In the euphoria of crossing glacial till to the largest mass of glacial ice in the Canadian Rockies, you could be forgiven for walking blithely past the small sign with the sombre message: “The glacier was here in 1992.”

James Cook envisioned a bride in 1886 when he asked Kate Graham to marry him, but he also came into a ranch that carried a window more than 20 million years into the past that stunned the scientific world.

Dark, heavy skies threaten to unleash a torrent. Undaunted, the single-engine’s propellor rumbles defiantly and roars to life, promising adventure as my float plane taxis upriver from tiny King Salmon, Alaska, headed for the mysterious Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes at Katmai National Park and Preserve.

On an island surrounded by ocean, Cape Breton Highlands National Park is an island itself, of rumpled mountains and thick forest mostly unbroken by the human footprint.

While the prospect of free land that the Homestead Act promised sounds typically American -- hard work and determination will lift you up -- the stories you can explore at Homestead National Historical Park in Nebraska reflect both jubilation and anguish, deprivation and self-determination.

Political tensions generated by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to reject a woman's right to abortion have made it challenging at times for park rangers interpreting civil rights history.

Associations and partnerships developing between the National Park Service and Indigenous people bring new voices to the story of the lands the parks occupy.

Acadia National Park’s trails system originated from the paths taken by mid-19th century artists who found inspiration on Mount Desert Island.

There are places in the National Park System where beavers are being welcomed into parks to help restore the landscape.

The EcoLogik Camp at Cabrillo National Monument is a specialized STEM program for girls that turns the park into a living laboratory.

Climate-change driven events are proving costly for the National Park Service, as impacts from drought, flooding, and landslides in just the past year are expected to cost nearly $2 billion to address, and that comes on top of hundreds of millions of dollars the agency unexpectedly needed from Congress in the past decade to address other weather-related impacts.

William Henry Jackson's short life as a bullwhacker quickly convinced him that that was not the career for him.

There are no walls around Fort Larned on the Kansas prairie, which makes it easy for your eyes to roam across the surrounding countryside that was home to soldiers from 1860 to 1878 when they were tasked with guarding travelers along the Santa Fe Trail, helping with mail deliveries, and negotiating with area tribes that grew increasingly concerned with growing numbers of settlers.

A billiards table offering one of the few respites from the daily hardships endured by soldiers on the frontier in the wake of the Civil War could not temper the racism that some white troops harbored against their Black peers.

In the late 1940s, Marjory Stoneman Douglas poetically labeled the Everglades a “River of Grass” in her renowned book. This brings up an interesting question: Is the River of Grass a river or just a poetic name?

The mosquitoes pull out all the stops to welcome us as we arrive alongside Hog Island in a fisheries patrol-style boat and take turns donning hip waders to make our way through the ocean lagoon to the rocky shore. We’re the only humans around and as we take a rare tour of this densely forested island, the overly abundant resident mosquito population follows and feasts.

In the wake of the feet that go off trail and trample delicate vegetation at Mount Rainier National Park come the meadow restorers with their tools and native wildflower seeds.

It seemed a move contrary to the national sentiment, heading east when most were looking west for prosperity, but for Stephen and Louisa Jones leaving Colorado for the Flint Hills of Kansas cemented their legacy.

A new storytelling tool helps both park managers and visitors understand the value of park wilderness.

On route to an old-growth Eastern hemlock stand, we’re waylaid by a hiker keen to share her sighting of a Lady’s Slipper, a prolific orchid with a pink, pouch-shaped flower that she has confused with the rare Hooker’s orchid the park wants citizen scientists to keep an eye out for. We pause to admire ruby red teaberries and bunchberries with tiny but showy white “flowers” made up of four oval bracts, rub sweetfern to inhale its namesake scent, and gently finger the ragged lung lichen that proliferate on tree trunks.