Sustainable tourism has become a major paradigm for both tourism researchers and those charged with planning and managing tourism. Protected areas and National Parks are no exception. Governance and institutional structures within these domains are now required to incorporate a broader set of objectives relating to widening socioeconomic opportunities and increasingly greater engagement in decision making processes. Sustainable development and subsequent forms of sustainable tourism have now been evident since the early 1990's, and the tourism research community has provided a wealth of academic studies on the manifestations of sustainable development in the context of protected areas. Here, my Article Based PhD study provides new contributions and insight into the evolution and temporality of sustainable tourism policies and institutional arrangements within the English National Park context, through three published papers and a doctoral thesis. The doctoral inquiry allows us to reflect upon historical trajectories of tourism policies and institutions through a range of evolutionary approaches and perspectives. Ultimately, the research demonstrates how through exploring historical paths and the application of such approaches in tourism research, we are in a better position to understand how a multitude of influences directly and indirectly impact tourism institutions and policies and how we can learn from previous actions and inactions.