The dangers of snowfields, perhaps unexpected at mid-summer, played out in Glacier National Park when a hiker died from injuries sustained in a slide down a snow-covered slope off the Grinnell Glacier Trail.

In perhaps just the most recent example of legislative might, U.S. Rep. Don Young of Alaska is determined to kick the National Park Service out of the water at Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve.

Whitebark pine trees, a foundation species that grows high in the upper reaches of parks such as Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Glacier, Yosemite, and Kings Canyon, is in need of Endangered Species Act protection from climate change, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

If nothing else, Roderick Davidson stirred the hopes of at least some of the Confederate troops defending Richmond in late 1864 and early 1865 with his "Artis Avis," a flying machine he believed could save the South.