The nine African-American students' persistence in attending the formerly all-white Central High School was the most prominent national example of the implementation of the May 17, 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.

Other Places

The National Park Service cares for America's more than 400 national parks…and works in almost every one of her 3,141 counties. We are proud that tribes, local governments, nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individual citizens ask for our help in revitalizing their communities, preserving local history, celebrating local heritage, and creating close to home opportunities for kids and families to get outside, be active, and have fun. Find a few selected important places outside the parks here and explore the links for more. Then explore what you can do to share your own stories and the places that matter to you.

Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor (the "Corridor") was designated as such in 2006 as part of the National Heritage Area Program.It extends from Wilmington, NC south to Jacksonville, FL.The Corridor's purpose is to preserve and interpret the unique cultural that was brought to the coastal southeastern US by enslaved peoples from western Africa, and how that culture and those traditions are still thriving in their descendents today.

Coso Rock Art District This National Historic Landmark deep in the U.S. Navy's testing station at China Lake, contains one of America's most impressive petroglyphic and archeological complexes. The 20,000 images already documented surpass in number most other collections, and the archeological resources are remarkably undisturbed. Coso rock art has become famous for its stylized representational symbolic system, a system that has intrigued—and baffled—archeologists and lay observers for decades.

Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco painted the Epic of American Civilization Murals in the Baker Library at Dartmouth College, finishing them in 1934. Orozco was a key figure in bringing Mexican culture and art to the forefront of North American artistic consciousness.

The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. This NPS-affiliated area in Seattle, Washington is the only community-based museum in the United States dedicated exclusively to the history of pan-Asian Pacific Americans. The museum is in a historic building constructed in 1910 by Chinese immigrants.