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March 9, 2025
The first time that I went seabeaning, I triumphantly scooped up what looked like a shrivelled brain from a national seashore that was dotted with plastic trash. I turned the fist-sized oddity over in my hands, admiring how the deep grooves on its... THE WHOLE STORY
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In this week’s podcast we thought we’d take a break from the unsettling news happening in and around our national parks and federal lands regarding park staff reductions and threats of reducing park boundaries to make way for mining. Instead, the... THE WHOLE STORY
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There are over 125 miles of hiking trails in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. These trails range from nearly-level to more challenging, and pass through various habitats including woodlands, wetlands, and old fields.
How many other units of the National Park System can boast of a scenic train ride through park landscape? At Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, you can take yourself and even your bike aboard the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad for a relaxing ride while you learn the area’s history, watch for wildlife, and even purchase a snack, beverage, or souvenir. To read more about this, click here.
"All Aboard the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad! The National Park Scenic excursion is a unique way to experience all the natural wonder Cuyahoga Valley National Park has to offer. Sit back and relax as the train weaves through the Cuyahoga Valley and races along with the rushing Cuyahoga River. The route provides passengers the opportunity to possibly spot eagles, deer, beavers, and herons in their natural habitat."
Cuyahoga Valley National Park's diverse landscape provides habitat for about 250 species of birds, including this quirky least bittern pictured here.
Twenty-five miles (40 km) of the river’s 100 miles (161 km) run the length of the park from south to north, so it’s a no-brainer to want to paddle a canoe or kayak through the park on this waterway. Click here to read more about paddling the Cuyahoga River.
From Superfund Site to environmental success story, Krejci was once a salvage yard and waste disposal facility. Cuyahoga Valley National Park acquired the land and began the task of cleanup. Click here to read more about this.
According to the National Park Service:
The Cuyahoga River is a famous ecosystem. Today its flowing water supports fish and insects that feed birds and amphibians along its muddy banks. But the river wasn’t always so full of life. The Cuyahoga River has a very polluted past. The river between Akron and Cleveland was dangerously dirtied by a century of dumped factory waste and sewage from cities. In the summer of 1969 a floating pile of oil-soaked logs and other trash caught fire on the river in Cleveland. The Cuyahoga River became known as the river that burned.
News of a river so polluted that it caught on fire made people demand action. The Cuyahoga River’s sad state sparked the modern environmental movement in America. The Environmental Protection Agency was created and legislators passed pollution control and clean-up laws. The fire even helped inspire the first Earth Day in 1970. Thanks to decades of clean-up work, the Cuyahoga River is on the mend.
According to the National Park Service, "Due to its exceptional night skies and efforts to mitigate light pollution, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park was designated as an International Dark Sky Park in 2015."
There are trails on both North and South rims at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The Uplands Trail is one of those hiking trails. To read more about hiking in this national park, click here.
According to the National Park Service, "Pegmatite refers to igneous rock with very coarse texture and unusually large, intergrown crystals. It consists mostly of quartz, feldspar, and mica. As magma cools and solidifies, water becomes concentrated. This concentration makes the magma more fluid and easier to squeeze, like toothpaste out of the tube, into the surrounding rock. The crystals can be very large—up to 6 feet (2 m) in length." To read more about Black Canyon of the Gunnison's geology, click here.
Wildflowers and flowering shrubs found at Black Canyon bloom in early season (April–June), mid-season (June–July), and late season (July–September). They grow on the canyon rim, uplands, and the inner canyon. Mariposa lilies are native to Western North America.
The cliffs of Black Canyon are a siren call to rock climbers, but this place is not to be lightly tackled by beginners. To read more about rock climbing at this national park in Colorado, click here.
Black Canyon is home to 174 bird species, including this canyon wren.
According to the National Park Service, "Black Canyon is the result of multiple episodes of uplift and erosion and the carving power of the Gunnison River. The canyon displays a wide variety of rock types - including igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary."
"Deep, steep, and narrow." According to the National Park Service, Black Canyon exposes nearly two billion year old Precambrian "basement rocks," one of the best examples in the world.
This first month of the 2025 New Year is all about throwback in the National Park System, with a little added trivia.
