Some stories just deserve a second, or third, reading, either because you rushed through it the first time, you might have missed it, or the subject intrigues you. With that understood, here, in no particular order, are some stories from the past year we think deserve another look.
Night-time viewing of Kīlauea's eruptions is a main draw at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park/NPS, Janice Wei
Exploring The Parks | In Awe Of Pele's Force
Charles Wilkes stood on the lip of Kīlauea's summit crater after dark and was astonished by the scene playing out before his eyes.
"The streams were of a glowing cherry-red color, illuminating the whole crater around," Wilkes said of the lava squeezing through cracks in the crater's surface. "The large lake beyond seemed swelling and becoming more vivid, so that we expected very moment to see an overflow from it of greater grandeur. ... The sight was magnificent, and worth a voyage round the world to witness."
Jennifer Trice (l) and Patty Lake of Matchcoat Sojourner
Sharing Stories Of The Chesapeake
The National Park Service has partnered on a new storytelling program that celebrates authentic traditions and experiences in the historic Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Climate change and drought are altering long-familiar national park landscapes. At Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, dropping water levels at Lake Powell have revealed a "bathtub" ring more than 100 feet tall and the trunks of trees once submerged by the reservoir/Kurt Repanshek
Uncertainties In Climate Change Are A Riddle For The Park Service’s Future Plans
Climate change is leaving National Park Service managers with stark choices: Stand by as the world warms to a point where ancient trees might no longer survive, or intervene so those trees may no longer be considered wild and national parks become something along the lines of national gardens.
Coral diseases are rampaging through reefs in the Caribbean and Florida.
Coral Disease Represents Ecological Crisis On Par With 1988 Yellowstone Fires
A disease that threatens an entire ecosystem lies below the surface of the sea – out of sight and out of mind.
Surface fire being reintroduced to a Giant Sequoia grove at Kings Canyon National Park. Note how fire is, in John Muir's words, " …rising here and there to a foot or two on dry twigs…” with the occasional “fierce bonfires lighted, where heavy branches broken off by snow had accumulated…”
Giant Sequoias Are No Stranger To Fire
Giant sequoias are no stranger to fire, but if they are to withstand large conflagrations such as those burning in California this year, fire has to be a regular visitor to the groves of these big trees.
Artist's rendering of ancient peoples in the landscape of today's White Sands National Park/Courtesy Karen Carr
Ancient Human Presence Revealed At White Sands National Park
Humans arrived in North America thousands of years earlier than previously accepted, according to groundbreaking research tied to a series of human -- and animal -- footprints preserved in fossilized sand within today's White Sands National Park.
Lake of the Lone Indian, Sierra National Forest/Wikimedia Commons
A 1.3-Million-Acre Approach To Preserving Nature
A soaring, 1.3-million-acre swath of the High Sierra would make a wonderful addition to the National Park System, one that could help slow the sixth mass extinction, forward the Biden administration's 30 by 30 initiative, and possibly even help the fight with climate change.
New Names For Old Routes
Dialogues about offensive climbing route names have ramped up in the last year as protests and ongoing dialogues about race and equity have happened across many sectors.
How quickly is climate change altering the glacial face of the National Park System?/Rebecca Latson
Under The Glaring Sun | National Park Glaciers At Risk
This summer's heat waves baked the Cascades and the glaciers in national parks there, but last winter's heavy snowpack might have been enough to shield the ice rivers from retreat.
Fajada Butte at Chaco Culture National Historical Park/Eric Jay Toll
Chaco Culture National Historical Park: Hard To Reach, Filled With The Unexpected
Chaco Culture National Historical Park is an atypical national park. The massive, thousand-year-old pueblos blend mysteriously into the towering canyon walls. Mystery and curiosity are among the top reasons thousands of visitors make the intentional trek far from paved roads deep into the Navajo Nation.
RVs have changed greatly since 1922. Today's increased interest in RVs, and bigger RVs, are putting pressure on national park campgrounds/NPS archives
Covid Spurred RV Sales, But Can National Park Campgrounds Handle Them?
A boom in RV sales during the Covid pandemic has allowed many to travel the country in their own mobile bubble, but it also is putting pressure on the National Park Service to expand park campgrounds to accommodate the larger RVs and to provide more campground amenities, such as Wi-Fi.
The graves of Beechey Island include three of Sir John Franklin's crew and one for a seaman who was part of a search party/Jennifer Bain
Tracing Sir John Franklin's Steps
Beechey Island beckons to all those fascinated by the story of Sir John Franklin and his ill-fated crew whose 1845 journey to find the Northwest Passage ended in tragedy, mystery and death.
The Appalachian on a ridge of the White Mountains in New Hampshire/USGS, Jeffrey Marion
The Appalachian Trail: A Biography
In an absorbing and compelling new book, Philip D’Anieri presents the country's most iconic footpath, the Appalachian Trail, as a human, as much as geographical, story.
The waning health of the Colorado River is impacting Grand Canyon National Park/Patrick Cone
Traveler Special Report: Grand Canyon's Struggling River
Diminished flows and invasive species are redefining the character of the Colorado River as it flows through Grand Canyon National Park.
