Category: National Parks

One man pays a visit to every unit in the national park system.

All 388. See his travel website.

Clearly this is a man who is a bit obsessive. His personal website tracks each of his 366 travel-related goals, from visiting all 131 North American telephone area codes designated by AT&T, to visiting some point worldwide whose name begins with each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, and consuming a McDonald’s menu item in every country in which it operates. Hogenauer even made a pilgrimage to the offices of R. R. Donnelley, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, company that prints maps and pamphlets for each park, just to let them know he appreciated their efforts.

was established on this date in 1941. According to the National Park Service:

The first English attempts at colonization in the New World (1585-1587) are commemorated here. These efforts, sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh, ended with the disappearance of 116 men, women and children (including two that were born in the New World). The fate of this “lost colony” remains a mystery to this day. The Park was established in 1941, and enlarged in 1990 by Public Law 1001-603 to include the preservation of Native American culture, The American Civil War, the Freedman’s Colony, and the activities of radio pioneer Reginald Fessenden. The park is also home to the outdoor symphonic drama THE LOST COLONY, performed in the Waterside Theatre during the summer since 1937.

And, to NewMexiKen’s memory, home as well to an hellacious number of mosquitoes.

was established on this date in 1909. From the National Park Service:

Click to enlarge

Navajo National Monument preserves three of the most-intact cliff dwellings of the ancestral puebloan people (Hisatsinom). The Navajo people who live here today call these ancient ones “Anasazi.” The monument is high on the Shonto Plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system in the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona.

It’s the anniversary of America’s first national park, created by an Act of Congress and approved by President U.S. Grant on this date in 1872.

Visit the National Park Service web site for Yellowstone National Park.

NewMexiKen photos 1997

From The New York Times, an interesting and somewhat informative article on visiting the Grand Canyon in winter.

Only then will you realize that the Grand Canyon is the perfect scale. If it were any deeper or wider, it would be an abyss, and if any smaller, it would lose much of its monumentality.

now Denali National Park & Preserve was established on this date in 1917.

It’s more than a mountain. Denali National Park & Preserve features North America’s highest mountain, 20,320-foot tall Mount McKinley. The Alaska Range also includes countless other spectacular mountains and many large glaciers. Denali’s more than 6 million acres also encompass a complete sub-arctic eco-system with large mammals such as grizzly bears, wolves, Dall sheep, and moose.

Via The Albuquerque Tribune, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees has named its top 10 “hidden” parks:

• Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Alaska
• Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico
• Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
• Fort Bowie National Historic Site, Arizona
• Crater Lake National Park, Oregon
• Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota
• Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida
• Yosemite National Park, California
• Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
• Zion National Park, Utah

So who “hid” the Lincoln Memorial? It was always there when I drove by it twice a day for more than 14 years during my commute.

Here’s a link to the The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees “secret spots.”

was established on this date in 1962. The National Park Service tells us:

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial preserves the site of the farm where Abraham Lincoln spent 14 formative years of his life, from the ages of 7 to 21. He and his family moved to Indiana in 1816 and stayed until 1830 when they moved on to Illinois. During this period, Lincoln grew physically and intellectually into a man. The people he knew here and the things he experienced had a profound influence on his life. His sense of honesty, his belief in the importance of education and learning, his respect for hard work, his compassion for his fellow man, and his moral convictions about right and wrong were all born of this place and this time. The time he spent here helped shape the man that went on to lead the country. This site is our most direct tie with that time of his life. Lincoln Boyhood preserves the place where he learned to laugh with his father, cried over the death of his mother, read the books that opened his mind, and triumphed over the adversities of life on the frontier.

From the Casper Star Tribune:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Interior Secretary Gale Norton cruised the powdery soft roads on a snowmobile, then took in the scenery near Old Faithful from a warm snowcoach.

She experienced for herself on Tuesday the plan that has made room for both activities in Yellowstone National Park for at least the next two winters.

As she got off the yellow snowcoach — a roomy passenger van on tracks — she declared the experience “not as special as snowmobiling.” Both are good options for seeing the park, Norton said, but “this is a much more ordinary way to see things.”

was established on this date. From the National Park Service:

The Mission of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield: Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park was authorized for protection by the War Department in 1917 and was transferred to the Department of the Interior as a unit of the National Park System in 1933. The 2,888 acre park includes the site of some of the heaviest fighting of the Atlanta Campaign of the Civil War. The park was set aside as an important cultural property dedicated to public inspiration and interpretation of the significant historic events that occurred here.

is celebrating its 90th anniversary today.

This from the National Park Service:

Established on January 26, 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park is a living showcase of the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. With elevations ranging from 8,000 feet in the wet, grassy valleys to 14,259 feet at the weather-ravaged top of Long’s Peak, a visitor to the park has opportunities for countless breathtaking experiences and adventures.

Elk, mule deer, moose, bighorn sheep, black bears, coyotes, cougars, eagles, hawks and scores of smaller animals delight wildlife-watchers of all ages. Wildflower-lovers are never disappointed in June and July when the meadows and hillsides are splashed with botanical color. Autumn visitors can relax among the golden aspens or enjoy the rowdier antics of the elk rut (mating season).

NewMexiKen refers to the fall rut as the elk singles bar.

was established on this date in 1929. From the National Park Service:

Located on the rugged coast of Maine, Acadia National Park encompasses over 47,000 acres of granite-domed mountains, woodlands, lakes and ponds, and ocean shoreline. Such diverse habitats create striking scenery and make the park a haven for wildlife and plants.

