How one biologist drew a national park's definitive map

Clark’s maps provided the first detailed record of the American West

Covering over 8,000 miles, William Clark’s maps charted rivers, mountains, and tribal territories with remarkable accuracy. Equipped with sextants, compasses, telescopes, and more, Clark became an expert at surveying—requiring extensive celestial and topographical observations each day.

Citizen scientist volunteers can help identify invasive species in wilderness areas

Launched in 2005 by the Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health at the University of Georgia, EDDMapS allows users can document invasive species sightings in the US and Canada in a web-based mapping system. As of February 2026, EDDMapS has over 8.6 million records, all freely available for querying.

Every type of US national park, explained

Ever wonder what kinds of sites comprise the US National Park System? Using the recent re-designation of New River Gorge as a national park as a jumping-off point, this engaging video breaks down the 19 different designations within the National Park System. This includes parks, reserves, monuments, and scenic trails.

Markers along the Underground Railroad

An interactive map of all National Park Service designated sites that were part of the Underground Railroad, helping shuttle escaped enslaved people to freedom.

Colombia’s biodiversity performs the national anthem

Scientists and composers in Colombia trekked more than 600 miles collecting audio from the country's vast assortment of creatures. Using parabolic microphones, recorders, cameras and field gear, they recorded the sounds of birds, whales, landscapes, and more to eventually recreate their Colombia’s national anthem using its biodiversity as an orchestra. Follow the fascinating journey and listen to the “natural anthem” in the article.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

A Thomas Moran painting inspired Yellowstone National Park

The 1872 painting provided viewers with a more accurate sense of the park's majesty than black-and-white photographs could provide. The painting was included in a packet of materials presented to Congress, which was taken with Moran's image and designated Yellowstone the first national park.

The Leopold Report was an early blueprint for ecosystem management

The 1963 report, officially known as Wildlife Management in the National Parks, recommended wildlife management and ecological preservation. In 2012, a follow-up report built upon the original paper to guide future park service policies based on scientific findings.

The 52-mile marvel of engineering inside Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is home to over one million acres of natural beauty, but it also includes 52 miles of a manmade miracle in Going-to-the-Sun Road, which takes drivers on a majestic tour through some of the park's most breathtaking views. This brief history and photo gallery allows you to gain an appreciation for the incredible engineering behind the road’s construction.

Explore coral reefs in Google's "street view"

Expanding its mission to map the world, Google Maps partnered with The Catlin Seaview Survey to introduce the first-ever underwater panoramas, making oceanic marvels like the Great Barrier Reef accessible to everyone. With Google Maps, the public...

Santa Barbara’s Botanic Garden was the first to showcase the state’s native plants

Founded in 1926, the garden’s founders sought to showcase the state’s local flora as a matter of conservation, rather than the water-hungry exotics regularly being imported. This story focuses on how the garden’s design took a more natural and less formal direction.

Photographing abandoned structures in the southeastern US

Leland Kent is a photographer and historian who has captured hundreds of buildings across the southeast United States over the last 10 years in order to preserve the past before it's too late. His subjects include decommissioned power plants, closed youth jails, vacant plantation homes, and more, and he has published several city-focused books. Get lost in Kent's dramatic portrayals of once-lively structures in this extensive and gripping gallery.

View the rainbow effect on the waters at First Landing State Park

The phenomenon results from light interacting with a thin film of natural oils on the surface of swamps and marshes at the site, not unlike the coloration seen in soap bubbles. The oils originate from decaying vegetation or from anaerobic bacteria reducing iron in soil. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

A fun, illustrated history of the Jurassic Coast

The 95-mile stretch of coastline along England's southern shores known as the Jurassic Coast is unique in the world due to its clear demonstration of 185 million years of geological history. Now, you can see the story of that formation told in a whimsical, absorbing video created by artist Tim Britton and his pen.

This flat map is still wrong, but it's the least wrong of all flat maps

While flat maps can never be as perfectly scaled as a globe, they're far more practical than carrying around a sphere. Researchers set out to minimize six major errors of flat maps, including boundary cuts and skewed proportions, by simply squashing...

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

The fall foliage map

Fall's beautiful color changes don't happen all at once, which makes planning that peak fall foliage weekend a bit tricky. Get some confidence with this map which allows you to choose a week from now until November and see which parts of the country...

Renaming the peak of the Great Smoky Mountains

After two years, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians' petition to rename Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, finally succeeded. In 2023, the peak's title officially returned to its original Indigenous name, Kuwohi, which means "the mulberry place." Read to learn more about the mountain's significance as a sacred site for the Cherokee people, who have used the area for prayer, reflection, and gathering mulberries for medicinal purposes.

One of the earliest Memorial Day ceremonies was held by newly freed Black Americans in South Carolina

On May 1, 1865, roughly 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves, paraded around a Charleston racetrack where Union prisoners had been buried, predating the first national commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery by three years.

How the peach became Georgia's fruit, though it makes fewer than other states

After the Civil War, the state sought to redefine its agricultural traditions away from slave-dependent cotton. One innovator, Samuel Rumph, crossed two breeds of peach, resulting in the Elberta, which could travel farther without spoiling. The state embraced this delicious identity to transcend its earlier reputation.

The 'sense' of direction comes from two strategies involving unique brain regions

Egocentric navigation utilizes the caudate nucleus and posterior parietal cortex, relying on a person's position in space to determine their direction of movement. Spatial navigation uses landscape features for orientation and is driven by the hippocampus.

Disney World is largely mosquito-free, thanks to civil engineer Joe Potter

As a former governor of the mosquito-prone Panama Canal zone, Potter understood the danger of standing water. At Disney, Potter built ditches to reduce moisture, designed buildings to channel water away, and more. His efforts help visitors avoid bites, adding to the perceived magic of the magical kingdom.

The term 'gerrymander' dates back to a 1812 Boston dinner party

The term "gerrymandering" arose when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved a state senate map with a district so contorted it resembled a salamander. Critics dubbed it the "Gerry-mander," cementing the term for partisan map manipulation.

There is a nature preserve in Korea's DMZ

In almost every way, the Demilitarized Zone is a depressing place, a testament to humans' inability to make peace. There is one surprising upside: Keeping people away has allowed nature to thrive. Recently released images offer a 360-degree view of some of the hundreds of endangered species making a comeback in the DMZ, including white-naped cranes, mountain goats, musk deer, and golden eagles.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

How a 19th-century aristocrat scammed the rich to buy fake Caribbean land

Nearly 200 years ago, Gregor MacGregor pulled off one of the most brazen real estate scams in history. A disgraced military leader, MacGregor sold plots of land in what is today Honduras, touting the country of Poyais as a new major region in South America. But no building was taking place, and instead of investing the proceeds of bond sales in construction, MacGregor was lining his pockets. Read the unbelievable story of MacGregor's exploits here.

The Bone Wars turned paleontology into a rivalry fraught with public scandal

Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope were friends-turned-enemies competing for the glory of discovering dinosaurs. It became so intense that when Cope died, he donated his body to science to prove he had a bigger brain than Marsh.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

This poison ivy knowledge quiz—accompanied by photos of the plant's varied forms—may help you identify this common rash-inducing growth.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.