Parks Are Calling Podcast

Death Valley National Park: The Borax Company Wanted a Park

Henry Wilder — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Death Valley National Park straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada, and it holds the lowest point in North America and the world-record high air temperature, 134°F, recorded at Furnace Creek. Lost emigrants named it in 1849, and the borax business is why it's a park. Stephen Mather made his fortune promoting Twenty Mule Team Borax, then became the first director of the National Park Service and rarely pushed for the valley. When the borax company closed its mines there and went into the tourist business, it wanted a park. Herbert Hoover proclaimed Death Valley National Monument in 1933 with mining still allowed, and it took an open pit near Ryan to get new mining closed across the whole park system in 1976.

This is one I've been to. This episode covers Badwater Basin, Artists Palette, Golden Canyon, the Salt Creek pupfish, the Mesquite Flat dunes and Dantes View, plus the heat, the water, and why the Park Service says the most dangerous thing in Death Valley National Park is the single-car rollover.

Chapters

(00:00) - The lowest point in North America
(02:16) - Goodbye, Death Valley
(02:40) - Borax and the twenty mule teams
(03:23) - Stephen Mather's conflict
(03:44) - The borax company wanted a park
(04:55) - Hoover's last month in office
(05:40) - The open pit near Ryan
(06:32) - Mining in the Parks Act
(07:26) - Badwater, Artists Palette, and the dunes
(09:18) - Heat, water, and single-car rollovers
(10:25) - Dunes at sunrise, then the stars

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/death-valley-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/ca/death-valley-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by RVGearPro: https://rvgearpro.com

Congaree National Park: The Newspaperman and the Record Stumps

Henry Wilder — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Congaree National Park, about 20 miles southeast of Columbia, South Carolina, protects a floodplain forest that floods about 10 times a year and holds the highest concentration of champion-sized trees in North America. A Chicago lumber family logged the biggest cypress there and then stopped. In the early 1950s Harry Hampton, who wrote the Woods and Waters column for the State newspaper, started arguing for a preserve, and the family said no. When the logging started again in 1969, people gave about 400 slide shows, mailed a congressman skeleton keys, and packed a rally in Columbia with 720 people. Gerald Ford signed Congaree Swamp National Monument in 1976, 22 years after Hampton's first letter, and Congress renamed it Congaree National Park in 2003.

I haven't been to this one yet, so everything here comes from the people who look after it. This episode covers the Boardwalk Trail from the Harry Hampton Visitor Center, the clearing on the Sims Trail where his hunt club stood, the Cedar Creek Canoe Trail, and the fireflies that flash in unison, plus why I'd go in the fall or early spring and get on the creek with a paddle.

Chapters

(00:00) - A forest that floods
(02:10) - Why the old trees were left standing
(02:36) - The newspaperman
(03:37) - The logging starts again
(04:25) - Bird watchers and snake hole watchers
(04:57) - Congaree Action Now
(05:54) - Hugo, and dropping the word swamp
(06:38) - The boardwalk, Cedar Creek, and the fireflies
(08:50) - Mosquitoes, floods, and bitter water
(09:58) - Out to the hunt club clearing, then onto the creek

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/congaree-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/sc/congaree-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by OffroadGearPro: https://offroadgearpro.com

Cuyahoga Valley National Park: The Park Washington Said Didn't Qualify

Henry Wilder — Thu, 28 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Cuyahoga Valley National Park sits in northeast Ohio between Cleveland and Akron, and it's the only national park in the state. In June of 1969, a few miles north of what's now the park, the Cuyahoga River caught fire, and it had burned more than 10 times in the century before. Around then, a first-time congressman from Akron named John Seiberling, whose grandfather founded Goodyear, had his staff write a bill for a national park in the valley. It failed, so he went and built the local support. When the bill finally reached Gerald Ford, his budget office wrote that the area possessed no qualities which qualify it for the National Park System. Two senators called Ford on a family ski trip in Vail, and he signed it anyway. Asked 15 years later, he said he had no specific recollection of why.

I haven't been to this one yet, so everything here comes from the people who look after it. Cuyahoga Valley National Park cleared out dumps, a million tires, and an arena where the Cleveland Cavaliers once played, and now a pair of bald eagles has raised a chick by the river and otters live in the Beaver Marsh. This episode covers Brandywine Falls, the Ledges at sunset, the Towpath Trail, and the train you flag down by waving both arms over your head, plus why I'd go in mid-October, on a weekday.

