Western States

West includes the following States - Alaska, Colorado, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.

National Parks: Yellowstone National Park -- Wyoming -- Yellowstone National Park encompasses 2.2 million acres. Preserved within the park are grizzly bears, wolves, herds of free-ranging bison and elk, outstanding mountain wildlands, and two-thirds of the world's geysers. Yellowstone's human history dates back more than 12,000 years. The legacy of American Indian use, early park management, and the development of park concessions is preserved in the park's museum, library, and archival collections, archeological sites, and historic buildings.
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National Parks: Sitka National Historical Park -- Sitka, Alaska -- Alaska's oldest federally designated park was established as a monument in 1910 to commemorate the 1804 Battle of Sitka. This last major conflict between Europeans and Alaska Natives is marked at the site of the Tlingit Fort and battlefield, located within this scenic 113-acre park in a temperate rain forest.
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National Parks: Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area -- Thousand Oaks, California -- Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is the nation’s largest urban national park, encompassing 153,000 acres of scenic mountains and coastline within Los Angeles and Ventura counties of southern California. In addition to historic landmarks like the Santa Monica pier and the Hollywood sign, the park features over 500 miles of recreation trails and 47 miles of beaches, all within easy access to a diverse metropolitan region of more than 17 million people.
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National Parks: Rocky Mountain National Park -- Estes Park, Colorado -- Established as the tenth national park in 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park preserves 416 square miles of some of the most splendid alpine environment in the continental United States. With 114 peaks more than 10,000 feet high and sixty peaks exceeding an elevation of 12,000 feet, Rocky Mountain National Park is the highest national park in the contiguous 48 states.
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National Parks: Point Reyes National Seashore -- Point Reyes Station, California -- One of America’s greatest coastlines, Point Reyes National Seashore encompasses more than 71,000 acres. Estuaries, windswept beaches, coastal grasslands, salt marshes, and coniferous forests create a haven of 80 miles of unspoiled and undeveloped coastline.
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National Parks: Olympic National Park -- Port Angeles, Washington -- Diversity is the hallmark of Olympic National Park. The park contains 922,651 acres of three distinctly different ecosystems - rugged glacier-capped mountains, more than 60 miles of wild Pacific coast and magnificent stands of old-growth and temperate rain forest. Diversity reigns on a smaller scale as well, with over 1,100 species of native plants, 300 species of birds and 70 species of mammals.
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National Parks: Minidoka Internment National Monument -- Hagerman, Idaho -- Minidoka Internment National Monument commemorates the hardships and sacrifices of Japanese Americans and legal resident aliens of Japanese ancestry interned during World War II.
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National Parks: Manzanar National Historic Site -- Independence, California -- Manzanar National Historic Site was established in 1992 to tell the stories of the relocation of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Manzanar was the first of ten war relocation centers. In operation from April 1942 through November 1945, it was the largest wartime "city" between Los Angeles and Reno. At Manzanar, the National Park Service also tells the stories of the centuries-long occupation of the area by Owens Valley Paiute, late 1800's cattle ranching homesteads, and the Manzanar fruit orchard community of the early 1900s.
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National Parks: Kenai Fjords National Park -- Seward, Alaska -- A stately spruce and cottonwood forest, thick with ferns and shrubs, gives a visitor few clues that Kenai Fjords National Park is a young and dynamic landscape, its seemingly quiet nature a sometimes dramatic work in progress.
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National Parks: Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail -- Arizona and California -- The Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail stretches over 1,200 miles from the border of Mexico up to the San Francisco Bay area. Each year, thousands of visitors relive a portion of the epic story that tells of the first overland colonizing expedition from Mexico to California.
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Western States - Pages 1, 2, 3