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President Obama and his family took advantage of 88 degree temperatures and sunny skies on Sunday to go for a hike in the Prince William Forest Park in Virginia. The nature walk comes a few days after the National Park Service celebrated its 100-year anniversary on Thursday. Obama marked the centennial last week by designating a new national monument in Maine’s north woods, protecting 87,500 acres, including the East Branch of the Penobscot River.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- The nation's most polluted nuclear weapons production site is now its newest national park. Thousands of people are expected next year to tour the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, home of the world's first full-sized nuclear reactor, near Richland, about 200 miles east of Seattle in south-central Washington. They won't be allowed anywhere near the nation's largest collection of toxic radioactive waste.

Several trails, campsites closed GATLINBURG, Tenn. -- An Ohio father fought off a black bear that was attacking his teenage son at Great Smoky Mountains National Park over the weekend. Greg Alexander's teenage son, Gabriel, was dragged by a bear from their campsite at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday, WCPO sister station WLOS reported. They were 40 miles into what was planned to be a 50-mile backpacking trip. "I woke up to (Gabriel) screaming, and I saw a bear," Alexander told WLOS. "And it seemed to have bitten (Gabriel) in the head and was dragging him that way across the ground...

Archaeologists conducting a survey in Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada have stumbled upon a 132-year-old Winchester rifle propped against a tree, possibly having been left there more than a century ago. The rifle, which records show was manufactured and shipped by the gun maker in 1882, had been leaning against the Juniper tree for so long that the wood of its stock was cracked and deteriorated from the desert sun, its barrel rusted. "It really is a mystery," said Nichole Andler, a public information officer for Great Basin National Park. "We know it has been out there awhile...

The story of how it got there may never be known, but a rusting 132-year-old Winchester rifle -- known in U.S. lore as "the gun that won the West" -- was recently found resting against a juniper tree in a Nevada national park. The gun, its stock split, gray and faded like driftwood, and its steel barrel rusted brown, blended in perfectly against the tree in a remote part of the Great Basin National Park until a National Parks Service employee spotted it. “The rifle, exposed for all those years to sun, wind, snow and rain, was found leaning against...

GREAT BASIN NATIONAL PARK, Nev., -- Officials at Nevada's Great Basin National Park said they are trying to determine the origins of a 132-year-old rifle found leaning against a tree. Park officials said the rifle, identified by an engraving on its side as a Model 1873 Winchester manufactured in 1882, was found blending in with the colors of a juniper tree in the park and seems to have been there for "many years." The officials wrote on the park's Facebook page the rifle was "exposed to sun, wind, snow, and rain" and features "a cracked wood stock, weathered to grey"...

Archaeologists conducting surveys in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park came upon a gun frozen in time: a .44-40 Winchester rifle manufactured in 1882. It was propped up against a juniper tree.

Archaeologists traversing the Great Basin National Park in Nevada came across an interesting find: a 132-year-old Winchester Model 1873 repeating rifle. The Facebook page for Great Basin National Park said in a post last week that researchers found the rifle, known as “the gun that won the West,” leaning up against a tree. “The 132 year-old rifle, exposed to sun, wind, snow, and rain was found leaning against a tree in the park. The cracked wood stock, weathered to grey, and the brown rusted barrel blended into the colors of the old juniper tree in a remote rocky outcrop, keeping...

The National Park Service is investigating a woman who appears to have traveled from New York to several Western states in recent weeks in order to paint pointless, embarrassingly unsightly drivel all over a bunch of America’s most pristine and most iconic national parks. The crap sketcher is Casey Nocket, Modern Hiker reports. Nocket, 21, left her trail of twaddle in nearly a dozen federally-protected parks including Yosemite National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Joshua Tree National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park.

The U.S. Forest Service has tightened restrictions on media coverage in vast swaths of the country's wild lands, requiring reporters to pay for a permit and get permission before shooting a photo or video in federally designated wilderness areas. Under rules being finalized in November, a reporter who met a biologist, wildlife advocate or whistleblower alleging neglect in any of the nation's 100 million acres of wilderness would first need special approval to shoot photos or videos even on an iPhone. Permits cost up to $1,500, says Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers, and reporters who don't get a permit could...

