America's National Parks Podcast

By RV Miles Network

What's America's National Parks Podcast about?

Explore our national parks — their history, their people, and their stories.

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The Search for Dark Skies

09.17.2019

80 percent of the world’s population lives under what’s called “skyglow.” In the United States and Europe, 99 percent of the public can’t experience a natural night. Light is helpful to people, of course, but it’s also one of our ...

America's National Parks Podcast episodes:

09.17.2019 The Search for Dark Skies 80 percent of the world’s population lives under what’s called “skyglow.” In the United States and Europe, 99 percent of the public can’t experience a natural night. Light is helpful to people, of course, but it’s also one of our ...
09.10.2019 Ahwahnee Who doesn't love a majestic National Park lodge? Splendid craftsmanship on a grand scale surrounded by the wonders of nature. Some lodges are full of just as many stories and secrets as the park that surrounds them. On this episode ...
09.02.2019 Castle on the Coast Situated along the shores of St. Augustine in northeastern Florida stands the only surviving 17th-century military construction in the United States, Castillo de san Marcos. On this episode, the many faces of Castillo de san Marcos National Monument, as told ...
08.22.2019 10 Days, 1,800 Miles For 18 short months, a group of riders carried letters from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, and they did it in just 10 days. Crossing 1,800 miles of rough western terrain, at breakneck speeds, the Ponny Express tied the ...
08.09.2019 The Waving Girl of Savannah The Savannah river twists and turns for 301 miles in the Southeastern United States, forming most of the border between Georgia and South Carolina, before it's divided into channels by several islands near Savannah Georgia, and then spills into the ...
08.02.2019 The Voice of Wilderness in the Storm In the early days of what is now Denali National Park and Preserve, one park scientist stood out among the rest. He was known for his tough, adventurous spirit, ground-breaking biological research, and inspiring communication. His name was Adolph Murie.
07.26.2019 Restoring the Giants Awe-inspiring giant sequoia trees are among the largest living things on earth, but the opportunity to experience them is rare. Approximately 75 groves exist, and only along the southern Sierra's western slope on moist sites between about 5,000 and 7,000 ...
07.19.2019 Rangers Make the Difference III Being a National Park Service Ranger is a multifaceted job, one that requires you to call on all your skills to bring a park to life. Whether it be through music, research, education, conservation, or day to day administrative work, ...
07.12.2019 Lincoln's Throne For more than 100 years, no national memorial had been contemplated for any president except George Washington, yet talk of building one to honor the monumental legacy left by Abraham Lincoln began even as he lingered on his deathbed. There ...
07.06.2019 238,900 Miles from Idaho 50 years ago, in 1969, NASA sent astronauts to a remote location in southern Idaho. Their goal? To learn basic geology and study the local, relatively recent volcanic features located there in preparation for potential missions to the moon. On ...
06.29.2019 A $50 Bet Rising high above the prairies west of the Blackhills stands a tower of astounding geological feature. Considered sacred by indigenous people, it's an impressive and striking monument against the flatlands of Northeastern Wyoming. Hundreds of parallel cracks make it one ...
06.24.2019 Meaningless Without Sacrifice The Emancipation Proclamation has been called one of the two most important American contributions to the world by Martin Luther King, Jr., yet was said to possess "all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading" by historian Richard Hofstadter. ...
06.14.2019 Alone on a Winter's Island Nestled at the top of Wisconsin sits a cluster of islands on Lake Superior that is home to what some call the finest collection of lighthouses in the country. Guiding the way for ships on Lake Superior, Nine light stations ...
06.10.2019 On the Oregon Trail The first covered wagons would carve a trail towards Oregon Country in 1836. Among them was a missionary party headed by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. Narcissa kept a journal at the suggestion of her mother, whom she would never see ...
05.31.2019 "We were standing on Ground Zero of World War III" During the Cold War, a vast arsenal of nuclear missiles was placed across the Great Plains. Hidden in plain sight, for thirty years 1,000 missiles were kept on constant alert; hundreds remain today. The Minuteman Missile remains an iconic weapon ...
05.24.2019 Cataloochee - The Center of the World Nestled among some of the most rugged mountains in the southeastern United States is an isolated valley that was home to 1200 people in 1910, who made their living first at farming, and then, as tourism developed, by welcoming weary ...
05.17.2019 A Presidential Barbecue Barbecued meat has played a surprisingly important role in United States presidential politics over the years. George Washington was a Virginia-style barbecue enthusiast. Recently, archaeologists discovered a barbecue pit on the south lawn of Montpelier that was in use during ...
05.10.2019 River on Fire In 2007, a young bald eagle took flight from its nest along the Cuyahoga River. It was the first successful nest in Cuyahoga County in more than 70 years. The eaglet grew up eating fish from the Cuyahoga River, where, ...
05.03.2019 Guardian of the Gulf When we think of America’s National Parks, we often don’t think of the oceans or the Gulf of Mexico, but along our shores are some of the most incredible places our country has to offer. Seven barrier islands along the ...
04.26.2019 A Race to a Tie On May 10th, 1869, in Promontory Summit, Utah, two sets of ordinary railroad tracks met under extraordinary circumstances. Together the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroad companies, building from Sacramento, California, and Omaha, Nebraska, joined to revolutionize travel. Before that ...
04.19.2019 The Strange World of National Park Gift Stores When we think about the people that help keep the gears turning in National Parks, it’s easy for us to think about the wonderful rangers that keep us safe and help us interpret and protect these incredible places. But we ...
04.12.2019 The Night the Mountain Fell The Yellowstone Supervolcano snores through the geysers and mud pots, and restlessly tumbles as multiple earthquakes hit the region nearly every day. We don't hear a lot about Yellowstone earthquakes, but each year one to three thousand hit the park ...
04.05.2019 A Rescue in the Grand Tetons Mountain climbing is surely one of the most dangerous of the extreme sports. It’s a trial of wills that takes a clear head, teamwork, and unflappable trust in your climbing partners. The challenge is magnified ten-fold when the climb is ...
