Wind Cave National Park

Hopa Mountain, in partnership with the National Park Service, is pleased to announce the 2019 awardees of the Connecting with our Homelands travel grants. Twenty-one Indigenous organizations, schools, and nonprofits have been awarded travel funds for trips to national park units across 12 states/territories within the United States.

View the recipients of the 2023 National Park Service Excellence in Interpretation Awards, which recognize outstanding contributions to the practice of interpretation and education by NPS employees.

Fossil Cycad National Monument, established in 1922, was the third monument created to protect fossils. Before the end of the decade, however, all the surface fossils were gone. Private collecting, National Park Service (NPS) mismanagement, budget shortfalls due to the Great Depression and World War II, and one man's obsession eventually led to the deauthorization of the monument.

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 Many recycle the same content and outdated information that has largely come from the NPS itself.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.

Between 1938 and 1941 the National Park Service (NPS) Western Museum Laboratories (WML) created many iconic posters. Often described as “the WPA park posters,” they should be called “the WML posters.” Research reveals more designs than previously thought (including several previously unknown ones), reevaluates what is known about the artists, and argues that modern reproductions have made the designs more significant to NPS graphic identity today than they were in the past.

The Northern Great Plains Inventory and Monitoring Network monitors bats at Wind Cave National Park using acoustic recorders to detect trends in bat populations. Very few bats actually use Wind Cave for roosting, but the park hosts a diversity of bat species. Long-term monitoring is critical to understanding the bat communities that live here, and to help protect their habitat.

Explore bat projects in Wind Cave National Park.

Bats are amazing animals and a formidable force against insect pests, but a nasty fungal disease is killing them. A coordinated national response brings hope.