American Road Magazine Winter 2016 Back Issue

This year, the National Park Service celebrates its centennial. In this issue of our magazine, we salute the public lands that ring our nation with purple mountains, emerald forests, blue glaciers, and a rainbow geyser or two. Our excursion into the wild begins with "Revisiting the National Park-to-Park Highway" a feature that examines the path taken by early motorists-turned-outdoor-enthusiasts. We revisit the eleven parks that survive and the one that hides today under a new designation, General Grant National Park, named for the towering tree at its heart.

Over the course of the past one hundred years, some national parks and monuments have been disbanded or abolished. We recount those that exist no more in "Lost Park Postcards", a feature that peeks at the past through pictures. What did William "Buffalo" Bill Cody have to do with Wyoming's Shoshone Cavern? What's the legend behind Arch Rock on Michigan's Mackinac Island? And what did Lewis and Clark miss in the middle of Montana? Bring a postage stamp and have a look.

Our "National Parks Photo Contest" reveals what our readers can do with a camera and the whole outdoors as their subject. Our road departments march through Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida; dig up Dinosaur National Monument along the Utah-Colorado state line; and trace Mark Twain's adventure in Pu'uhonua o Honaunau on the island of Hawaii. Don't miss this issue's installment of "America's Playgrounds" and its tribute to Smokey Bear—an icon who has asked campers to prevent forest fires some seventy years.