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Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a sanctuary. This is one of the few places in the eastern United States where animal populations can live, propagate, and die with relatively little influence from humans. Plants flourish in untold numbers, and often achieve record size. Gene pools are remarkably diverse. Some species here are rare or endangered, and new species may yet be discovered.
These mountains have also become a refuge for humans. But a natural area like this benefits people far beyond the simple pleasure of being in an unspoiled forest. It provides clean water to nourish communities, and a diversity of life that helps make our world so interesting. Many have called the Great Smokies a living laboratory, providing a standard to help monitor the health of the world's environment.
Newfound Gap @ Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee
Photo: NPS / Kelsey Graczyk
Alt text: Light painting of NPS with boulder and night sky in the background.
Court of the Patriarchs, from left to right, Abraham Peak, Isaac Peak, and Jacob Peak behind Mount Moroni.
Chisos Basin Road was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930's.
From the NPS website: "In the early 1930s, the CCC built an all-weather access road into the Chisos Mountains Basin. They surveyed and built the seven-mile road using only picks, shovels, rakes, and a dump truck, which they loaded by hand. They scraped, dug, and blasted 10,000 truck loads of earth and rock and constructed 17 stone culverts, still in use today along the Basin road."
Big Bend National Park is named for the sweeping bend of the Rio Grande River along the United States - Mexico border in southwest Texas. It is a remote land of beautiful and stark scenery. The Chihuahuan desert dominates the landscape, the Chisos Mountains rise above like an island, and the Rio Grande River flows gently through this outstanding National Park.
Exploration and survey of cave passages is a critical part of studying cave and karst areas. (NPS Photo)
This system uses thermal soaring to stay aloft all day long. It senses when it's going through a thermal, and when it hits the edge it turns back into it, soaring like a hawk.
They're networked and share data. The concept is a flock of these can be put up, and they'll collaboratively share thermal information and be able to stay aloft all day.
National Park Service 100th Anniversary celebration at the Stewart County Visitor Center. Speakers were from Fort Donelson National Battlefield in Dover, TN. Forest Service staff photo
7) 0.5 Mi. MALAPAI HILL
Three-quarters of a mile west of this point the twin peaks of Malapai Hill rise about 400 feet above the valley floor. The hill is composed largely of black basalt and apparently resulted from a shallow injection of molten or liquid material which did not quite reach the surface of the earth. If it had reached the surface , a lava flow or volcano would have resulted, but no such floe exists. The basalt intrudes the quarts monzonire and is probably quite young, though its true age is unknown. It could have formed within the last two or three million years, which is quite recent compared to the gneiss, which is over 700 million years old.
If your time permits, take a short stroll to the base of Malapai Hill for a closer look. A balanced rock occurs about 1/4-mile west of here, about halfway to the hill.
8) 0.4 Mi. ALLUVIAL FANS
You are now descending an alluvial fan. Notice a similar fan extending from the mountains into the valley directly in front of you. These fans are composed of sand, gravel and rock produced from the erosion of rocks at higher elevations. This material is carried by gravity and flood waters to lower levels. Here it is deposited, the larger, heavier rocks being dropped first, and the lighter sands and gravels being carried farther out into the valley. The alluvial fans illustrate the constant change that is taking place. Mountains are being destroyed and the material is being deposited. Some might be consolidated into rock which could thrust up as new mountains.