🇺🇸 WEEKLY AMERICAN HERITAGE: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve

(Explore the history and landscape of the United States with us as we approach the 250th anniversary of American Independence. Get out your atlas and almanac and follow along!)

Alaska is our homeschool state-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today with your students learning about one of Alaska’s most important natural and historical places: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, which protects the ancient lands that once connected Asia and North America.

“Bering Land Bridge National Preserve lies at the continental crossroad that greatly influenced the distribution of life in the Western Hemisphere during the Pleistocene Epoch. It is a vital landscape for Indigenous communities who depend on the land just as their ancestors did for many generations. It is a wild and ecologically healthy landscape unlike any other.”

More than 10,000 years ago, people crossed from East Asia through the Bering Land Bridge into North America. They followed herds of large mammals (many of them now extinct) to hunt for food and shelter, all the while expanding their civilization and possibly unknowingly populating a new world.

Bering Land Bridge National Preserve is a small remnant of the land bridge, also known as Beringia, protected for the study of these past cultures, to learn more about the first people who set foot in America, and to support the traditional lifestyles of its residents present and future.

What was once home to mastodons, mammoths, steppe bison, and other ice-age mammals is now the breeding ground for smaller animals like reindeer, muskox, caribou, and moose. Though the animals have changed, the subsistence way of life for Alaskan natives have not. Whether for carving ivory and bone, hunting seals and fishing for food, or picking berries in the spring for Eskimo ice cream, the lives of those living on the Seward Peninsula are interminably intertwined with the environment.

The cultural allure of the preserve still attracts scientists, archaeologists, and anthropologists today – many of which are drawn by the search for the origin of human population of the Americas. From Serpentine Hot Springs to the Cape Espenberg, countless research projects are a prominent staple spanning the Preserve’s 2.7 million acres. (nps.gov)

You can find a wealth of additional information about the Preserve’s history, landscape, location(s), and visitor facilities on the webpage for Bering Land Bridge National Preserve from the National Park Service, and also on the Preserve’s page on Wikipedia.

Explore America’s National Parks, National Historical Parks, National Historic Sites, National Monuments, and more via Wikipedia and via the U.S. National Park Service’s website today.

What American treasures have you and your students been exploring in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 🇺🇸

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool Geography posts featuring important natural and historical sites in the United States. Print your own copy of our River Houses American Heritage Calendar and follow along with us, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌎

❡ We set to-day a votive stone: If you want a great long-term history and geography project for your homeschool, explore the Historical Marker Database online (hmdb.org) and make a plan to find all the markers that are listed in your local area. Add any new ones you know of that are missing, and add new photos or descriptions for the ones already included. Your students will gain a better appreciation for your local community and will learn a wealth of new information about history and geography. 🏛

❡ Print this little lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you’ll find a special “Print” button that will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you edit and delete sections you don’t want or need (such as individual images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses atlas and almanac for more information about any of our homeschool states-of-the-week. The almanac has detailed profiles of all the U.S. states and territories, and the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found. 📚

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒

❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