Chapters

(00:00) - A green valley between Cleveland and Akron
(01:40) - Saving its scenery for all time
(02:38) - The river caught fire
(03:37) - A first-time congressman from Akron
(04:28) - No qualities which qualify it
(06:02) - A million tires and a basketball arena
(07:41) - Brandywine Falls, the Ledges, and the Beaver Marsh
(09:01) - No camping, and lots full by midday
(10:00) - Train one way, Towpath back

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/cuyahoga-valley-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/oh/cuyahoga-valley-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by The Sprinter Store: https://sprinterstore.com

Pinnacles National Park: The Rocks That Rode North

Henry Wilder — Mon, 25 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Pinnacles National Park sits in the Gabilan Mountains of central California, about five miles east of Soledad and 80 miles southeast of San Jose, and its rocks are what's left of a volcano that erupted 23 million years ago near Lancaster, in Southern California. The San Andreas Fault split it, and the Pacific Plate carried them north. Schuyler Hain, a homesteader in Bear Valley, spent close to 30 years asking for them to be protected. Stanford's president told him the place didn't rank with the high Sierras. Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed a 2,000-acre monument in 1908 that didn't even include the Bear Gulch caves, and when the forest reserve around it was cut, a mining man gated one of the gorges and charged admission. Hain asked for a national park. It came in 2013, and the park's wilderness now carries his name.

Pinnacles is one I know and one of my favorites to recommend. This episode covers the High Peaks and the Steep and Narrow, Bear Gulch and Balconies caves (bring a flashlight), spring wildflowers and nearly 500 kinds of bees, and the California condors, whose first chick fledged inside Pinnacles National Park in 2016, the first since 1898. Plus why you need to pick the east or west entrance before you leave home.

Chapters

(00:00) - Rocks that rode north on the San Andreas
(02:00) - A homesteader and a Stanford professor
(03:19) - A lukewarm endorsement
(04:12) - The monument that missed the caves
(05:12) - I am in sore straits
(06:31) - The condors come back
(07:44) - The High Peaks and the caves
(09:30) - Two entrances, no road between
(10:28) - Sit a while and wait for a condor

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/pinnacles-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/ca/pinnacles-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by OffroadGearPro: https://offroadgearpro.com

Canyonlands National Park: Why Stop With the Needles

Henry Wilder — Thu, 21 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Canyonlands National Park is the largest national park in Utah, on the high desert of the Colorado Plateau in the southeast of the state, 36.6 miles in a straight line from Arches. Bates Wilson, the superintendent at Arches, thought one corner of this country, the Needles, deserved to be a national park. When two Park Service planners finally came out and stood with him at Grand View Point, one of them asked why stop with the Needles, and the idea went from 32,000 acres to a million. Wilson won people over on long jeep trips with Dutch oven dinners. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall was won over from the air, flying with the man who wanted to dam the river just below the Confluence. Utah's governor said the state might need the Needles as building stone. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson signed a park a little over a quarter of the original size.

I've been to Canyonlands, and this is the separate episode I promised back at Arches. The Green and Colorado rivers split Canyonlands National Park into three pieces with no roads between them, so I go through the Island in the Sky, Mesa Arch and Grand View Point, the Needles and Chesler Park, and the Maze and Horseshoe Canyon's Great Gallery. Plus flash floods, water, and why to stay up late at least once.

Chapters

(00:00) - Where the Green meets the Colorado
(01:55) - A superintendent on horseback
(03:01) - Why stop with the Needles
(03:22) - Dutch oven diplomacy
(04:34) - Utah might need these as building stones
(05:42) - A park for forever
(06:53) - Mesa Arch and Grand View Point
(08:59) - Halfway through your water
(09:58) - Save the Needles for another trip

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/canyonlands-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/ut/canyonlands-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by RVGearPro: https://rvgearpro.com

Saguaro National Park: The Forest That Was Supposed to Die

Henry Wilder — Mon, 18 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Saguaro National Park sits on both sides of Tucson, in southern Arizona, and today it counts about 2 million saguaros, nearly double what its census found 30 years ago. Herbert Hoover proclaimed Saguaro National Monument in 1933, and within a few years the people looking after it were sure the forest was dying. A university plant pathologist reported disease spreading through the saguaros, so the Park Service staked out every living cactus in one square mile, sawed up the ones that looked sick and buried them in a trench. A regional director argued for abolishing the monument altogether. The park's own history says what it almost certainly was: an old stand of cactus and the damage from a long freeze.

I've been to Saguaro. Saguaro National Park's two districts don't feel like the same place: the old forest on the east side, the younger, denser one on the west, with Hohokam petroglyphs on Signal Hill. I cover when to go for the flowers, why the Park Service says half the park is after dark, and what to know about summer heat, cholla spines, and the monsoon.