Entrance fees to many national parks have increased far greater than the CPI would guide/NPS file
Your National Park Vacation Has Gotten More Expensive
You’re not mistaken. A national park vacation is more expensive than it was 20 years ago. Considerably more expensive in some costs once you get to the entrance gate.
Proposed Tusayan Development Threatens Grand Canyon National Park
A massive development proposed for Grand Canyon National Park's southern gateway town of Tusayan threatens to change the community's character and strain the groundwater that fuels the park's springs and seeps.
Flat Top Manor on the Blue Ridge Parkway/NPS
Restoring Americana on the Blue Ridge Parkway
An iconic early 20th-century mountain home along the Blue Ridge Parkway built by textile magnate Moses Cone and his wife, Bertha, is being restored to its elegant original appearance.
El Capitan and Guadalupe Peak from Hunter Peak/Barbara Jensen
Off The Grid At Guadalupe Mountains National Park
While some national parks are so busy that they require reservations, others make it easy to get off the beaten path – like Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas.
A hatchling heading for the Gulf/Rebecca Latson
Traveler Special Report: Is Padre Island's Renowned Sea Turtle Program Slipping Away?
After the National Park Service recruited Dr. Donna Shaver to build a sea turtle science program at Padre Island National Seashore, a role that saw her bring the program to international prominence, the agency now appears to be squandering her success and hoping she'll retire.
Fort Laramie was a sprawling post in 1870. The Laramie River cuts between the wooden and stone buildings in the background and the tents in the foreground/NPS Archives
Fort Laramie, An Overlooked Trove Of American History
When the U.S. Army in 1849 bought a fur trading post near the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers on the windswept plains of the Wyoming Territory, it wasn't exactly a turnkey operation.
The giant sequoias, the world’s most massive trees, have been in California’s Sierra Nevada for 200 million years. Now this species that stood when dinosaurs walked the Earth faces new threats. Is its longevity at risk?
A Porcupine caribou in Ivvavik National Park, home to the herd's summer calving grounds/Parks Canada
Exploring Canada's Most Accessible Arctic National Park
North of the Arctic Circle, our Twin Otter soars over the Mackenzie Delta’s maze of waterways and patchwork of tundra, darts across the Beaufort Sea and passes over the British Mountains before shaking and shuddering its way down to Sheep Creek International Airport. Well, that’s what the hand-painted sign says at the end of the grassy wilderness landing area. Parks Canada marks the spot as Imniarvik base camp in Ivvavik National Park, a place that just 100 or so people get to see each year in the extreme northwest corner of the Yukon.
Roman Hubbell, buying jewelry, carried on the family business (NPS archives photo).
Navajo Artisans Struggle, Adapt To Hubbell Trading Post Closure
A year-long closure of Hubbell Trading Post National Monument due to COVID-19 has disrupted a century-old model of buying and selling Navajo artwork and accelerated a shift of the art scene online.
Robert E. Lee statue at Gettysburg National Military Park/LRR2020
The Future Of Confederate Monuments
As the nation continues to reckon with its racist history, legislation calling for the removal of Confederate commemorative works from national parkland is likely to be reconsidered this year.
Ranger Yenyen Chan on Lembert Dome, in Tuolumne Meadows/Photo courtesy of Yenyen Chan.
Curiosity is often at the core of uncovering history. For Yosemite ranger Yenyen Chan, curiosity about Chinese history in the park has led to a decades-long journey of unearthing and sharing stories that might otherwise have gone untold.
"Long time ago the ground trembled, a big black smoke came,” was the memory the Hopi passed from generation to generation. It was a thick, choking smoke, preceded no doubt by shuddering earthquakes and precipitated by a furious, explosive eruption that alternately darkened and lit up the sky for hundreds of miles around.
Expanding the National Park System by adding places such as the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana would help preserve biodiversity/Zack Frank
A National Park Roadmap To "30 By 30"
There are vestiges of America's wildness and history, places where rich wilderness and the forgotten past can be found outside the National Park System, and where some progress can be made in guiding the country to "30 by 30," the international push to conserve 30 percent of the globe's lands and oceans for biodiversity and as impediment to climate change by 2030.
The voyageurs of the 18th century fur trade were a hardy bunch, transporting furs both in 40-foot-long canoes as well as in bundles on their backs as they portaged them to trading posts. Contributor Robert Pahre retraced a section of the "Grand Portage" to get a sense of their experience/ Frances Anne Hopkins (1838–1919)
Retracing The Voyageurs' Path Along The Grand Portage
Tracing the route through the forests and skirting lakes that the voyageurs followed in the 1700s provides ample reminder that the natural world provides an important part of the human landscape at Grand Portage and many other historic sites.
Support Essential Coverage of Essential Places
Comments
Kurt --- I wasn't certain of where to ask this, but this morning I read a troubling article from the Fresno Bee, concerning long time residents of the Yosemite area being displaced.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/yosemite-forcing-homeowners-leave-without-130...