Today marks 48 years since Congress established the National Park Foundation. That’s 48 years we’ve dutifully served as the official charity of America’s national parks; 48 years we’ve proudly partnered with the National Park Service to ensure our national heritage remains protected, vibrant, and relevant now and in the future.
The National Park Service Centennial in 2016 will be not only an epic celebration of what’s been accomplished to date, but also a springboard for the next century for our national parks. It’s a critical moment for the national park community to come together and ensure all people recognize the importance of supporting these magnificent places.
Where would you spend most of your summer? Get up, go out, explore and #FindYourPark! #SailiLouPaka Join our Ranger-led Saturday Hikes! All Saturdays until September.
Today we gaze through the windows of the past into one of the best preserved cliff dwellings in North America. This 20 room high-rise apartment, nestled into a towering limestone cliff, tells a story of ingenuity, survival and ultimately, prosperity in an unforgiving desert landscape.
Montezuma Castle National Monument protects a set of well-preserved Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings near the town of Camp Verde, Arizona, United States. The dwellings were built and used by the Sinagua people, a pre-Columbian culture closely related to the Hohokam and other indigenous peoples of the southwestern United States, between approximately 1100 and 1425 AD. The main structure comprises five stories and twenty rooms, and was built over the course of three centuries.
Neither part of the monument's name is correct. When European-Americans first observed the ruins in the 1860s, by then long-abandoned, they named them for the famous Aztec emperor Montezuma in the mistaken belief that he had been connected to their construction (see also Montezuma mythology). In fact, the dwelling was abandoned more than 40 years before Montezuma was born, and was not a "castle" in the traditional sense, but instead functioned more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex".
Several Hopi clans and Yavapai communities trace their ancestries to early immigrants from the Montezuma Castle/Beaver Creek area. Clan members periodically return to these ancestral homes for religious ceremonies.
Montezuma Well (Yavapai: ʼHakthkyayva or Ahagaskiaywa), a detached unit of Montezuma Castle National Monument, is a natural limestone sinkhole near the town of Rimrock, Arizona through which some 1,500,000 US gallons (5,700,000 L) of water emerge each day from an underground spring. It is located about 11 miles (18 km) northeast of Montezuma Castle.
The Well measures 386 feet (118 m) in diameter from rim to rim and contains a near-constant volume of spring water even in times of severe drought, amounting to approximately 15,000,000 US gallons (57,000,000 L). The water is highly carbonated and contains high levels of arsenic. At least five endemic species are found exclusively in Montezuma Well: a diatom, a springtail, a water scorpion, an amphipod, and a leech — the most endemic species in any spring in the southwestern United States. It is also home to the Montezuma Well springsnail.
Montezuma Well's steady outflow has been used for irrigation since the 8th century. Part of a prehistoric canal is preserved near the park's picnic ground, and portions of the canal's original route are still in use today.
As with Montezuma Castle, the label "Montezuma" is a misnomer: the Aztec emperor Montezuma had no connection to the site or the early indigenous peoples that occupied the area.
Fact Sources:
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://ow.ly/W3Efp
Montezuma Castle National Monument (U.S. National Park Service) http://ow.ly/W3EjX
Part of Alaska's allure is melting. But it's not all bad news for the 49th state's glaciers. While most of the more than 100,000 glaciers in Alaska are thinning, retreating or stagnating, Johns Hopkins and Margerie glaciers are actually advancing, fed by abundant snowfall from the Fairweather Range.
These are just two of the icy wonders in the 3.3 million-acre Glacier Bay National Park in southeast Alaska. The last of the bay's four glacial periods began about 4,000 years ago, leaving today's glaciers in its wake.
Take a sea kayaking trip out of park headquarters at Bartlett Cove to get a closer look at these icy Alaskan phenomena, or see the wild expanse from above on a flight seeing expedition. If you're lucky, you'll see a moose or bear swimming across the bay.
* January 18 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
* April 16 through 24 – National Park Week
* August 25 through 28 – National Park Service Birthday (and following weekend)
* September 24 – National Public Lands Day
* November 11 – Veterans Day
“Fee-free days provide an extra incentive to visit a national park, especially during next year’s centennial celebration,” said National Park Service Director Jon B. Jarvis. “We added extra fee-free days so that everyone has a chance to join the party. With locations in every state, finding a national park is easy. The hard part might be deciding which ones to visit.”
America The Beautiful - The National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass http://ow.ly/VOzuk
