Archive List

It's certainly true that travel schedules and seasonal weather patterns dictate that the heaviest traffic flows to national parks come during the summer months. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to do in the parks in winter. At Dinosaur National Monument, for instance, a park that showcases geology, paleontology, and rivers in summer, winter brings opportunities for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and even snowmobiling.

Well, a full year has gone by since the Traveler tossed out some ideas of what we'd like to see take place across the National Park System in 2009. Let's take a look back and see how things turned out.

A trip to a national park normally lets you leave stress and worry behind, but when falling temperatures combined with light snow at Grand Canyon National Park the conditions produced slick roads that led to a number of accidents involving roughly 40 vehicles, including one that came close to sliding off into the abyss.

The National Park Service and xRez Studio have created one of the world’s largest photographic images, an amazingly detailed photographic map of the rock faces rimming Yosemite Valley. Believe me, you won’t need to squint!

Florida’s new “Don’t Let It Loose” Billboard Campaign is further evidence that the National Park Service and other federal and state land management agencies are getting real serious about using public education as a tool to combat the spread of harmful nonnative plant and animal species.

A $10,000 grant from the Glacier National Park Fund will enable biologists to learn more about the bighorn sheep that inhabit Glacier National Park along the park's boundary with the Blackfeet Reservation.

Most snowshoes made these days have decking made out of Hypalon, a synthetic rubber fabric. But if you head to Voyageurs National Park in late January, you can be schooled in the art of lacing snowshoes the old-fashioned way, with rawhide.

Though most folks view Glacier National Park as a summertime destination, winter ushers in a completely different personality for the park, one that's quieter, less congested, and brimming with wonder. Beginning January 10, rangers will point out these wonders during weekly two-hour-long snowshoe hikes in the park.

A tiny scorpion-like invertebrate found only in Grand Canyon National Park is among 67 plant, animal, and insect species that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says might be eligible for listing as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.

The calendar and Mother Nature are in agreement at Glacier National Park in Montana: the winter season has officially begun, and most roads in the park are closed to vehicles and open for cross country skiing and snowshoeing.

Guns in the parks. Budget boosts. New units. The past year brought a mixed bag of goods to the National Park System. Some good, some not so good. Here, in no particular order, are some of the top stories we saw.

St. Thomas National Historic Site left the National Park System as quietly as it entered. Getting abolished without ever being activated didn’t make it unique, but getting established on Christmas Eve put it in a class of its own.