Entwined with the natural diversity of Acadia is the story of people. Evidence suggests native people first lived here at least 5,000 years ago. Subsequent centuries brought explorers from far lands, settlers of European descent, and, arising directly from the beauty of the landscape, tourism and preservation.

was proclaimed by President Herbert Hoover on this date in 1933. From the National Park Service:

At the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert lies a mountain ringed valley called the Tularosa Basin. Rising from the heart of this basin is one of the world’s great natural wonders – the glistening white sands of New Mexico.

Here, great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert and have created the world’s largest gypsum dune field. The brilliant white dunes are ever changing: growing, cresting, then slumping, but always advancing. Slowly but relentlessly the sand, driven by strong southwest winds, covers everything in its path. Within the extremely harsh environment of the dune field, even plants and animals adapted to desert conditions struggle to survive. Only a few species of plants grow rapidly enough to survive burial by moving dunes, but several types of small animals have evolved a white coloration that camouflages them in the gypsum sand.

White Sands National Monument preserves a major portion of this gypsum dune field, along with the plants and animals that have successfully adapted to this constantly changing environment.

was first designated for preservation on this date in 1908 when President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the area a national monument. It was designated a national park in 1919.

NewMexiKen photo, 1995

was established on this date in 1908. From the National Park Service —

“This is the best tree-lovers monument that could possibly be found in all the forests of the world,” declared conservationist John Muir when describing the majestic coast redwoods of Muir Woods.

Until the 1800’s, many northern California coastal valleys were covered with coast redwood trees similar to those now found in Muir Woods National Monument. The forest along Redwood Creek in today’s Muir Woods was spared from logging because it was hard to get to. Noting that Redwood Creek contained one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s last uncut stands of old-growth redwood, Congressman William Kent and his wife, Elizabeth Thacher Kent, bought 295 acres here for $45,000 in 1905. To protect the redwoods the Kents donated the land to the United States Federal Government and, in 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt declared it a national monument. Roosevelt suggested naming the area after Kent, but Kent wanted it named for conservationist John Muir.

was designated as such on this date in 1971. It had been a national monument since 1937.

[NewMexiKen photo, 2002]

Grand Teton Webcam.

Thanks to Ralph.

was designated on this date in 1906. The National Park Service says:

Nestled into a limestone recess high above the flood plain of Beaver Creek in the Verde Valley stands one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America. The five-story, 20-room cliff dwelling served as a “high-rise apartment building” for prehistoric Sinagua Indians over 600 years ago. Early settlers to the area assumed that the imposing structure was associated with the Aztec emperor Montezuma, but the castle was abandoned almost a century before Montezuma was born.

NewMexiKen photo, 2003.

was designated on this date in 1906. The National Park Service has this to say about El Morro:

Rising 200 feet above the valley floor, this massive sandstone bluff was a welcome landmark for weary travelers. A reliable waterhole hidden at its base made El Morro (or Inscription Rock) a popular campsite. Beginning in the late 1500s Spanish, and later, Americans passed by El Morro. While they rested in its shade and drank from the pool, many carved their signatures, dates, and messages. Before the Spanish, petroglyphs were inscribed by Ancestral Puebloans living on top of the bluff over 700 years ago. Today, El Morro National Monument protects over 2,000 inscriptions and petroglyphs, as well as Ancestral Puebloan ruins.

From The Arizona Republic:

PETRIFIED FOREST – As paleontologist Bill Parker slowly moves his fingers across the skull of a crocodile-looking phytosaur, his voice quickens while he discusses future dinosaur discoveries in an expanded Petrified Forest National Park.

The head of this 30-foot-long creature is so impressive in its detail that it is about to be shipped for prominent display to the Smithsonian Institution.

Two weeks ago, Congress gave its long-anticipated blessing to a bill that will more than double the size, to 222,000 acres, of this northeastern Arizona national park, famed for its calcified wood, dinosaur remains and petroglyphs.

The expansion will protect the new acreage, allow blight removal and yield many new archaeological sites.

became law on this date in 1980, more than doubling the size of the national park system.

According to America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents edited by Lary M. Dilsaver:

In the waning days of the Carter Democratic administration, Congress acted to further protect and expand preserved areas in Alaska, many rescued from exploitation two years earlier by presidential proclamation. This complex and lengthy act defines preserved parks, forests, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, wild and scenic rivers, and Native American corporation lands and the degrees of preservation and usage for each. It prescribes timber, fish, and wildlife protection and use by Native Americans and other citizens.

New areas for the national park system included Aniakchak National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Kenai Fjords National Park, Kobuk Valley National Park, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Noatak National Preserve, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. The act also added new lands to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Katmai National Monument and Preserve, and Denali National Park and Preserve (renamed from Mount McKinley National Park).

New wild and scenic rivers under Park Service administration included Alagnak, Alatna, Aniakchak, Charley, Chilikadrotna, John, Kobuk, Mulchatna, Noatak, North Fork of the Koyukuk, Salmon, Tinayguk, and Tlikakila rivers. Other wild and scenic rivers are designated or expanded in wildlife refuges and in other areas.

The vast majority of acreage in the Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Katmai, Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, Noatak, and Wrangell-St. Elias units is designated wilderness.

was established on this date in 1999. According to the National Park Service:

Minuteman Missile National Historic Site is one of the nation’s newest national park areas. It was created to illustrate the history and significance of the Cold War, the arms race, and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development. The National Park Service is currently involved in the planning process to determine the future of this site. We encourage you to contact us with any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Minuteman Missile NHS consists of two significant cold War sites, a Launch Control Facility (Delta-01) and a missile silo complex (Delta-09). The facilities represent the only remaining intact components of a nuclear missile field that consisted of 150 Minuteman II missiles, 15 launch control centers, and covered over 13,500 square miles of southwestern South Dakota.