Shows / America's National Parks, One at a Time
America's National Parks, One at a Time
A 5-minute deep dive into one U.S. National Park unit each day
This episode was written and voiced with AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.
Episodes
America's National Parks, One at a TimeBig Bend National Park: Rio Grande Canyons and the Darkest Skies in the Lower 48
Big Bend National Park sits where the Rio Grande makes its great bend through West Texas desert, cutting Santa Elena Canyon's 1,500-foot limestone walls along…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Crater Lake: The Deepest Lake in the US, Born From a Collapsed Volcano
Crater Lake formed about 7,700 years ago when Mount Mazama, an 11,000-foot Cascade volcano, erupted so violently it emptied its own magma chamber and collapsed…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Mammoth Cave: The Longest Known Cave System on Earth
Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky protects more than 420 surveyed miles of passageways, by far the longest known cave system in the world, and surveyors…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Shenandoah National Park: Skyline Drive and the Return of the Black Bear
Shenandoah National Park's land was almost entirely farmland a century ago -- more than 500 families were relocated when the park opened in 1935. Today the…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Carlsbad Caverns: Sulfuric Acid Caves and the Nightly Bat Flight
Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the New Mexico desert hides one of the largest cave systems on the continent, carved not by ordinary rainwater but by…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Badlands National Park: Eroding an Inch a Year, Revealing 30 Million Years of Fossils
Badlands National Park in South Dakota erodes at about one inch per year and could vanish within 500,000 years, but its jagged buttes and spires have given up…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Olympic National Park: Rainforest, Glaciers, and Coastline in One Park
Olympic National Park in Washington packs four ecosystems into 922,650 acres: a 60-mile wild Pacific coastline, the 140-inch-a-year Hoh Rain Forest and its…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Joshua Tree National Park: Where Two Deserts Meet and a Moth Keeps the Trees Alive
We cross into Joshua Tree National Park, 795,156 acres straddling the higher Mojave Desert and the lower Colorado Desert. Learn how Franklin Roosevelt…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Mesa Verde National Park: The Cliff Dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloans
We climb into Mesa Verde National Park, created in 1906 to protect human history rather than scenery, home to more than 5,000 archaeological sites and about…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Sequoia National Park: General Sherman, the Largest Tree on Earth by Volume
We head into Sequoia National Park, California's second-oldest national park, to meet General Sherman, the largest living tree on the planet by volume. Learn…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Rocky Mountain: Driving Into Arctic Tundra on America's Highest Road
Trail Ridge Road climbs above 12,000 feet through real alpine tundra, the kind normally found hundreds of miles north. We cover why treeline sits so low here…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Grand Teton: Mountains With No Foothills, Rising on an Active Fault
Grand Teton's peaks rise over 7,000 feet straight out of Jackson Hole with no foothills because the valley is sinking as fast as the range is rising. We cover…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Redwood: The Fog-Fed Trees That Grow Taller Than Skyscrapers
Redwood National and State Parks protects the tallest trees on Earth, including Hyperion at roughly 381 feet. We cover how coastal fog drip lets redwoods…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Death Valley: Hottest, Driest, Lowest -- All at Once
Death Valley holds three US records simultaneously: hottest reliably recorded temperature, driest spot in North America, and lowest point in the park system…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Bryce Canyon: Frost Carved These Hoodoos, Not Water
Bryce Canyon isn't really a canyon -- it's a retreating plateau edge covered in thousands of hoodoo spires. We cover why frost wedging, not flowing water, is…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Arches National Park: 2,000 Stone Spans, Already Collapsing
Arches National Park holds the highest concentration of natural stone arches on Earth, shaped by an ancient buried salt layer and slow freeze-thaw erosion…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Glacier National Park: Watching the Ice Disappear
Glacier National Park had about 80 glaciers in 1910; fewer than 30 remain today. We cover why most of the dramatic valleys and peaks were actually carved by…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Everglades: The 60-Mile-Wide River Hiding in Plain Sight
The Everglades isn't a swamp -- it's a slow-moving, 60-mile-wide river of grass. We cover why alligators and crocodiles coexist here and nowhere else on Earth…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Denali: North America's Tallest Peak and Its Sled Dog Rangers
Denali rises higher base-to-peak than Everest and generates some of the harshest weather on the continent. We cover the mountain's two competing height…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Great Smoky Mountains: Ancient Peaks Behind the Blue Haze
Great Smoky Mountains is the most-visited US national park, with mountains older than the Atlantic Ocean. We cover the Pangaea-era collision that built them…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Acadia: Where Ancient Granite Meets Ice-Carved Coastline
Acadia National Park's Cadillac Mountain is the first place in the US to see sunrise for part of the year. We cover the 420-million-year-old granite beneath…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Zion: How the Virgin River Carved Slot Canyons a Thousand Feet Deep
Zion Canyon's narrow, towering walls come from a fast, steep river cutting through soft-but-solid Navajo Sandstone. We cover why the canyon is so dramatically…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Grand Canyon: Two Billion Years of Rock in One Gorge
The Grand Canyon's layered walls span nearly two billion years of Earth's history, from 1.75-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist at the bottom to…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
How Glaciers Carved El Capitan and Half Dome
Yosemite Valley's broad U-shaped canyon, its sheer granite walls, and Half Dome's missing half are all products of glacial carving, not river erosion. We cover…
- America's National Parks, One at a Time
Yellowstone's Supervolcano: The Park Built on a Sleeping Giant
Yellowstone became America's first national park in 1872, sitting atop one of the largest active volcanic systems on Earth. We cover the scale of its past…