Lucas St. Clair pulled up to an overlook in Maine’s North Woods to a stunning vista of Mount Katahdin, the state’s highest peak and the endpoint of the Appalachian Trail. Stretched out below was a vast green carpet of pine and spruce flecked with golden aspens and blazing red maples; Millinocket Lake glistened in the distance.“I think it’s national-park worthy,” he said.This was not an idle observation. Mr. St. Clair and his mother, Roxanne Quimby, who owns the land, have been trying for years to turn these woods into a national park. But ferocious opposition has stalled their plan, partly...

Rangers issue a handful of citations over the weekend for alleged trespassing. The government shutdown closed the national park Oct. 1. For months, Julie and Eugene Gillies of South Portland planned to celebrate their wedding anniversary in Bar Harbor. They weren’t about to let a political fight in Congress get in the way of their plans to see Acadia National Park, which they visited on their honeymoon 34 years ago. Riding on small motor scooters beneath a bright blue sky Sunday morning, the couple went around the barricades and past the sign declaring the park closed and joined what they...

<p>SAGUARO NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. — When Steve Bolyard checked out a report of black paint on some of the park’s majestic saguaros — cactuses whose towering bodies and upraised arms are as emblematic of the American West as red-rock buttes and skittering tumbleweeds — he did not expect to see ganglike calligraphy covering more of them than he could easily count.</p>

A U.S. Forest Service ranger at Mount Rainier National Park has been shot and killed, and the gunman is at large. The ranger has been identifed as 34-year-old Margaret Anderson. The shooting occurred at 10:11 a.m. near Longmire Ranger Station.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Anti-nuclear activists say they will fight a proposal to create national parks at Los Alamos National Laboratory and two other sites where the world's first nuclear bombs were developed. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar released a study to Congress last week that recommends establishing a national historical park to commemorate the top-secret Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb.

Wildlife officials have killed a grizzly bear in Wyoming and a grizzly bear in Montana to head-off potential lawsuits. The Montana grizzly killed and partially consumed Kevin Kammer at a Gallatin National Forest campground near Cooke City, Mont. on July 29. The Wyoming grizzly killed 70 year-old botanist Erwin Evert on June 17 on the Shoshone National Forest near the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The circumstances were quite different, but the decision to kill the bears was undoubtedly influenced by a 1996 court case over the terrible bear mauling of 16 year-old Anna Knochel at a U.S. Forest...

As the threat of violence stemming from illegal immigration hangs over federal lands in southern Arizona, an internal memo from 2007 reveals that refuge officers have been spending most of their time struggling to deal with border-related activities instead of protecting wildlife habitat. The memo is three years old, but it is unlikely that much has changed, since parts of five federal lands -- including two designated national monuments -- continue to post travel warnings or be outright closed to the public because of the dangers of "human and drug trafficking" along the Mexican border. According to the memo, which...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials euthanized a 60-pound female black bear Thursday afternoon that attacked a hiker and ended up becoming an Internet cause celebre. Wildlife biologists determined the young bear that park rangers captured May 13 bit the foot of an unidentified man who got too close with a camera as he was hiking along the popular Laurel Falls Trail the day before. Park spokeswoman Nancy Gray said park policy dictates that all animals who attack humans must be euthanized. The bear was put down "in a humane manner," according to a National Park Service news release Thursday.

Note: The following text is a quote: Official Explains Approach to Climate Change, Energy By Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael J. Carden American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 21, 2010 – Developing a deliberate approach to energy and climate change is an important platform to national security and the U.S. military mission, a senior Defense Department official told members of Congress here yesterday. Dorothy Robyn, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment, testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about the Pentagon’s take on the California Desert Protection Act of 2010. The proposal, introduced to Congress in...

American History Exhumed by: Alana Goodman, July 10, 2009 On October 11, 1809, celebrated explorer Meriwether Lewis—of Lewis and Clarke fame—was found shot to death on the floor of an old tavern at the edge of Indian country in Tennessee. Witnesses and friends traveling with the explorer maintained that Lewis shot himself in the head and chest after a long bought of mental illness and depression. However, some of Lewis’ family members argued that he was murdered in cold blood. Two-hundred years later his descendents are still dead-set on solving the mystery, even if it means digging up and studying...