On October 14, 1994, Saguaro was redesignated a National Park from a National Monument. This Arizona park covers elevation ranges from desert floor to mountain top, up to 2600 m (8600 ft). The park’s lowest elevation is a desert ecozone with chaparral and grassland…
On September 25, 1890, Sequoia National Park was established to protect a forest of giant trees called sequoias. That’s what to do with the largest trees on Earth – build a national park around them! The largest tree is named the General Sherman tree…
On September 14, 1907, Jasper Forest Park was established, expanding into national park status in 1930. With its 11,000 km² (4200 mi² ) area, Jasper National Park of Canada is larger than the country of Jamaica. On hundreds of individual sites throughout Jasper, there…
On September 12, 1940, close to the town of Lascaux, four teenaged boys enlarged the entrance to an old river cliff cave so they could explore. They found it to be so large and complex … they got their teacher involved and… anthropologist Henri…
On April 5, 1815, the Tambora stratovolcano erupted after several thousand years in repose. This Indonesian super-volcano signalled its awakening with a few years of steam releases, tremors, and small eruptions until the April 5th explosion, heard up to 1,400 km (870 mi.) away,…
On April 3, 1837, writer/naturalist, John Burroughs was born. In his early adult years, he alternated teaching with studying at different institutions or colleges. The works of Wordsworth and Emerson inspired him to write from his personal vantage point – a man raised and…
On May 18, 1980, in Washington state, Mount St. Helens volcano exploded leaving 57 people dead or missing. This was a Plinian eruption. It validated Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness description, often regarded as exaggeration, of the Vesuvius explosion that buried Pompeii and Heraculaneum. Mount…
On January 28, 1884, Belgian physicist, inventor, and extremes explorer Auguste Piccard was born in Switzerland… a few minutes after his physicist-chemist brother Jean-Felix. Auguste conducted atmospheric research using balloon flight and was well into the public eye when the University of Brussels offered…
On October 29, 1831, American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh was born. As a professor of paleontology at Yale, Marsh led student expeditions to the West aboard the recently completed Union Pacific Railway to find fossils. Full of energy and passion for his subject, Marsh…
On October 27, 1986, Nevada’s Great Basin National Park was established, incorporating the Lehman Caves National Monument. Rather than being one actual great basin, the area is a collection of many small basins. The park, with its deserts, mountains, and caves, ranges in elevation…