National Park Information

Mammoth Cave National Park

National Park Guy — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 03:43:18 +0000

Local Indians knew about Mammoth Cave long ago. It was about 2000 B.C. when, no doubt impelled by normal human curiosity, they first ventured through the entrance, a gaping hole on a forested hillside, overlooking the Green River far below. To find their way as they penetrated this dark and silent underground world, the Indians [...]

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Mammoth Cave National Park

Carlsbad Caverns National Park - The Action

National Park Guy — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:02:41 +0000

When rain falls and the drops seep through the soil, they combine with carbon dioxide to form a weak carbonic acid. Trickling down through cracks in the reef, this mild acid is strong enough to dissolve limestone, generally in the form of calcite, which it carries along. When a drop of this stone-in-solution reaches the [...]

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Carlsbad Caverns National Park - The Action

Wind Cave National Park - Temple of Darkness

National Park Guy — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 02:56:23 +0000

But if light and life and limitless space are the hallmarks of the prairie world, Wind Cave has its darker side, too -- its underground realm. It is anything but a feeling of spaciousness that greets the visitor when the cave's entry door is opened and the descent begins. Even with modern conveniences -- staircases, [...]

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Wind Cave National Park - Temple of Darkness

Wind Cave National Park - Pageantry of the Plains

National Park Guy — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 02:56:23 +0000

What visitors to the surface park remember most, however, is the grassland. Gazing across the prairie dog town on Bison Flats, out beyond the ridge where a band of pronghorn graze, and far south to the horizon that is Nebraska, you can still imagine what the Great Plains used to be: home to one of [...]

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Wind Cave National Park - Pageantry of the Plains

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park - Strange Creatures and Ancient Forests

National Park Guy — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:26:19 +0000

Strange and Amazing Creatures Today's regeneration of plants on recent lava flows is just a small reminder of the larger miracle that took place here millions of years ago, when life first took hold on the newly formed islands. Like a handful of precious gems scattered in the sea, the Hawaiian Islands are isolated from [...]

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Hawaii Volcanoes National Park - Strange Creatures and Ancient Forests

Grand Canyon National Park

National Park Guy — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 01:51:51 +0000

Mount Everest. The Sahara. The Amazon. The Grand Canyon. These are the standards by which the earth's immense wonders are measured. They themselves defy human comprehension. Though people have mapped their surfaces and plumbed their depths, analyzed their climates, studied their histories, and catalogued the life they contain, they still numb the mind by the [...]

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Grand Canyon National Park

Badlands National Park

National Park Guy — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:19:21 +0000

There are badlands throughout the West, where treeless plains are being cut to pieces, shaped and reshaped by erosion. But jagged Badlands National Park is in the Badlands, the biggest and the baddest, from which all other badlands take their name. These Big Badlands actually cover about 6,000 square miles of South Dakota and Nebraska. [...]

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Badlands National Park

Voyageurs National Park - The Living Wilderness

National Park Guy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:07:53 +0000

Along the voyageurs' routes, wildlife was plentiful. The men saw moose munching pondweeds, heard lynx and bobcats caterwauling at night, and glimpsed the reflections of their own campfires in the yellow-green eyes of timber wolves. Virgin forests of enormous white and red pines dominated the landscape; and in the dry upland woods, red spruces, birches, [...]

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Voyageurs National Park - The Living Wilderness

Canyonlands National Park - Anasazi and the All-American Man

National Park Guy — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:07:53 +0000

To the south and east of the Maze is the Needles district, bristling with towers and peaked spires of sandstone. In this piece of the park there is more diversity, both of terrain and of life, than in the other two pieces combined. There are water-cut canyons, the streams at their bases lined with lush [...]

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Canyonlands National Park - Anasazi and the All-American Man

Theodore Roosevelt National Park - The Delicate Badlands

National Park Guy — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:01:51 +0000

Despite the seemingly endless vistas of grass, despite the implacably rugged badlands that slash through them, despite the calm quality of eternal sameness that the Little Missouri lends as it winds northward toward its junction with the Missouri, despite all the elements that create the illusion of immutable toughness, this is a delicate, fragile, and [...]

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Theodore Roosevelt National Park - The Delicate Badlands

Big Bend National Park - Conflict and Border Wars

National Park Guy — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 23:17:40 +0000

The land today is much the same as it was when prehistoric man arrived in Big Bend Country 10,000 or more years ago. Water is still carried across the desert to the Rio Grande by two natural drainage systems, Tornillo and Terlingua creeks. After heavy rains they are torrents, but more often their routes are [...]

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Big Bend National Park - Conflict and Border Wars

Canyonlands National Park

National Park Guy — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 22:11:40 +0000

At the heart of the arid stone wilderness that is Canyonlands National Park is a watery place called the Confluence. Here, between rock walls more than a thousand feet high, the waters of the Green River pour into those of the Colorado. From this point on, the Colorado–already a powerful force upon the land–becomes one [...]

