National park National Park in 1914. The UK waited until 1951 for the designation of its first national park, The Peak District National Park which sits at the southern end of the Pennine Hills surrounded by industrial cities. This followed perhaps 70 years of pressure for greater public access to the landscape. By the end of the decade a further 9 national parks had been designated. Europe has some 359 national parks as of 2010. Africa's first national park was established in 1925 when Albert I of Belgium designated an area of what is now Democratic Republic of Congo centred on the
Glacier National Park (U.S.) as Biosphere Reserves in 1976, and in 1995 as World Heritage sites. In April 2017, the joint park received a provisional Gold Tier designation as Waterton-Glacier International Dark Sky Park through the International Dark Sky Association, the first transboundary dark sky park. According to archeological evidence, Native Americans first arrived in the Glacier area some 10,000 years ago. The earliest occupants with lineage to current tribes were the Flathead (Salish) and Kootenai, Shoshone, and Cheyenne. The Blackfeet arrived around the beginning of the 18th century and soon dominated the eastern slopes of what later became the park, as well as