For nearly a century, a popular story has linked the origins of the National Park Service to the genius of one man. In 1914, Stephen T. Mather, a self-made millionaire in the borax industry, visited Yosemite and Sequoia national parks. Finding both of them poorly managed he wrote Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane and complained. “Dear Steve,” Lane allegedly replied, “If you don’t like the way the national parks are being run, come on down to Washington and run them yourself.”

While there are a handful of cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park that you can tour, there are more than 600 dwellings in all in the park. Here's a tip on how to visit some of those off the beaten path.

Fewer ranger-guided tours of Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park will be offered next spring due to the need for preservation work on the massive dwelling.

For those of us who love our national parks and are confronted daily with media, politicians, and pundits warning us of a coming global-warming disaster, it’s only natural to ask what that warming will mean for our national parks. This is exactly what the well- known Union of Concerned Scientists discuss in their recent report, National Landmarks at Risk: How Rising Seas, Floods, and Wildfires Are Threatening the UnitedStates’Most Cherished Historic Sites.