Grand Canyon National Park

Our Traveler’s Top Ten national park movies post was well-received, but we only scratched the surface. We’re digging deeper now. Here are some more we like for 1950 to 1979.

For most, a national park vacation entails booking a room in a lodge or reserving a spot in a campground, arriving at the park and checking in, and then spending a number of days hiking, paddling, or traveling the park to view various sites, whether they focus on waterfalls, geysers, deep forests, museums, or cultural focal points. Here are some alternatives to that approach, some pricey, some not so.

There's a brand new series of Trails Illustrated maps for Grand Canyon National Park, and this trio provides more detail to help you navigate the canyon.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is calling for more high-flow releases of the Colorado River down through Grand Canyon National Park and believes they can be done to benefit the national park's resources while also meeting energy and water needs.

Some of the best star gazing can be had in national parks. Proof of that can be found at Natural Bridges National Monument, Yellowstone National Park, Big Bend National Park, even Acadia National Park. Those and other park settings are celebrated in a series of night sky posters issued in conjunction with the International Year of Astronomy.

It's good to know that the National Park Service has hired a software company to track data related to search-and-rescue incidents. Let's just hope their work is a little more accurate than their press release.

Rangers at Grand Canyon National Park are trying to determine how a man fell 200 feet to his death from the South Rim near Mather Point.

Big changes in roads, parking and other facilities are nearing completion on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The result should be a much-improved visitor experience, beginning this month. The real payoff will come with next summer's crowds.

Years ago there was a lodge on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon just outside the national park's boundaries. It would operate through the winter as a cross-country ski resort. Sadly, it's no longer in operation, and its snowcat rides to the North Rim are a thing of the past as well. Which means that after Monday, if you want to gaze into the canyon before next spring you'll have to walk or ski there, as road access is closing down.

Grand Canyon National Park long has run its backpacking permit operation with a four-month lead time. In other words, you could walk into the backcountry office on February 1 and ask for a permit for a date in June and receive it. Well, the rules are changing friends.

This time the signal from SPOT really was sent seeking aid with a medical emergency, alerting Grand Canyon National Park rangers to a man with a fractured leg deep in the canyon.

A group has gone to court to halt the development of a uranium mine within 10 miles of Grand Canyon National Park. Filed on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, the Grand Canyon Trust, and the Sierra Club, the lawsuit claims the U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to update environmental reviews and mining plans before approving the project.

An influx of federal dollars through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is helping Grand Canyon National Park crews repair trails and put new roofs on aging structures.

In this final installment of our three-part series on visiting national parks by train, we'll take a look at some options for trips in the central and western United States.

Grand Canyon National Park rangers on Tuesday were trying to determine the cause of death of an Arizona man whose body was found on the Bright Angel Trail.

With the approach of Christmas and New Year's, some people remain undecided about what to do and where to go for the holidays. Here are a few suggestions for year-end national park vacations that are likely to result in some lasting memories.

For those who see the national parks as being preserved time immemorial under gigantic bell jars, there is evidence that each succeeding generation makes an imprint or two on the parks. It wasn't too terribly long ago, for instance, that you climbed into the bleachers to watch the bear buffets in Yellowstone National Park, or that the El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon National Park had separate dining areas for men and women.

Comparatively few people think of visiting national parks during the winter months, and that's unfortunate for a variety of reasons. Not only does this season present an entirely different view of the parks than the one you normally experience during spring and summer, but lodging typically is less expensive, as the following offers demonstrate.

Tamarisk, or salt cedar, is a highly invasive plant that has caused plenty of problems in the West. A test project to control the pest with the tamarisk leaf beetle has been underway since 2001 in parts of the country, but a few of the beetles have turned up unexpectedly in the upper end of the Grand Canyon. Will this prove to be a case of "Oh, my," or "Oh, me"?

Frivolous calls to 911 centers are a growing problem all across the country, but when the call comes from a remote location in Grand Canyon National Park, both the expense and risks of an emergency response increase dramatically. A group of hikers recently activated their SPOT device not once, not twice, but three times on the same trip.

Many national parks have historic lookouts that are, or should be, listed on the National Historic Lookouts Register. Visitors who know where to look can see lots of splendid examples.

A trail reconstruction project on the South Kaibab Trail at Grand Canyon National Park has led to some changes in mule trips at the park. The overnight trip to Phantom Ranch is not affected, but the day trip to Plateau Point has been replaced by a ride to an overlook featuring a view with a classic Grand Canyon name: The Abyss.

There's still plenty of time to visit the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. Officials say vehicle access to the North Rim will be possible until the end of November...or heavy snowfall.

In the days before interstate highways made travel faster—and usually a lot less interesting—a road trip to some popular NPS sites included a drive on at least part of Route 66. Fans of the historic highway now have a great new resource for information about the famous route.

If there's a great place to study earth science in the National Park System, certainly Grand Canyon National Park would be near, if not at, the top of the list. And if you head to Grand Canyon in mid-October, you'll be able to study earth science with the rangers and staff.

The body of a man whose wife reported him overdue from a hike at Grand Canyon National Park was found in a remote and rugged area below the North Rim.