MY first experience of the Yorkshire Dales came on a long, hot summer 30 years ago. I'd given up my civil service job in London, bought a tent and a rucksack, then set out to walk from John O' Groats to Land's End.

I walked through some stunning landscapes that summer: the Scottish Highlands; the northern Pennines; the Welsh borders; the Cotswolds with their honey-coloured villages; the coastal paths of Devon and Cornwall.

But the Yorkshire Dales were something special. I'd stride down out of the hills at the end of each day's walk, and the low-lying sun would light up the close-cropped turf of the fields, throwing the stone barns and drystone walls into stark relief, highlighting the swells and lifts of the hill country, burnishing the outcrops of limestone until they shone against the green hillsides.

It was a landscape to make the heart melt and rejoice. Here was not just natural beauty, but the evidence all around you of the hard work of generations of hill folk who, down the centuries, had helped shape and mould this land with their own hands.

We could so easily have lost much that makes this landscape special – to the slow creep of development; to changing farming methods; to sheer neglect.

Thankfully, we haven't – as anyone who watched the opening two days of this year's Tour de France on the television can attest. The images of the Dales beamed around the world from the swooping helicopters which followed the progress of the peloton along Yorkshire's winding upland roads were as beautiful as anything I remembered from 30 years ago.

The reason that beauty remains relatively unspoiled owes much to the Yorkshire Dales National Park, which was set up 60 years ago this autumn.

It is impossible to imagine how the Dales might have been today without the national park, admits the park authority's chief executive David Butterworth.

"I'm looking out of my window now into Upper Wensleydale," he says, "looking at this magnificent limestone landscape dotted with barns and walls. I think that's how so many people think of the Dales.

"It's difficult to judge how that landscape might have been without the National Park Authority. But I suppose the best way to look at it is to look at the development that's taken place outside of the national park, in towns like Skipton, Leyburn, Richmond and Ingleton. I think we'd have seen much more encroachment into the area that's now the national park."

Yorkshire Dales author and poet Colin Speakman, himself a former national park board member, has no doubt the Dales we love today could have been very different but for the national park.

In his sumptuous new book, The Yorkshire Dales National Park: A Celebration of 60 Years, he lays it on the line.

His book is a celebration of the Dales in the best sense of the word. It looks at how the national park was set up, and traces its history through the last six decades, covering challenges such as the fight to save barns, drystone walls and hay meadows from destruction. There are chapters on key issued faces today – and a wealth of photographs from the early days in the 1950s through to the present day.

He believes that if you want to get an idea of just how important the national park has been in conserving this magnificent landscape, all you need to do is look at the things that have not happened over the last 60 years.

"There are no huge new quarries blighting the landscape," he writes. "Intrusive new roads were not built across the Park...We haven't had any ghastly new theme parks and holiday home estates... Villages have not been swamped with rings of new executive homes and retirement bungalows..."

It was on October 12, 1954, that the order creating the Yorkshire Dales National Park came was confirmed: though it wasn't until November 16 that that order took effect and the park was created.

It wasn't England's first National Park. The National Parks movement began before the Second World War, and the two first parks created, in early 1951, were the Peak District and the Lake District, says David Joy, the former Dalesman editor who has also edited Mr Speakman's book. "But the Yorkshire Dales was one of the pioneers."

The new national parks – the Yorkshire Dales was England's fifth, created a couple of years after the North York Moors – had two key aims; to "conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage" of the park, and to "promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the park's special qualities by the public".

There was, to begin with, some opposition from farmers and landowners in the Dales. Almost all the land within the park boundary was and is privately owned, points out David Butterworth. "And in the 1950s there was a real fear among farmers and landowners about hordes of visitors bringing litter."

Those fears were reignited in 2005 with the 'open access' legislation. "There were real fears about the impact of that. But here we are, nearly ten years on, and I think none of those fears have really come to fruition," Mr Butterworth says.

What the national park has done is to enable the landscape and culture that makes the Dales so unique to be, not preserved in aspic, but conserved.

The park authority, under Mr Butterworth, acts as planning authority. Park staff and volunteers also maintain the park's 1,300 miles of footpaths, ensuring they are properly signposted and easy to walk, and also making sure that heavily used paths are maintained and repaired so that the landscape isn't damaged.

The park has about 100 staff and 300 or so volunteers, and – to manage this stunning 680 square miles of upland landscape – a budget of £4.1 million a year. That has been cut by 40 per cent in the last five years, and is about the same as a medium-sized secondary school, says Mr Butterworth.

So there are challenges ahead. Not least is how to maintain the quality of life of the 20,000 or so people that actually live within the park boundaries.

As the body responsible for planning, the park has to grapple with issues such as how to ensure there is enough affordable housing – a problem in all rural areas.

That is a high priority, Mr Butterworth says. "There is no point conserving a landscape if there are no communities living there."

But despite the challenges – and despite the budget cuts – Mr Butterworth remains optimistic. That is partly because of the countless millions of people who love the Dales, he says – and partly because of the dedication of his small team of staff and volunteers who look after them. "Working with people like that, there has to be hope for the future."

Mr Speakman agrees. The national park's 60 year history is something to be proud of and to celebrate, he writes in his new book.

Britain will face challenges in the coming years. "(But) the Yorkshire Dales National Park will be there as a continuing inspiration."

Let us hope so.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park: A Celebration of 60 Years by Colin Speakman is published by Great Northern, price £17.99.