When driving the Chisos Basin Road toward the Chisos Mountains and the Chisos Mountains Lodge, think about the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). They built the road.
According to park staff:
"In May 1933, Texas Canyons State Park was established; it was later renamed Big Bend State Park. Roads and trails were needed for the new park, and the CCC provided an ideal workforce. A year after the park was established, 200 young men, 80 percent of whom were Hispanic, arrived to work in the Chisos Mountains. The CCC's first job was to set up camp and develop a reliable water supply. The CCC boys faced many challenges, living in tents 85 miles from the nearest town, and facing extreme temperatures and weather. Eventually barracks replaced tents in the area of today’s Basin Campground."
"The CCC built an all-weather access road into the Chisos Mountains Basin. They surveyed and built the seven-mile road using only picks, shovels, rakes, and a dump truck, which they loaded by hand. They scraped, dug, and blasted 10,000 truck loads of earth and rock and constructed 17 stone culverts, still in use today along the Basin road."
This first month of the 2025 New Year is all about throwback in the National Park System, with a little added trivia.
Did you know that when Paradise Inn opened for business in 1917 up at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State, there were tent cabins there, too? According to Mount Rainier Guest Service's history page for the Paradise Inn:
"In early 1895, a coffee shop called the Paradise Hotel and a tent camp were established providing services to the ever-increasing numbers of people visiting the area, and in 1898; John L. Reese combined the two operations and name it Camp of the Clouds. Although visitors were generally satisfied with the camp, they wanted nicer accommodations and the demand for better sanitation increased in 1911, the first full season that it was possible to take horse-drawn vehicles all the way to the Camp of the Clouds. As the need increased for a hotel and other services in the Paradise area, a corporation of local Tacoma businessmen from Tacoma formed the Rainier National Park Company (RNPC) and began construction of the Paradise Inn. John Reese sold his camp to RNPC in 1916 to house construction crews as they worked on the new first-class Paradise Inn. In spite of the short construction season, the crew nearly completed the Paradise Inn during the summer of 1916 at an initial cost of $91,000, not including furnishings or equipment." The tent cabins were ultimately removed in 1930.
This first month of the 2025 New Year is all about throwback in the National Park System, along with a little added trivia.
According to Padre Island National Seashore staff, "When Colonel Sam Robertson bought out Pat Dunn's interests (except for grazing and mineral rights) on the island, he envisioned developing Padre Island into the Miami Beach of the Texas coast. To that end he developed several projects to bring people to the island and which still exist, although not in their original form."
"In 1927 Colonel Robertson built the first causeway from the island's northern end to Flour Bluff on the mainland. He named it the Don Patricio causeway in honor of Patrick Dunn. The construction was very simple: four wooden troughs supported by a trestle. The troughs were spaced so that a standard automobile could place it tires in them and drive across. One pair of troughs was for eastbound traffic and one was for westbound. In the first month of its operation, 1,800 cars used the causeway and 2,500 used it the second month. After that use dropped."
Looks like the Don Patricio Causeway in this 1930 image was more popular as a spot for saltwater fishing.
This first week of the New Year is all about a little throwback with national park photos from years past, along with a little trivia.
According to Wikipedia: "The irregularly-shaped lake lies at the northern end of Cinder Cone and the Fantastic Lava Beds, which is a complex of lava flows and a cinder cone. Lava from Cinder Cone's 1666 eruption flowed into and around the lake. This formed an underwater lava field. Water from Snag Lake to the south flows through the porous lava field to Butte Lake. Water from Butte Lake drains via Butte Creek, which flows north out of the parkland.
Do you wonder what fish those two women caught? Maybe rainbow, brown, or brook trout.
"In about anything they needed as extra manpower, they always relied on the CCC…. I mean, you can just see the results. I don’t think they would have a lot of things today if they hadn’t had the CCC working on these, you know a lot of this rock cribbing and river work and the trail work and just things like that. They got a lot done. It makes the park…I’ll say."
- Fred Brueck, Zion and Bryce National Park Ranger 1934-1941 and Zion National Park Chief Ranger 1953-1973. Interviewed September 18, 1989.
