🇺🇸 WEEKLY AMERICAN HERITAGE: Glacier Bay National Park

(Explore the history and landscape of the United States as we celebrate 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: Glacier Bay National Park, which protects and interprets the spectacular glacial landscape of southeastern Alaska.

“Covering 3.3 million acres of rugged mountains, dynamic glaciers, temperate rainforest, wild coastlines and deep sheltered fjords, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is known as Homeland to the Huna and Yakutat Lingít, and is a highlight of Alaska’s Inside Passage. From sea to summit, Glacier Bay offers limitless opportunities for adventure and inspiration.”

Sailing through Glacier Bay today, you travel along shorelines and among islands that were completely covered by ice just over 200 years ago. When Captain George Vancouver charted adjacent waters of Icy Strait in 1794, he and his crew described what we now call Glacier Bay as just a small five-mile indent in a gigantic glacier that stretched off to the horizon. That massive glacier was more than 4,000 feet thick in places, up to 20 miles wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St. Elias mountain range. By 1879, however, naturalist John Muir discovered that the ice had retreated more than 30 miles forming an actual bay. By 1916, the Grand Pacific Glacier – the main glacier credited with carving the bay – had melted back 60 miles to the head of what is now Tarr Inlet.

What happens when nature wipes the slate clean and starts over from scratch? Today’s visitors can see the answer to that question during the course of one trip into the tidewater glaciers. Such a journey is like going back to the last ice age. The land near the mouth of the bay, long-ago released from the grip of glaciers, has had the most time to recover and is now blanketed by mature spruce and hemlock forests. As you travel toward the glaciers the vegetation gets younger and smaller, until you reach the face of the ice where nothing grows at all. The successional processes so evident here offered unparalleled opportunity for scientific observation and glaciologists, geologists, plant ecologists and other scientists came here to study this dynamic landscape. While recounting his scientific work in Glacier Bay, a plant ecologist named William Cooper so inspired his colleagues at the Ecological Society of America that they started the movement to protect the bay and its environs.

In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge declared Glacier Bay a national monument. Today Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve continues to protect these natural resources which offer a glimpse into ice ages past in the midst of a flourishing and dynamic natural environment. (nps.gov)

You can find a wealth of additional information about this park’s history, landscape, location(s), and visitor facilities on the webpage for Glacier Bay National Park from the National Park Service, and also on the park’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 are you and your students 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! 🛒