Joshua Tree: A Desert Named by Settlers Who Saw Something Biblical in a Cactus
Joshua Tree National Park takes its name from Mormon settlers crossing the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th century, who reportedly saw the…
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Death Valley: The Hottest, Driest, Lowest Point in North America, All at Once
Death Valley holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth, 56.7 degrees Celsius at Furnace Creek in July…
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Glacier National Park: A Park Named for Ice That May Not Outlast Its Own Name
Glacier National Park, established in 1910, was named for the roughly 150 glaciers estimated to exist within its boundaries at the time,…
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Arches National Park: Over 2,000 Natural Stone Arches, Still Being Made
Arches National Park protects over 2,000 documented natural stone arches, the highest concentration found anywhere on Earth, formed over roughly 100 million…
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St Louis’s Gateway Arch: A Monument Built to Honour Expansion, Not Without Controversy
The Gateway Arch, completed in 1965, stands 192 metres tall, the tallest arch and tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, designed…
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Whistler: A Ski Town Built From an Olympic Gamble
Whistler’s development as a major ski destination began with a genuinely ambitious, initially unsuccessful goal, a group of Vancouver businessmen developed the…
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Calgary: A Ranching Town Transformed by an Underground Discovery
Calgary’s modern identity was fundamentally reshaped by the Leduc oil discovery in 1947, a strike that transformed the surrounding Alberta region and,…
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Ottawa: A Capital Chosen Specifically to Avoid an Argument
Ottawa became Canada’s capital in 1857 largely because Queen Victoria, asked to settle a bitter rivalry between Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, and…
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Halifax: A Harbour City Shaped by One of History’s Largest Man-Made Explosions
Halifax’s modern layout and much of its civic memory trace back to December 6, 1917, when a French cargo ship carrying wartime…
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Milford Sound: A Fjord Mistaken for a Sound, Rated the World’s Top Travel Destination
Milford Sound is technically not a sound at all but a fjord, carved by glacial activity during past ice ages rather than…
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Byron Bay’s Lighthouse: A Beacon Guarding Australia’s Easternmost Point
Cape Byron Lighthouse, completed in 1901, marks the easternmost point of the Australian mainland, its beam historically among the most powerful in…
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Cancun: A Resort City Built From Almost Nothing in Under a Decade
Cancun did not meaningfully exist as a settlement before the early 1970s, the Mexican government, using computer modelling to identify the ideal…
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