President Jimmy Carter, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, and company riding horses near mountains.
NPS Photo

January 9, 2025 - By Will Shafroth - President Jimmy Carter leaves behind a rich legacy forged from his lifelong commitment to the environment. As a boy, Jimmy Carter developed a deep and abiding connection to nature exploring the countryside – the woods and ravines – just outside the front door of his home in Plains, Georgia. Now, Carter’s boyhood home is open to the public to visit and experience as part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park within a thriving National Park System that he supported and helped to expand for the benefit of all Americans.

During his presidency, Jimmy Carter created 39 national park units. They include places as diverse as Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, the Martin Luther King National Historic Park in Atlanta, and Denali National Park, among a series of national park units he created in Alaska.

President Carter’s impressive commitment to protecting the environment set a standard in the arena of public lands protection. He designated more than 1,300 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers across the country, more than tripling the size of the Wild and Scenic River System during his presidency. In 1978, President Carter created the Endangered American Wilderness Act, adding nearly 1.3 million acres across 10 western states, while expanding 4 existing wilderness areas and adding 13 new areas – the largest single addition to the country’s wilderness areas since enactment of the Wilderness Act more than a decade earlier.

In 2016, President Carter was made an honorary national park ranger by National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis. A fitting tribute to a man who embodied public service at its best.

We remember President Carter as one of the most effective and greatest champions of national parks of any U.S. President, and we celebrate the “man from Plains” for a life well-lived and his enduring legacy.