There’s a story in western Colorado involving Colorado National Monument that bears watching. The gist of the story is that some local community organizations are in support of redesignating the monument as a national park, but only if they can veto Park Service decisions on what uses the monument is appropriate for. Onlookers believe that this ties in to past...
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Did you know that National Park Week is April 20-28, 2013? Did you know that there are 401 national parks? That they include seashores, battlefields, historic homes, archeological sites, and spectacular natural areas? Did you know there is at least one national park in every state? So, if you are looking for something fun and fantastic to do with family and friends, head...
Learn MoreAs cell phones, iPods and laptops creep steadily into every corner of modern life, America’s national parks have stayed largely off the digital grid, among the last remaining outposts of ringtone-free human solitude. For better or worse, that may soon change. Under pressure from telecommunications companies and a growing number of park visitors who feel adrift...
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Its bolts are rusting, floor planks are rotting, and its windowpanes shattered. The roof is pocked with holes that let in the rain and snow. Even some of the guardrails have gone missing from the 60-foot-tall lookout tower — an unnerving thought for any person daring enough to climb it. Since its construction in the 1930s, the Shuckstack firetower in the Fontana region...
Learn MoreLetting the public into the National Park System for free can be costly to the National Park Service. So costly, in fact, that the agency has scaled back the number of fee-free days in 2013 to 11 days, down by almost a full week from 2012. Park Service spokesman David Barna told the New York Times that each fee-free day costs the agency between $700,000 and $1 million in...
Learn MoreWhile Interior Department officials publicly refuse to discuss how failure to avert the “fiscal cliff” might impact national park operations, internally they’re telling National Park Service staff that nothing should change in the short term. In an email distributed throughout the Interior Department’s realm, Deputy Interior Secretary David Hays...
Learn MoreGreat Smoky Mountains National Park offers hiking opportunities for every level of experience – short hikes, long hikes, moderately easy hikes up to strenuous hiking levels. Hiking in the Smokies enables hikers to experience nature in ways that driving in a vehicle over mountain roads does not provide. Cascading streams, wildflowers, the scent of evergreens and the...
Learn MoreCongress’ looming failure to solve the fiscal cliff crisis leaves national parks facing large-scale cuts and the prospect of fewer visitors as tax increases leave Americans with less money to travel. With serious doubts that the politicians will be able to reach a deal before the automatic spending cuts and tax increases go into effect at the end of the year, national...
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The Trail to Every Classroom (TTEC) program is a professional development program for K-12 teachers that provides educators with the tools and training for place-based education and service-learning on the Appalachian Trail (A.T.). Launched in 2006, in partnership with the National Park Service, the program offers educators resources needed to engage their students in...
Learn MoreFire management officials at Great Smoky Mountains National Park have announced plans to conduct a 200 acre prescribed burn just inside the park south of Wears Valley in Sevier County, TN. The burn will take place during November 11th – 24th, depending on weather. Prescribed burn operations are expected to take 2 days. Great Smoky Wildland Fire Module, a National...
Learn MoreThe National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) this week, presented National Park Service Superintendent Pam Underhill from the Appalachian National Scenic Trail with the Stephen T. Mather conservation award. Underhill was recognized for her leadership in managing one of the Park Service’s most unique resources, which stretches 2200 miles and through 14 states,...
Learn MoreThe National Park Service says it has completed a five-year-long project to remove heavy debris from areas it oversees in Northwest Alaska – including more than two dozen military fuel pods, mostly from F-4 Phantom II fighter jets. According to NPS spokesperson John Quinley, the aluminum pods – which measure about 15 feet long and weigh about 450 pounds each...
Learn MoreSept. 3, 2014, may be almost 700 days away, but planning for the celebration of that notable date, the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, is well under way and has been for at least two years. Already, the four federal agencies responsible for managing the National Wilderness Preservation System have joined national wilderness organizations in formally committing to...
Learn MoreAmerica’s national parks are undoubtedly some of our “best ideas.” They are unique places across our country where public lands are preserved for their natural, cultural, or historic value, as well as for the unique contributions they provide to local and regional economies and our national economic strength. This is why we have set aside national parks, national...
Learn More48 years ago today, President Johnson signed The Wilderness Act. “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Watch this stunning and inspiring video for a...
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Named after the Biblical mount where Moses first saw the Promised Land, Mt. Pisgah is the landmark that gave Pisgah National Forest its name. Located on the border of Buncombe and Haywood counties in NC, close to the point where Transylvania and Henderson meet them, the mountain is easily accessible via a hiking trail from the Blue Ridge Parkway. Mt. Pisgah is topped...
Learn MoreThe Asheville Chapter of Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway is working with the National Park Service to offer a volunteer opportunity for those who love the parkway and want to help preserve its scenic beauty and heritage. There will be a work day on Saturday, Sept. 29, National Public Lands Day. The Pisgah Campground at Milepost 408.5 needs 25 volunteers to pull weeds,...
Learn MoreOn the eve of its 96th birthday on August 25th, the National Park Service is getting a special gift: A new report that is both the first of its kind in the last 50 years and a benchmark for the future. Announced by NPS Director Jonathan Jarvis in a ceremony at Rocky Mountain National Park today, the report represents a science-based effort to ensure America’s parks...
Learn MoreSure, the National Park Service could just call August 25th its birthday, but the term “Founder’s Day” seems more fitting since the Park Service was the brainchild of a great many people who contributed to its inception. The National Park Service Organic Act (or simply “the Organic Act”) established the National Park Service (NPS), an agency of the Department...
Learn MoreOn August 24 and 25, 2012, the sixth in the series of National Park Service-National Geographic Society BioBlitzes is scheduled to take place in Rocky Mountain National Park. The event is being held each year leading up to the National Park Service Centennial in 2016. Hundreds of scientists, students, teachers, and volunteers will gather to participate in this event, a...
Learn MoreMorgan Hensley’s little chunk of roasted dirt may not look like much to the untrained eye, but she’s proud of it. Hensley, a senior at Pisgah High School in Canton, N.C., is one of several dozen students who are getting a little history, heritage and culture under their fingernails this summer at an archaeological excavation site in the Great Smoky Mountains...
Learn MoreThe National Park Service will limit the number of vehicles allowed on the wilderness portion of Denali Park Road at 160 per day starting in 2015, but that still represents a potential sizable increase in traffic on the only road leading into Alaska’s premier national park. The 160-vehicle-per-day cap will replace the current seasonal limit of 10,512 vehicles allowed on...
Learn MoreIt’s the incredible tale of a rogue ranger and his whiskey-running wife, an opium-addicted moonshiner named Josephine Doody who tangled with mountain lions and is rumored to have murdered a man in Colorado before lamming it on the banks of the Middle Fork Flathead River. Wanted by federal agents, Josephine was kidnapped by husband Dan Doody while in an opium haze and...
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. My regular hiking companions have designated me the lead hiker, so I suppose that makes me the slowest Meanderthal. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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