Sequoia and Kings Canyon, the twin national parks situated at the southern extremity of California's Sierra Nevada Range, define the concept of diversity. The extreme contrasts in climate, topography and vegetation expressed in this region are...

Joshua Tree is a relatively new addition to our national park network. A national monument since 1936, Joshua Tree was elevated to national park protection in 1994, and for good reason. Desert, oases, mountains, slot canyons, mazes of rocks, and, of...

On Memorial Day, 1914, after centuries of slumber, Lassen Peak, southernmost of the mighty volcanoes of the Cascades, awakened with a ferocity not unlike that replicated some 66 years later by its sister peak to the north - Mount Saint Helens. About a...

One of the stark realities of Yosemite is its vastness and, apart from the well-documented level of activity in the valley, so much of the park is astoundingly remote, if not impenetrable. Of the park's approximate 750,000 acres, or 1,200 square...

In so many ways, California's Highway 1, as it snakes southward from Monterey hugging the incomparable Pacific shoreline through Big Sur, Cambria, San Luis Obispo, Pismo Beach to Santa Barbara, is, arguably, America's greatest, most scenic roadway....