Mammoth Cave National Park
Mammoth Cave National Park is a U. S. national park in central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. Since the 1972 unification of Mammoth Cave with the system under Flint Ridge to the north. The park was established as a park on July 1,1941. It became a World Heritage Site on October 27,1981, the parks 52,830 acres are located primarily in Edmonson County, with small areas extending eastward into Hart County and Barren County. It is centered on the Green River, with a tributary, with 405 miles of surveyed passageways Mammoth Cave is by far the worlds longest known cave system, being over twice as long as the second-longest cave system, Mexicos Sac Actun underwater cave. Mammoth Cave developed in thick Mississippian-aged limestone strata capped by a layer of sandstone and it is known to include more than 390 miles of passageway, new discoveries and connections add several miles to this figure each year. Mammoth Cave National Park was established to preserve the cave system, the epikarstic zone concentrates local flows of runoff into high-elevation springs which emerge at the edges of ridges.
It is in underlying massive limestone layers that the human-explorable caves of the region have naturally developed. The limestone layers of the column beneath the Big Clifty, in increasing order of depth below the ridgetops, are the Girkin Formation. Genevieve Limestone, and the St. Louis Limestone, for example, the large Main Cave passage seen on the Historic Tour is located at the bottom of the Girkin and the top of the Ste. Each of the layers of limestone is divided further into named geological units and subunits. One area of research involves correlating the stratigraphy with the cave survey produced by explorers. This makes it possible to produce approximate three-dimensional maps of the contours of the layer boundaries without the necessity for test wells. The upper sandstone caprock is relatively hard for water to penetrate, the sandstone caprock layer has been dissolved and eroded at many locations within the park, such as the Frozen Niagara room. At one valley bottom in the region of the park.
Known as Cedar Sink, the features a small river entering one side. Mammoth Cave is home to the endangered Kentucky cave shrimp, a sightless albino shrimp, the National Park Service offers several cave tours to visitors. Some notable features of the cave, such as Grand Avenue, Frozen Niagara, two tours, lit only by visitor-carried paraffin lamps, are popular alternatives to the electric-lit routes
National Wildlife Refuge
National Wildlife Refuge System is a designation for certain protected areas of the United States managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Wildlife Refuge System is the system of lands and waters set aside to conserve Americas fish, wildlife. National Wildlife Refuges manage a range of habitat types, including wetlands, prairies and marine areas. Among these hundreds of national refuges are home to some 700 species of birds,220 species of mammals,250 reptile and amphibian species and more than 1000 species of fish. Endangered species are a priority of National Wildlife Refuges in that nearly 60 refuges have been established with the purpose of conserving 280 threatened or endangered species. National Wildlife Refuges are places where visitors can participate in a variety of outdoor recreational activities. The National Wildlife Refuge System welcomes nearly 50 million visitors each year, hunters visit more than 350 hunting programs on refuges and on about 36,000 Waterfowl Production Areas.
Opportunities for fresh or saltwater fishing are available at more than 340 refuges, there is at least one wildlife refuge in each of the fifty states. The agency has created Comprehensive Conservation Plans for each refuge, developed through consultation with private and these began a review process by stakeholders beginning in 2013. The CCCPs must be consistent with the Fish and Wildlife Service goals for conservation, the CCPs outline conservation goals for each refuge for fifteen years into the future, with the intent that they will be revised every fifteen years thereafter. Additionally, NEPA requires FWS planners and refuge staff to engage the public in planning process to assist them with identifying the most appropriate alternative. Completed CCPs are available to the public and can be found on the FWS website, equally important is an intimate understanding of the social and economic drivers that impact and are impacted by management decisions and can facilitate or impede implementation success.
