Golestan, therefore, literally means "land of flowers" in Iranian languages (e.g., Persian, Kurdish, and Mazandarani).

Under the Achaemenid Iran, it seems to have been administered as a sub-province of Parthia and is not named separately in the provincial lists of Darius and Xerxes.

[11] In 2006, the Ministry of Education of Iran estimated the ethnic breakdown of the province to be: The Mazandaranis who inhabit the foothills to Shah Pasand were subsumed under the rubric "Persian" by these official statistics.

Since the 15th century, these formerly nomadic people have lived in this area, the main cities of which are Gonbad-e Kavus and Bandar Torkaman.

The people of Kordkuy are originally from the Kurdish areas of west Iran, Kermanshah and Kurdistan provinces.

[18] Other ethnic groups such as Kazakhs, Khorasani Kurds, Georgians, and Armenians also reside in this area, and have preserved their traditions and rituals.

The population history and structural changes of Golestan province's administrative divisions over three consecutive censuses are shown in the following table.

Golestan National Park in northern Iran is faced with the construction of a road through the forest, allegedly for the ease of traffic for the villagers and woodmen but at the expense of losing the only national park in Iran throughout which a range of different climates (humidity near the Caspian Sea and desert farther south) is spread.

Surprisingly, the authorities ignore repeated calls by experts to construct such roads around, instead of through, the forests, which in this way would no longer threaten animal and plant life.