03.29.2019 Apostle of the Cacti If you're a National Park buff, and you probably are if you're listening to this podcast, you probably know of some of the famous people responsible for the very creation of many of our greatest parks. People like John Muir, ...
03.22.2019 9:02 A.M. 24 years ago, a Ryder truck packed with nearly 5,000 pounds of explosives was parked in front of Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. In a matter of seconds, the blast destroyed most of the nine-story concrete and granite ...
03.15.2019 Rover On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his famous “Day Of Infamy Speech." The United States had entered World War II. That evening, his wife would call on all ...
03.08.2019 "Goodbye, Death Valley." In 1848, gold was discovered in California and people from all over the United States packed their belongings and began to travel by wagon to what they hoped would be a new and better life. It was important to leave ...
03.02.2019 A Century of Progress Surely if you listen to this podcast you've heard the news — America now boasts 61 National Parks. Buried within a massive spending bill protecting public lands signed by the President on February 15, 2019, was a provision that simply ...
02.22.2019 Four Voices, Four Missions The Alamo is certainly San Antonio’s most famous landmark, perhaps even the most famous building in Texas, because of its pivotal role in the 1836 Texas Revolution. But the Alamo was built over a century prior as Mission San Antonio ...
02.16.2019 A Great Obelisk In 1833, a small organization formed with the purpose to fund and build a monument "unparalleled in the world," in honor of once commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and the first President of the United States. Its completion, and its ...
02.09.2019 Fighting on Arrival, Fighting for Survival During the Indian conflicts on the western plains after the Civil War, Native Americans gave Black regiments of the U.S. Army the name Buffalo Soldiers, after their short, curly hair, which to them, looked like a bison. The soldiers took ...
02.01.2019 The Chestnut Blight At the turn of the 20th century, the eastern half of the American landscape looked very different than it does today. It was blanketed in 4 billion towering American Chestnut trees. Over the course of 50 years, they all vanished. ...
01.25.2019 The Great Smoky Homestead Ridge upon ridge of forest straddles the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, where ancient mountains, covered in pine, glow in purple, pink and blue hues, as a smoky mist rises from their thick cloak of trees. World-renowned for its ...
01.18.2019 Rangers Make the Difference II As we release this episode, the longest government shutdown in American history is still underway, and 800,000 government workers are on furlough, including rangers and other protectors of our wildlife and national treasures. Those that remain on the job, mainly ...
01.11.2019 A White House Burns One of the very symbols of our nation is a residence for our highest elected official, designed by Irish-born architect James Hoban in the neoclassical style, using sandstone painted white. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he ...
01.04.2019 A Rocky Mountain Tragedy There are a million conspiracy theories about people missing or turning up dead in National Parks and other public lands. But really, when you break down the numbers, the number of disappearances, murders, and accidental deaths are on par with ...
12.28.2018 A Gift from Tokyo Each spring, an abundance of winter-weary locals and tourists flock to our nation's capital, hoping to see the blossoming beauty of the famed Japanese cherry trees. You may know that the original trees were a gift from Japan in 1912 ...
12.21.2018 Kitty Hawk Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man." He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders. Photographs of his attempts were published worldwide, sparking a fever over the ...
12.14.2018 An Impossible Climb In July of 1982, 5 men set out to conquer the highest peak in Texas, Guadalupe Peak at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Every day, many people take the 8.5-mile trip that summits the 8,749' peak, but this party was different—they ...
12.07.2018 77 Years Ago The day this episode is released, December 7th, 2018, marks the 77th anniversary of the event that would send the United States into World War II, the devastating surprise attack on Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. The U.S.S. Arizona, a Pennsylvania class ...
12.02.2018 The Solitude of Self On July 11, 1848, a local newspaper ran an advertisement announcing a meeting that would happen a week later at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York — the first American Women’s Rights Convention. Today on America's National Parks ...
11.23.2018 A Yellowstone Christmas What could be more magical than Christmas at a National Park lodge? Grand log-beamed lobbies, decked out in real pine trimmings, the crackling of massive stone fireplaces, and decadent holiday feasts, while far away from civilization with the glories of ...
11.16.2018 The Lost Horse Mine Even before the California Gold Rush of 1849, prospectors were finding gold in Southern California. As the rewards from the mines in the Sierras began to wither, miners headed toward the deserts, where hot summers, scarce water, limited wood sources, ...
11.09.2018 Four Men on a Mountain In the Black Hills of South Dakota, majestic figures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln are said to tell the story of the birth, growth, development and preservation of this country. But how much do you ...
11.02.2018 Switchbacks Before dawn on what would become a perfect October day in Utah, I set out to attempt a solo hike. It wasn't the type of hike that would have been a big deal to an avid hiker, but for me, ...
10.26.2018 Hell, with the Fires Out It’s that time of year. You’re getting pelted with the supernatural from every direction - on TV, at the Movie Theater, in the grocery store. Far be it from us to miss an opportunity for a themed episode. On today’s ...
10.19.2018 How National Parks Stop Thieves If you listened to The Curse of the Petrified Forest, our episode on the strange happenings surrounding people who stole rocks from Petrified Forest National Park, you know that the park faced a major identity crisis - people thought all ...
10.12.2018 At Home with Harry and Bess On this episode of America's National Parks, At Home With Harry & Bess, the multigenerational story of a home that would come to be known as the Summer White House, now a part of the Harry S Truman National Historic ...
10.05.2018 The Wonderful Wind Cave In 1881, Jesse and Tom Bingham heard a whistling noise coming from a beach-ball-sized hole in a rock formation near Hot Springs, South Dakota. Wind was blowing out of the hole, just as it does today, with such force that ...
09.28.2018 Corps of Discovery Part 2 When we left off last time Meriwether Lewis had just looked over the crest of the largest mountain range he had ever seen (or summited), hoping to see the Columbia River, and an easy path to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, ...