Chapters

(00:00) - Two million saguaros
(02:00) - The monument that became a rifle range
(03:12) - Designation was easy
(03:49) - The disease that wasn't
(05:26) - It was cattle, and a long freeze
(06:50) - No compromise in Tucson
(07:51) - Cactus Forest Drive and Signal Hill
(09:22) - A comb, tweezers, and a quart an hour
(10:35) - Stay for the dark

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/saguaro-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/az/saguaro-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by RVGearPro: https://rvgearpro.com

Joshua Tree National Park: The Desert Nobody Thought Was Outstanding

Henry Wilder — Thu, 14 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Joshua Tree National Park sits in southern California, about 140 miles east of Los Angeles, where two deserts meet, and an estimated 870,000 Joshua trees grow inside it. About 100 years ago, people were digging those trees up and setting them on fire. Minerva Hoyt, a South Pasadena garden-club leader who fell for the desert after her husband died, decided to stop it. She built prize-winning desert exhibits in New York, Boston and London, talked California's governor out of signing a smaller state park, and got the Secretary of the Interior to pull more than a million acres off the market. Then the Park Service's own expert, Roger Toll, wrote that it was not the outstanding desert area of the United States. Roosevelt proclaimed a monument anyway in 1936, Congress cut more than a third of it for mining in 1950, and it took until 1994 to become a national park.

I've been to Joshua Tree, and this episode covers what I'd do there: Park Boulevard for the trees, Hidden Valley in the morning, Keys View late in the day, and Pinto Basin Road after dark, where the park's skies are darkest. Plus the practical part: no gas, food or water inside Joshua Tree National Park, why not to trust your map app, and when not to hike in summer.

Chapters

(00:00) - Two deserts and a tree that isn't a tree
(02:14) - Minerva Hoyt takes the desert to New York
(03:04) - Joshua trees set on fire
(03:59) - Not the outstanding desert
(05:51) - A bitter compromise
(06:48) - Mount Minerva Hoyt
(07:24) - Hidden Valley, Keys View, and the Cholla Garden
(09:25) - No gas, no signal, no shortcuts
(10:23) - Pinto Basin Road after dark

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/joshua-tree-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/ca/joshua-tree-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by The Sprinter Store: https://sprinterstore.com

North Cascades National Park: The Park You Drive Right Past

Henry Wilder — Mon, 11 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

North Cascades National Park sits in the far north of Washington State, about 100 miles northeast of Seattle, and in one recent year it counted about 16,500 visitors while the recreation area next to it counted close to a million. That's because the North Cascades Highway, Diablo Lake and the dams that made it aren't in the park. They're in that separate recreation area, wedged between the park's two halves. How it got drawn that way is the story: a Forest Service plan conservationists called a mockery, nearly 22,000 signatures asking for a study, and a senator who told a supporter, off the record, that without some compromises with Seattle's power company there wasn't going to be a park.

Lyndon Johnson signed North Cascades National Park into law the same day as Redwood. The mountains hold more than 300 glaciers, and people call them the American Alps. North Cascades is one I know, and the first time I drove that highway I had no idea I never crossed into the park. We cover the Diablo Lake Overlook, Gorge Creek Falls, the boat into Stehekin, and why I'd take the gravel road to Cascade Pass and finally get out of the car.

Chapters

(00:00) - Diablo Lake and the American Alps
(01:47) - You're not in the park
(02:11) - A wilderness plan called a mockery
(03:55) - A senator and a power company
(05:52) - The road goes around it, on purpose
(06:31) - Skagit, Shuksan, Hozomeen
(07:38) - Cascade Pass and Stehekin
(09:34) - Don't count on your phone
(10:33) - Get out of the car

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/north-cascades-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/wa/north-cascades-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by OffroadGearPro: https://offroadgearpro.com

White Sands National Park: The Sand Nobody Could Sell

Henry Wilder — Thu, 07 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

White Sands National Park is in the Tularosa Basin of southern New Mexico, with its visitor center about 15 miles west of Alamogordo, and its dunes are part of the largest gypsum dunefield in the world. In the early 1900s people tried to mine those white dunes, more than once, and none of it worked, because unprocessed gypsum sand just wasn't worth much. So an Alamogordo insurance agent named Tom Charles argued it was worth something else. He learned from Albert Fall's failed All-Year National Park, took a senator's advice to settle for a monument, and then ran the place out of his insurance office for a dollar a month. It stayed a monument for almost 87 years before it became a national park.

White Sands National Park sits next door to a missile range, and it holds human footprints dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago. I've been, and I've gone down those dunes on a plastic saucer for longer than I'd like to admit. We cover Dunes Drive, the Interdune Boardwalk, the Alkali Flat Trail, which the Park Service says is not flat, the missile-test closures, and why I'd go between late fall and early spring and stay for the sunset stroll.

