Which UNESCO World Heritage Site is the first national park in the world?

Yellowstone National Park is the UNESCO World Heritage Site widely recognized as the world’s first national park.

The United States established Yellowstone National Park in 1872, creating a new model for protecting a large natural landscape for public benefit. The park covers a vast volcanic plateau in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, with geysers, hot springs, waterfalls, lakes, forests, and deep canyons.

Yellowstone is especially important for its geothermal features. The Yellowstone Caldera is one of the largest active volcanic systems on Earth, and the park contains more than half of the world’s active geysers. Old Faithful is its most famous geyser, although its eruptions are predictable rather than perfectly timed.

Yellowstone became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. It is sometimes confused with Banff, founded in 1885 as Canada’s first national park, or Royal National Park, established in Australia in 1879. Those distinctions explain why Yellowstone holds the global first-place claim.