The human history of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone spans more than 11,000 years, evolving from an ancient hunting ground and sacred Native American territory into the visual centerpiece that inspired the creation of the world’s first national park. The rivers and waterfalls of Yellowstone are sometimes overlooked amid the gushing geysers found throughout…
Located along the Bow River and entirely within Banff National Park, the town of Banff is surrounded by the beautiful Canadian Rockies, which draw guests to this recreational hub in both winter and summer. I captured this shot of the icy river and snow-capped mountains while on a walk at the edge of town, trying…
Feeling small and unheard? Guadalupe Mountains National Park, in far West Texas, encompasses 86,416 rugged acres of the Chihuahuan Desert and is home to eight of the ten highest peaks in the state, yet it is a relatively unknown national park. Formed from an ancient marine fossil reef more than 260 million years ago, the…
The Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in Yellowstone National Park and the third-largest in the world. Its vibrant colors result from heat-loving microorganisms that thrive in the warm outer rings of the spring. The deep blue center is too hot for these colorful thermophiles to survive. My first visit to Yellowstone as…
In 1898, 16-year-old Jim White was rounding up cattle in the Chihuahuan Desert in present day New Mexico, when up on a ridge he saw a massive plume of dark “smoke.” Fearing wildfire, Jim made his way up the ridge to inspect the source of the smoke… ≡Canon R5/RF24-240 83mm f/6.3 1/200sec iso-125
16-year-old Jim White, riding to inspect the source of smoke he observed on a ridge in the Chihuahuan Desert in 1898, soon realize the “smoke” he had seen from a distance was millions of bats, primarily Brazilian free-tailed bats, spiraling out of a massive hole in the ground… ≡Canon R5/RF24-240 24mm f/18 1/320sec iso-2500
Intrigued when he came upon the large hole in the ground, Jim White did what any teenager would do, he began to descend the opening, only to find a drop-off into the darkness too steep to climb. He threw a hastily made torch off the cliff and as it careened out of sight, Jim soon…
Unable to reach the floor in the first attempt of entering his new discovery, 16-year-old Jim White would return later with homemade wire, a wood ladder and a kerosene lantern. So, in 1898, alone, Jim descended down the cliff roughly 60 feet to the first landing inside the cave, and began exploring the pitch-black tunnels….
On subsequent journeys, Jim White would continue several miles underground and descend vertically more than 700 feet below the surface. He spent the next several years exploring the cave system, naming iconic landmarks like the Big Room, King’s Palace, and Devil’s Spring. For a long time, his claims of a “buried fairyland” were dismissed as…
For Jim White, who discovered the cave in 1898 at age 16 while herding cattle in the Chihuahuan Desert, recognition finally arrived in the early 1920s when photographer Ray V. Davis took its first interior photographs. The photos sparked a National Geographic expedition led by Dr. Willis T. Lee, which confirmed the cave’s immense scale….