The South We Share
The South We Share
On National Public Lands Day, we celebrate the wild, historic, and wonderfully ordinary places that belong to all of us.
In the South, public land is not one particular landscape.
It is a mist-softened trail through the Great Smoky Mountains, a blackwater passage into the Okefenokee, and a windswept stretch of Cumberland Island where wild horses wander beyond the dunes.
It is Congaree’s old-growth forest in South Carolina, the limestone caves of Kentucky, and the long ribbon of the Natchez Trace. It is also the city park where someone eats lunch beneath an oak tree, the county trail where a child learns to ride a bicycle, and the neighborhood greenway that provides a little breathing room at the end of the day.
Public lands are the places we hold in common.
National Public Lands Day, observed this year on Saturday, September 26, is the nation’s largest single-day volunteer effort devoted to their care. Established in 1994 and coordinated by the National Environmental Education Foundation, the observance brings together volunteers at national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, historic sites, waterways, and state and local parks across the country.
The 2026 theme, “Caring for Our Shared America,” carries particular meaning during the nation’s 250th anniversary year. It asks us to consider not only what these places give us, but what we owe them in return.
More Than the Grand Places
When we hear the words “public lands,” it is easy to picture the biggest names on the map. Yet the definition reaches far beyond national parks.
Public lands include national forests and wildlife refuges, state parks and historic battlefields, marine sanctuaries and public lakes, city gardens and county preserves. Some protect rare plants, wildlife habitats, and fragile ecosystems. Others preserve the physical settings of complicated American stories. Many simply give people a place to walk, paddle, fish, picnic, learn, or sit quietly beneath an open sky.
Their value is not measured only in acres or scenic overlooks. It is also found in access.
These are places where beauty does not require a membership, where history can be encountered outside a textbook, and where a family can spend the day without purchasing admission to an attraction. They belong to the communities around them, and, in a broader sense, to all of us.
Loving a Place Means Helping Care for It
National Public Lands Day turns appreciation into action. Across the country, volunteers repair trails, collect litter, remove invasive plants, restore habitats, improve accessibility, and assist with educational programs.
In 2025, more than 55,000 people participated in over 900 events across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The work completed in a single day was tangible, but the larger purpose was connection. People protect places more deeply when they have spent time learning their names, understanding their stories, and working alongside others to care for them.
Participation does not have to begin with a shovel or a full-day project. It can start by joining a guided walk, attending a ranger program, picking up litter along a familiar trail, supporting a local friends group, or introducing someone to a public place they have never visited.
It can also begin with attention. Read the signs. Learn whose land you are crossing. Follow the rules designed to protect wildlife and historic resources. Carry out what you carry in. Leave artifacts, plants, shells, and stones where they belong. Small choices, repeated by millions of visitors, shape the future of these places.
Go Somewhere That Belongs to You
This National Public Lands Day, visit one of the South’s celebrated landscapes, or find the quieter place close to home that rarely makes a travel list.
Walk beneath the longleaf pines. Stand beside a tidal marsh. Follow a trail to an overlook, a ruin, a riverbank, or a patch of prairie moving in the wind. Volunteer if you can. Learn something while you are there. Leave the place a little better than you found it.
Public land is part inheritance, part responsibility, and part promise. It preserves what came before us while leaving room for people we will never meet to experience the same forests, waters, stories, and open spaces.
These places belong to all of us. Caring for them is something we can share, too.
Plan Your Day
National Public Lands Day is Saturday, September 26, 2026. Learn more and find a volunteer event near you through the National Environmental Education Foundation.
Join In
Show us what you see, who you know, and what matters.