Chapters

(00:00) - The largest gypsum dunefield in the world
(02:04) - Sand nobody could sell
(02:49) - Albert Fall's park and the Teapot Dome
(05:27) - One dollar a month
(06:08) - A bombing range next door
(06:49) - Footprints older than the sand
(08:17) - Dunes Drive, Alkali Flat, and sledding
(09:59) - Don't type white sands into your map app
(11:04) - Sled, then go see the footprints

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/white-sands-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/nm/white-sands-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/
This episode is sponsored by The Sprinter Store: https://sprinterstore.com

Redwood National Park: The Tallest Tree, the Worm, and a Park Surrounded by Stumps

Henry Wilder — Mon, 04 May 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Redwood National Park sits on the northern California coast just below the Oregon border, in the stretch from Crescent City to south of Orick, and the tallest known tree, 379 feet, grows in its Redwood Creek watershed. Of the original old-growth coast redwoods, 96% have been logged. In 1963, in the middle of that, a National Geographic survey team found what may have been the tallest tree in the world, standing on lumber company land. That gave the fight a face. The park Lyndon Johnson signed in 1968 reached those trees with a strip of land half a mile wide, and people called it the Worm. Protesters met Lady Bird Johnson at the dedication with a sign that said we have enough stumps, and it took 10 more years to get the whole watershed.

Today Redwood National Park and three state parks are run together and protect almost half of all the old-growth redwood left in California. Redwood is one I know, and the first time I drove through I didn't realize I was already in it. We cover the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, Tall Trees Grove, Fern Canyon, the elk, why you shouldn't trust your phone for directions, and why I'd skip chasing the biggest tree and find a quiet afternoon in the old growth instead.

Chapters

(00:00) - Trees taller than a skyscraper
(02:01) - Ninety-six percent
(02:50) - The tallest tree in the world, and a saw waiting
(04:32) - They called it the Worm
(05:17) - The saws didn't stop
(06:18) - You can't photograph the tallest tree
(06:45) - Old growth, Fern Canyon, and elk
(08:04) - Don't trust your phone in there
(08:57) - Old growth and second growth, side by side

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/redwood-national-and-state-parks/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/ca/redwood-national-and-state-parks/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/

Olympic National Park: The Elk, the Schoolhouse Sign, and the Park That Was Cut in Half

Henry Wilder — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Olympic National Park sits on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, west of Puget Sound and reached from Port Angeles or Forks, and it protects the largest fully wild herd of Roosevelt elk in the Pacific Northwest. Around the turn of the last century it was fashionable for men to wear elk teeth on their watch chains, and those elk paid for it. Congress couldn't pass a law to protect them, so Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed a national monument two days before he left office. Six years later, people sure there was mineral wealth in those mountains got it cut roughly in half. There wasn't any. It took another Roosevelt, and a sign on a schoolhouse in Port Angeles, to make it a national park.

Olympic National Park is really three parks at once: mountains with glaciers on them, a temperate rain forest that gets 12 to 14 feet of rain a year, and more than 73 miles of wild coast. It's also where the largest dam removal in the history of the United States gave the Elwha River back. Olympic is one I know. We cover Hurricane Ridge, the Hoh Rain Forest and its elk, Rialto Beach and the tide pools, and why I'd pick one of the three and give it the whole day.

Chapters

(00:00) - Mountains, rain forest, and wild ocean
(02:11) - Elk teeth were in fashion
(03:13) - Two days before Roosevelt left office
(03:39) - The half they cut was the timber
(04:59) - Please, Mister President
(06:13) - The Elwha runs free again
(07:27) - Pick one park and give it the day
(08:39) - Rain layers, tides, and elk
(09:52) - The treasure was the mountains

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/olympic-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/wa/olympic-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/

Arches National Park: The Prospector, the Railroad, and the Name That Moved

Henry Wilder — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Arches National Park sits five miles north of Moab in southeast Utah, and it has the densest concentration of natural stone arches in the world, over 2,000 of them. It starts on Christmas Eve, 1922, when a prospector named Alex Ringhoffer went looking for copper and silver and found a field of fins and arches instead. He called it the Devil's Garden. Then he did the smart thing: he didn't write to the government, he wrote to a railroad. Along the way the name he gave it wandered off to a different place entirely, the founding credit went to two other men for years, and Delicate Arch, now a symbol of Utah, used to be called Old Maid's Bloomers.

I've been out there. We cover the Windows, the walk to Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch at the end of the park road, the dark skies, and why I'd go early in the day and then go looking for the corner of the park that had its name taken.

Chapters

(00:00) - The densest field of stone arches on Earth
(01:58) - A prospector on Christmas Eve
(02:31) - He didn't write to the government
(03:27) - The name that moved
(04:44) - Who gets the credit
(05:58) - Old Maid's Bloomers
(06:26) - The Windows, Delicate Arch, and Landscape Arch
(08:26) - Going, the way I'd tell a friend
(09:46) - Go before your favorite one falls

Links
Episode page: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks-are-calling/arches-national-park/
Plan your visit: https://verdanttraveler.com/parks/ut/arches-national-park/
Parks Are Calling Podcast is brought to you by Verdant Traveler: https://verdanttraveler.com/