A massive defense authorization bill, carrying riders that create seven national parks, headed Friday to President Obama for his signature, though how the National Park Service would pay for the additions was not immediately clear.

Along with the new units, the bill provides for the expansion of nine national park sites and the extension of 15 National Heritage Areas. Overall, the measure marks the largest increase in the size of the National Park System since at least 2009.

“This bipartisan legislation represents years of work by community members, business leaders, scientists and the National Parks Conservation Association. It also represents years of history that deserve to be preserved, and acres of land that deserve to be protected in the name of strengthening our country’s best idea.  This legislation clearly demonstrates that Congress and the Administration are making national parks a national priority,” Clark Bunting, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a prepared statement.

As sent to the president after passage by the U.S. Senate, the measure designates:

* Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument in Nevada with its Ice Age fossil remains of lions, bison, gargantuan mammoths, dire wolves and saber tooth cats;

* Manhattan Project National Historical Park, with sites in Washington, New Mexico, and Tennessee, where under a veil of secrecy workers built the world’s first production-scale nuclear reactor—and created a lasting impact on world history;

* Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in New York, with sites important to the life of the legendary Underground Railroad conductor who led many enslaved people to freedom;

* Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico as a new national park site, where scientists come to study one of the world’s best examples of a resurgent caldera and its large eruptions and visitors come to explore the streams, mountain peaks, old growth timber, and rich tribal heritage.

The legislation also:

* Expands Gettysburg National Military Park to include the Gettysburg Train Station in Pennsylvania, famed for bringing President Abraham Lincoln to the area to deliver the Gettysburg Address. The train station also served as a field hospital during the battle;

* Expands Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve to add 4,000 additional acres of federal land to the existing monument to better protect the larger watershed and the cave system. President William Howard Taft originally protected 480 acres of this area in 1909;

* Expands San Antonio Missions National Historical Park in Texas to better preserve important cultural and historic resources associated with the Spanish Colonial era (1513 – 1821). Visitors will now be able to see crops growing on the Spanish colonial farm fields and witness a working irrigation system (acequias);

* Studies the possible inclusion of a national park site to tell the story of the Buffalo Soldiers, African-American troops that played a key role in protecting Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks before the National Park Service was formed. The soldiers built roads, created maps, extinguished fires, prevented the logging of sequoia trees, and kept poachers out of the parks.

It also protects land and the headwaters of the Flathead River, adjacent to Glacier National Park in Montana, by precluding future mining and drilling activity through the North Fork Watershed Protection Act.

With no additional funding for the Park Service provided for in the bill, the agency likely will have to borrow from its existing 401 units to get the new units up and running until dedicated funding can be sought for Fiscal 2016, which starts October 1, 2015. National Park Service officials in Washington, D.C., where not immediately available Friday evening to say how they would initially fund operations of the new units.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, establishment of three of the units would be delayed:

· The conditions for establishment for Coltsville National Historical Park in Connecticut preclude its establishment until the Secretary of Interior determines they have acquired by donation sufficient land for the park. The Secretary also needs to have written agreements with the city and state.

· Similar conditions exist for establishment of the Harriet Tubman Historical Park in New York.

· For Manhattan Project sites, that park cannot be established until the Secretaries of Interior and Energy have consulted and entered into an agreement on the governance and management of these sites. The Department of Energy will continue to own the facilities, and the Department of Interior, through the National Park Service will manage for historic preservation and interpretation.