Lockwood started it. He grabs two new lists from National Geographic “Our Amazing Planet“: the Ten Most Visited National Parks and the Ten Least Visited National Parks. Says he: Bold the ones you have visited, and italicize the ones you’ve never heard of before.
Most visited:
10: Glacier
9: Acadia
8: Grand Teton
7: Cuyahoga Valley (what? the river that caught fire? that one?)
6: Rocky Mountain
5: Olympic
4: Yellowstone
3: Yosemite
2: Grand Canyon
1: Great Smoky Mountains
Least Visited:
10: City of Rocks NR, Idaho
9: Cumberland Island NS, Georgia
8: Florissant Fossil Beds NM, Colorado
7: Chiricahua NM, Arizona
6: Tonto NM, Arizona
5: Dry Tortugas NP, Florida (one of the coolest places I’ve ever been, and unfortunately, also one of the national parks most threatened by the Gulf oil spill)
4: Katmai NP & Preserve, Alaska
3: Kalaupapa NHP, Hawaii
2: Hagerman Fossil Beds NM, Idaho
1: Russell Cave NM, Alabama
It was actually from a pair of posts at a site that I started following recently, Our Amazing Planet. not National Geographic. And as I commented when I linked your post, yes, the very same river, but upstream from the Cleveland metro area, where it’s surprisingly pristine. And from what I’ve read, it was because of those fires that northern Ohio rallied to protect the Cuyahoga head waters from development, starting in the sixties, with suggestions for NP status by the time I lived in the area during the late seventies. Lots of good fossils from the early Paleozoic.
Thanks for joining in!
Oops. My bad. Sloppy!
I fixed it.
Cuyahoga NP was actually a favorite field trip destination for many of my undergrad geology classes while I was at Oberlin. Great exposures of Devonian rocks (by Ohio standards at least.)
Btw, Great Smoky Mountains is spelled wrong.
Okay: fixed it!
And now I fixed the
National Geographicon my blog!City of Rocks is cool.
Russell Cave, which has 2 l’s, is OK, but not much of a place to visit if you are a caver.
Steve Stokowski
OK — I’ll change it. Looks like the source list could have used some editing before the geobloggers started copying it all over the place…
Hey! I’ve been here!
8: Florissant Fossil Beds NM, Colorado
That’s the place with all of the really cool fossil insects!
The next time you are in Denver at GSA (this fall?) you should drive down and check it out. It is just west of Colorado Springs, over near Pikes Peak. Go and see Garden of the Gods while you are in Colorado Springs. It is also somewhat close to Cripple Creek (gold) and Canon City (Royal Gorge), and of course, Cave of the WInds. Lots of cool things to see near Colorado Springs.
I’ve photos of those insect fossils, and they look amazing! Do they have a nice display at the visitors center?
Yes they have a great display, fossils and photo enlargements. And huge redwood stumps, still vertical, now petrified wood.
There’s a place a mile or two down the road, near an intersection where you can pay and dig up the ash with insects, outside the park.