Casa Grande Ruins National Monument

Eusebio Francisco Kino

Frank "Boss" Pinkley

Sallie Pierce Brewer Van Valkenburg Harris

View 2022 recipients of the National Park Service Excellence in Education Awards, which recognize expertise within the field of education.

Each National Park Service (NPS) employee has a unique story. We can't tell them all, but sometimes there's a personal account—like that of Sallie Pierce Brewer Van Valkenburg Harris—that speaks to common experiences. Although her NPS connections ran from 1933 to 1971, many of her joys, challenges, and frustrations can still be recognized in the NPS today. Sallie's story resonates regardless of era, gender, or position. How will it speak to you?

National Park Service (NPS) naturalist Natt N. Dodge spent most of his 30-year-career at parks and monuments in the Southwest. His books, photographs, and motion picture films forever link him to desert ecosystems. It may seem surprising, then, that some of the most interesting photos in his personal collection are of glaciers, crevasses, mountain climbers, and other winter scenes at Mount Rainier National Park.

A lot of articles have been written about the history of the National Park Service (NPS) arrowhead emblem. Many recycle the same content and outdated information that has largely come from the NPS itself. Challenging the traditional story has revealed new sources of information—and two previously overlooked arrowhead designs—that rewrite the arrowhead origin story.

When the climate changes enough, the vegetation communities growing in any given place will also change. Under an expanded bimodal climate zone, some plant communities in western national parks are more likely to change than others. National Park Service ecologists and partners investigated the future conditions that may force some of this change. Having this information can help park managers decide whether to resist, direct, or accept the change.

In 2018, Casa Grande Ruins National Monument received a grant from the Western National Parks Association to better document its cultural resources. This grant included funding for a small project that involved conservation and cleaning of the interior walls of the Great House, a 14th century Hohokam multi-story earthen structure that is the centerpiece of the park, followed by reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) photography. 

Although it was built close to 700 years ago, the Casa Grande remains one the tallest structures in the town of Coolidge, Arizona. The Casa Grande is probably the most significant surviving example of Hohokam building techniques and architecture made from caliche, a concrete-like mixture of sand, clay, and calcium carbonate (limestone).

Across the US, changes in water availability are altering which plants grow where. These changes are evident at a broad scale. But not all areas experience the same climate in the same way, even within the boundaries of a single national park. A new dataset gives park managers a valuable tool for understanding why vegetation has changed and how it might change in the future under different climate-change scenarios.