Work won't start for two years, but the National Park Service has completed environmental compliance for a project to improve parking, transit, and visitor access to Muir Woods National Monument just north of San Francisco. The Muir Woods Sustainable Access Project is expected to enhance safety, visitor experience, and protection of park resources through the reorganization of parking areas, optimization of traffic flow, and redesign of the visitor entry plaza.

New Mexico Highway 4 climbs steadily, sometimes steeply, west out of Los Alamos, through forests scorched by wildfire in recent decades, and over a pass at the top of Bandelier National Monument. The road drops slightly then bursts out of the trees. Spread suddenly before us is a vast grassland, the Valle Grande, in Valles Caldera National Preserve, a recent addition to the national park system. This huge meadow seems the bottom of a bowl and we are on its south rim. Eleven miles to the north is the north rim of the caldera, rising to 10,000 feet. The 87,000-acre National Preserve, established in 2000, was placed under the care of the National Park Service in 2015.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was so impressed with Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument that he will ask Congress to designate it as a national park, according to Lucas St. Clair.

For the first time in 99 years, a total solar eclipse will cross the nation on August 21. Representatives from NASA, the National Park Service, other federal agencies and science organizations will provide important viewing safety, travel, and science information during two briefings at the Newseum in Washington starting at 1 p.m. EDT on June 21.