Posts tagged — Ocean

Established in 1938 by Franklin D Roosevelt, Olympic was the nation's 21st National Park, founded on Washington's rugged northwest peninsula and named after 7,980' Mount Olympus. It is an International Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage Site, two designations granted to the park due to a rich geography that includes hundreds of species of animals (including over 300 species of birds) and over 1,100 species of plants. The park's distinct ecosystems create a range of diversity rarely found elsewhere: a rugged coastline, glacier-capped mountains, forests, and rivers. The peninsula's diversity attracted –and kept– pre-historic humans, who hunted mastodon with stone-tipped spears as far back as 12,000 years ago, supplementing their diet with deer, elk, and gathered plants. Fish, marine mammals, and shellfish were provided by the...

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Acadia National Park—originally named Lafayette National Park—America's 12th national park and the first east of the Mississippi River. The park's 420 million year-old location, Mount Desert Island, was first discovered by French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1604, whose description of its bare granite mountains stuck for centuries. Eventually, the island’s pristine beauty attracted the attention of the burgeoning wealthy elite of 19th Century New England, who built lavish summer homes amid its "fjard", moraine, and glacial erratic geology.  Two such elite were John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and George Dorr, whose love for the...