You are here

Home » National Parks Traveler

First Lady Visits Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site

During her recent visit to Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, First Lady Laura Bush toured Sandburg’s Connemara residence, petted dairy goats, talked with children in the Junior Ranger program, and announced a $50,000 National Park Foundation grant to expand the park’s Junior Ranger and youth education programs.

Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part I

Today, well over a century after the Civil War ended in 1865, it is difficult to imagine the battlefields of Antietam, Vicksburg, Shiloh, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga had they been neglected, instead of preserved as military parks. As compelling historic landscapes of great natural beauty and public interest, these early military parks have been familiar to generations of Americans.

Shenandoah National Park Ranger Roy Sullivan Set the World Record for Being Hit by Lightning

The odds of being struck by lightning once in an 80-year lifetime are about one in 3,000. The odds for two strikes in a lifetime soar to one in nine million. Roy Sullivan, a park ranger at Shenandoah National Park, was struck by seven lightning bolts and survived them all. It just goes to show you something or other.

Pruning the Parks: Delisted Over a Half-Century Ago, Fossil Cycad National Monument (1922-1956) is a Cautionary Tale

South Dakota’s Fossil Cycad National Monument was supposed to protect a geologic treasure when it was established in 1922, but its marvelous surface deposits of fossilized plants had already been stripped from the site. A bill signed into law on August 1, 1956, abolished the park, which has served ever since as a cautionary tale. If you don’t protect park resources, they won’t be there for future generations.