 The Lake District National Park was created in 1951 covering an area of over and, although its population is only 42,000, over 10 million visitors arrive each year, mostly attracted by the lakes and fells.About 500 million years ago in the late Cambrian and early Ordivician periods, the region was situated where the Iapetus ocean floor was being subducted under the Avalonia plate.Sedimentary material became metamorphosed to the Skiddaw slates found in the north and west.