They are simple structures, and "shacks" is no doubt a good way to describe them. Built more than a century ago to house members of the U.S. Life-Saving Service, these board structures hidden amid the dunes of Cape Cod National Seashore have taken on a second, or third, life as artists' roosts. But what should the national seashore do with them?

Cape Cod to many is synonymous with cranberries. So it shouldn't be surprising that Cape Cod National Seashore is offering an archaeology program focused on a historic cranberry farm on the cape.

A Jaws redux? Not quite, but officials are monitoring some great white sharks that have been enjoying the waters off Cape Cod National Seashore.

Some of the least-known resources of the National Park System are the cultural and natural resources that lie below the waters within the boundaries of our park areas. While not as mainstream as activities such as camping and hiking, diving and snorkeling are increasingly popular ways to enjoy and be inspired by these resources.

Each spring, certain areas in Acadia National Park in Maine are closed to visitors as peregrine falcons return to their ancestral nesting sites on seaside cliffs. With great anticipation, park visitors gather below the cliffs with binoculars, spotting scopes, and zoom lenses to watch the peregrines — — a species that in the mid-1960s was on the brink of extinction.

The theme of this week’s quiz is a term that has at least 13 different meanings. We’ll pretty much stick with the standard connotation, but not entirely. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll make you clean the Traveler wishing well and count all the pennies.

While humans certainly can wreak havoc on the nests of shorebirds such as piping plovers and least terns, so can Mother Nature. A late-June storm that battered Cape Cod National Seashore destroyed a large majority of the seashore's plover and tern nests.

The "busy season" for Cape Cod National Seashore doesn't really begin until the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Which means you have plenty of time to consider the Traveler's suggestions for what you definitely must see or do when you visit the seashore.

Major changes are in the wind—literally and figuratively—concerning leasing of sites for offshore energy production. How might parks be affected by the current national plan being developed for offshore energy?

Piping plovers and sea turtles have halted traffic at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, lava flows and their gases have done the same at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and floods have shut down traffic at Olympic National Park and Mount Rainier National Park. At Cape Cod National Seashore, a tiny toad has the power to divert traffic.

If you like to leave the pavement for the sand dunes at Cape Cod National Seashore, mark April 10 on your calendar. That's when the seashore will begin selling this year's off-road-vehicle permits.

There was an essay recently that brought to my attention a startling figure: Even though there are nearly 1,700 marine protected areas in U.S. territorial waters, 99.9 percent of all our territorial waters were open to fishing in 2008.

This week’s quiz will find out just how much you remember about one of the most influential programs in National Park Service history. Answers are at the end. If we catch you guessing we’ll make you explain how the visitor center design strategies employed by Los Angeles-based Neutra and Alexander differed from those of San Francisco-based Malone & Hooper.

Sure, the calendar says January, there's a lot of snow out there across the country, and you haven't even thought about filing your income taxes. But it's still not too early to begin planning your national park vacation for this summer.

Cape Cod National Seashore was established 47 years ago on August 7, 1961. To create the new park, the National Park Service had to “think outside the box” and employ greenlining and cooperative stewardship.

What's in a name? That's a good question in light of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's unsolicited bid to turn Golden Gate National Recreation Area into a "national park."

Fierce winter storms and shifting shoals gave birth to the "Graveyard of the Atlantic," where thousands of ships have foundered since record-keeping began in the 16th century. Beginning late in the 18th century, rescuers began patrolling the East Coast in search of such wrecks.

One-hundred-and-forty-five years had passed since Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was mortally wounded by "friendly fire" in the woods at Chancellorsville, and yet it might have been yesterday. Thick forest still hangs over the waning vestige of the Old Mountain Road where the general was riding, beyond the front lines, on the night of May 2, 1863, when members of the 18th North Carolina mistook him and his aides for a Union incursion.

Walter Gropius, founder of the influential German Bauhaus school of design, implored the managers of the brand new Cape Cod National Seashore to design facilities, such as visitor centers and bathhouses, with an innovative approach. Rustic cabin design found in Western national parks wouldn’t work here, but Modern design featuring modest scale and a light footprint on the land would.

Steaming lobster, fresh quahogs, corn on the cob, a cold brew, sand and sun. It doesn't get much better than that at Cape Cod National Seashore, a place where the perfect summer surely could have been designed.

A January storm has spit up onto a beach at Cape Cod National Seashore what a similar storm might have taken to the bottom a century ago -- the hull of a 19th century schooner that once plied the Atlantic.

For years, summer trips to Cape Cod were an annual ritual for my family. My parents had retired to the Cape, and our boys loved romping in the surf and building castles in the sand. Lobster feasts, game-fishing, and whale watching were added benefits, as were exploring the seashore’s lighthouses, roaming its dunes, and looking for sea creatures in its mudflats.

In the wake of the uproar over hunting brown bears in Katmai National Preserve, does anyone care that Cape Cod National Seashore officials have cleared the way for pheasant or turkey hunts? Or is it only hunts involving charismatic mega-fauna that draw ire?

How much would you pay to hike a trail in Shenandoah, or Great Smoky Mountains or Sequoia? What do you think is a reasonable fee to take a dip at Cape Cod or Cape Hatteras national seashores?