Eastern National

Eastern National (also known as EN) is a non-profit organization based in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania that partners with the National Park Service in the United States. It was created by charter in 1948 to "provide quality educational products and services to the visitors to America's national parks and other public trusts."cite web |url=http://www.easternnational.org |title=Eastern National Home Page |publisher=Eastern National] Since then, they have donated over $77 million to the Park Service.

History

In 1947, some park service rangers formed the Eastern National Park & Monument Association at Gettysburg National Military Park. These rangers collected $147 and published one work: "Abraham Lincoln in His Own Work and That of His Contemporaries". This book was sold at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site. [cite web |url=http://www.easternnational.org/OurHistoryLogo.pdf |title=Our History |publisher=Eastern National] The organization was officially charted the following year.

Present Day

Eastern National operates nearly 250 bookstores in over 130 National Park units. EN publishes approximately 100 new products for the National Park Service each year. [cite web |url=http://www.easternnational.org/TheMissionLogo.pdf |title=The Mission|publisher=Eastern National] They also operate the Jamestown Glasshouse in Jamestown, Virginia, and partner with other agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers and the United States Forest Service.

Passport Stamps

They began and continue to run the national park passport stamp program. Over 1.3 million passport books have been sold since the program started in 1986. [cite web |url=http://www.nps.gov/applications/digest/headline.cfm?type=ParkNewsEvents&id=21616&urlarea=npsnews |title=New Passport Explorer Available |publisher=National Park Service] To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the program, they created the "Passport Explorer", a new version of the passport book with larger, sturdier pages, in early 2006. [cite web |url=http://www.eparks.com/eparks/passport_explorer.pdf |title=Passport Explorer Edition|publisher=Eastern National]

References

External links

* [http://www.easternnational.org/ Eastern National]
* [http://www.eparks.com/eparks/ Eastern National Bookstore]
* [http://www.parkstamps.org/ National Park Passport Stamps: A website with more information on stamps including pictures and reports.]