Older episodes

America's National Parks Podcast

What's America's National Parks Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

America's National Parks Podcast episodes:

The Search for Dark Skies

Ahwahnee

Castle on the Coast

10 Days, 1,800 Miles

The Waving Girl of Savannah

The Voice of Wilderness in the Storm

Restoring the Giants

Rangers Make the Difference III

Lincoln's Throne

238,900 Miles from Idaho

A $50 Bet

Meaningless Without Sacrifice

Alone on a Winter's Island

On the Oregon Trail

"We were standing on Ground Zero of World War III"

Cataloochee - The Center of the World

A Presidential Barbecue

River on Fire

Guardian of the Gulf

A Race to a Tie

The Strange World of National Park Gift Stores

The Night the Mountain Fell

A Rescue in the Grand Tetons

Apostle of the Cacti

9:02 A.M.

Rover

"Goodbye, Death Valley."

A Century of Progress

Four Voices, Four Missions

A Great Obelisk

Fighting on Arrival, Fighting for Survival

The Chestnut Blight

The Great Smoky Homestead

Rangers Make the Difference II

A White House Burns

A Rocky Mountain Tragedy

A Gift from Tokyo

Kitty Hawk

An Impossible Climb

77 Years Ago

The Solitude of Self

A Yellowstone Christmas

The Lost Horse Mine

Four Men on a Mountain

Switchbacks

Hell, with the Fires Out

How National Parks Stop Thieves

At Home with Harry and Bess

The Wonderful Wind Cave

Corps of Discovery Part 2

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