Featured Articles on National Parks Traveler

Fort Caroline in Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve commemorates a short-lived French community in North Florida. The reconstructed fort will fulfills a child's dream of long-ago adventure.

We like to think that national parks are just that: serene, picturesque "parks" where we can, if only for a moment or two, escape the ugliness and stress of the world beyond their borders. But as the New Year's Day shooting at Mount Rainier National Park that left a young ranger dead proved only too well, national parks are not always the sanctuaries we'd like them to be.

The United States has been invaded. None of the presidential candidates are talking about it and I haven’t even seen it mentioned on the national news reports yet. Birders, however, are well aware of this invasion and we welcome our new owl overlords.

A 34-year-old Mount Rainier National Park ranger was shot and killed in the line of duty Sunday as she tried to apprehend a man who fled a check stop at Paradise. Fellow rangers were prevented from reaching the downed ranger for about 90 minutes as the shooter pinned them down with gunfire.

In 1895, Mackinac National Park became the first national park to be abolished. It would not be the last. More than two dozen other sites or areas with independent identities have been pruned from the National Park System.

Despite the impending doom that pixels were expected to hand the printed word, we're happy to report that publishers are still turning out books, and more than a few that crossed our desks this year are worth your attention.

Over the years there has been passing interest to a wild and scenic corner of West Virginia being added to the National Park System, and in the coming weeks the National Park Service will begin to take a look to see if the area in question is suitable for inclusion.

Don't overlook the good work of the various friends groups that strive to bring a little extra to the national parks scattered throughout the country.

The past year took me across the National Park System, from Cape Lookout National Seashore on the North Carolina coast to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska. The stories that spooled out from these trips into the National Park System told of advocacy and nurturing, of history and recreation, and even of controversy. Here's a look back.

The National Park Service administered the White Plains National Battlefield Site for several decades, but no national park materialized there and the property was eventually delisted.

Those seemingly ubiquitous disposable plastic bottles, the ones that generated a storm of controversy over their proposed ban at Grand Canyon National Park, may now be banned by park superintendents nationwide.

A year's worth of family vacations to national parks led to the following list of top family adventures in the national parks.

Rangers who both work and live in parks receive some unusual after-hours phone calls, but this one was guaranteed to get my adrenalin flowing: The woman on the line was nearly hysterical, but her message got right to the point: "Come quick! There's been an explosion!"

National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis is determined to rid plastic bottles from the national parks, but wants to consider all factors before doing so, the agency's communications chief said today while addressing the uproar over the director's decision to put a hold on a water bottle ban at Grand Canyon National Park.