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Canyonlands National Park

Glacier National Park - Alpine Heights

National Park Guy — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:40:59 +0000

From a distance, it seems that nothing grows at the very top of the peaks, which are alternately drenched in bright sunlight and cast in shadow by twilight and clouds. But in crevices, behind boulders, and between shards of fractured rock grow an amazing collection of hardy plants -- an inches-high forest of flowers that [...]

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Glacier National Park - Alpine Heights

Petrified Forest National Park - The Land Today

National Park Guy — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 19:18:54 +0000

Though the details of the Petrified Forest's landscape are constantly changing, the character of the land itself is much the same as it was when the first humans walked its haunting panoramas. It is still a pristine world of solitude and space -- a place where, beneath the golden fury of the sun, turkey vultures [...]

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Petrified Forest National Park - The Land Today

Isle Royale National Park - Striking the Balance

National Park Guy — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:35:04 +0000

The story of wolves, moose, and beavers is a recent one on the Isle Royale, even in terms of the island's relatively short history. At the beginning of this century, neither moose nor wolf was here at all, but beavers were rare at best. In fact, few of the mammals of the past were to [...]

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Isle Royale National Park - Striking the Balance

Olympic National Park - On Icebound Summits

National Park Guy — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:08:23 +0000

Toward 7,000 feet the forest posts its last sentinels, low-lying firs that seem to crouch against the wind. At these elevations the best strategy for survival is to lie low, where snow and wind are less able to crush and contort. The result is a stunted forest of twisted trees that sprawl along the ground. [...]

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Olympic National Park - On Icebound Summits

Canyonlands National Park - Grasslands and Flowers

National Park Guy — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:18:51 +0000

Leaving its canyons, Salt Creek meanders in a slow curve around a place called Squaw Flat, where large pinyon pines and junipers offer welcome shade amid bare mounds and hummocks of smooth sandstone. The salt and alkali for which Salt Creek is named are made obvious here by white encrustations that edge the banks. Even [...]

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Canyonlands National Park - Grasslands and Flowers

Zion National Park - Paiutes and Pioneers

National Park Guy — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:30:36 +0000

The soaring cliffs and streamside woodlands of Zion have long been known to humans. From A.D. 500 until about A.D. 1200, small bands of Anasazi Indians, the "Ancient Ones" of the Navajos, dwelt in the canyon, where they lived by hunting game, gathering wild foods, and tending small garden plots. Relics of their presence, scattered [...]

Olympic National Park - The Odyssey of the Elk

National Park Guy — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:55:39 +0000

Into this setting Olympic's elk migrate each summer. About 5,000 of the oversized deer live in the park, all of them a subspecies of the North American elk called Roosevelt elk in honor of Theodore Roosevelt. Slightly heavier and darker than elk living in the Rockies, these majestic animals weigh in at 700 pounds or [...]

Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park - Aquatic Gymnastics

National Park Guy — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:31:56 +0000

Beneath the Sierra's snowy summits, sparkling streams twist and slip down the mountains, gaining momentum as they cascade from cliff to cliff, merging with rivers as they squeeze through canyons, racing downslope to become foaming, unstoppable forces. Along the way, the water slices through thick evergreen forests where many of the trees, like the giant [...]

Bryce Canyon National Park - Forests and Hoodoos

National Park Guy — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:39:20 +0000

The Forest World It was atop the heavily forested Pausaugunt Plateau that the nomadic Paiutes spend their summers, living in loosely organized family groups. Here they built brush shelters called wickiups, and hunted the abundant mule deer, along with rabbits and other small game. From the lush grasses growing in occasional meadows they gathered many [...]

Mesa Verde National Park - Fortresses and Cliffs

National Park Guy — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:18:25 +0000

Villages of Stone A series of droughts blighted the end of the 11th century, and during this time the people began abandoning their clan houses and moving farther north on the mesas, where rainfall was heavier. Here they no longer built the rowhouses of the past, but erected stone buildings three and four stories high, [...]

Glacier National Park - Glaciers and Symphonies

National Park Guy — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 12:39:20 +0000

Glacier's Glaciers After the rocks settled into place, the land gradually became eroded into soft contours. Pinnacled peaks were transformed into gentle domes, thickly wooded forests paraded up the slopes, and twisting streams etched V-shaped valleys into the mountain faces like wrinkles earned through time. Although these were peaceful times in the mountains, it was [...]

Virgin Islands National Park - Castles of Stone

National Park Guy — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:33:28 +0000

Castles of Stone Throughout the park the sea is never far from sight or mind. Sometimes during the winter months, surf caused by swells from distant Atlantic storms pounds the northern and eastern shorelines with waves up to eight feet high, but such fury occurs infrequently and lasts only a day or two. Normally, these [...]

Arches National Park - Thorns and Thirsty Roots

National Park Guy — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 12:33:28 +0000

Among these labyrinths of disintegrating stone, which rise like the bare ribs and knuckles of the earth, life is almost as stubborn and hard as the rock itself. Then, clear air envelops a land of extremes, shimmering beneath the summer's hot sun, shivering in the cold winter's white light. The plants and creatures that flourish [...]