Consideration of these contributes to the success of the Service’s mission to protect wildlife. The Refuge System works collaboratively internally and externally to leverage resources, according to the Services 2013 Banking on Nature Report, visitors to refuges positively impact the local economies. Prevention and control of fires is a very active part of refuge management. Completion of controlled burns to reduce fuel loading, and participation in the wildland fire suppression efforts, are vital for management of refuge lands. A considerable infrastructure of physical structures is essential to management of refuge lands. As of September 30,2015 there were 13,030 roads and trails,5,284 buildings,8,007 water management structures, the overall facility infrastructure is valued at nearly $30 billion
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its resources. The organization has four science disciplines, concerning biology, geology. The USGS is a research organization with no regulatory responsibility. The USGS is a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior, the USGS employs approximately 8,670 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. The USGS has major offices near Lakewood, Colorado, at the Denver Federal Center, the current motto of the USGS, in use since August 1997, is science for a changing world. The agencys previous slogan, adopted on the occasion of its anniversary, was Earth Science in the Public Service. Prompted by a report from the National Academy of Sciences, the USGS was created, by a last-minute amendment and it was charged with the classification of the public lands, and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain.
This task was driven by the need to inventory the vast lands added to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the legislation provided that the Hayden and Wheeler surveys be discontinued as of June 30,1879. Clarence King, the first director of USGS, assembled the new organization from disparate regional survey agencies, after a short tenure, King was succeeded in the directors chair by John Wesley Powell. Administratively, it is divided into a Headquarters unit and six Regional Units, Other specific programs include, Earthquake Hazards Program monitors earthquake activity worldwide. The National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines detects the location, the USGS runs or supports several regional monitoring networks in the United States under the umbrella of the Advanced National Seismic System. The USGS informs authorities, emergency responders, the media, and it maintains long-term archives of earthquake data for scientific and engineering research.
It conducts and supports research on long-term seismic hazards, USGS has released the UCERF California earthquake forecast. The USGS National Geomagnetism Program monitors the magnetic field at magnetic observatories and distributes magnetometer data in real time, the USGS operates the streamgaging network for the United States, with over 7400 streamgages. Real-time streamflow data are available online, since 1962, the Astrogeology Research Program has been involved in global and planetary exploration and mapping. USGS operates a number of related programs, notably the National Streamflow Information Program. USGS Water data is available from their National Water Information System database
Greenbo Lake State Resort Park
Greenbo Lake State Resort Park in Kentucky is a resort park in the northeastern part of the commonwealth, close to the town of Greenup, Kentucky in Greenup County on Kentucky State Route 1. The lodge contains a 232-seat dining room and it is centered on the 300-acre Greenbo Lake that features a boat dock and marina. There are over 25 miles of hiking and horseback trails, the park hosts a variety of community events each year including a quilt show, murder mystery dinner theaters, and a 5K race. Greenbo Lake State Resort Park Kentucky Department of Parks Greenbo Lake State Resort Park American Byways
Greek Revival architecture
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in Northern Europe and the United States. A product of Hellenism, it may be looked upon as the last phase in the development of Neoclassical architecture, the term was first used by Charles Robert Cockerell in a lecture he gave as Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1842. With a newfound access to Greece, or initially the books produced by the few who had actually been able to visit the sites, archaeologist-architects of the period studied the Doric and Ionic orders. This was especially the case in Britain and the United States, Greek Revival architecture took a different course in a number of countries, lasting until the Civil War in America and even in Scotland. Despite the unbounded prestige of ancient Greece amongst the elite of Europe. The monuments of Greek antiquity were known chiefly from Pausanias and other literary sources, visiting Ottoman Greece was difficult and dangerous business prior to the period of stagnation beginning with the Great Turkish War.
Few Grand Tourists called on Athens during the first half of the 18th century and it would take until the expedition funded by the Society of Dilettanti of 1751 by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett before serious archaeological inquiry began in earnest. Access to the originals in Greece itself only became easier after the Greek War of Independence ended in 1832, Lord Byrons participation, following James Stuarts travels to Greece in the early 1750s, intellectual curiosity quickly led to a desire to emulate. Stuart was commissioned after his return from Greece by George Lyttelton to produce the first Greek building in England, arguably the greatest British exponent of the style was Decimus Burton. In London twenty three Greek Revival Commissioners churches were built between 1817 and 1829, the most notable being St. Pancras church by William and Henry William Inwood. Such was the popularity of the Doric in Edinburgh that the city now enjoys a striking visual uniformity, Greek continued to be in favour in Scotland well into the 1870s in the singular figure of Alexander Thomson, known as Greek Thomson.
In Germany, the Greek revival is predominantly found in two centres and Munich, the earliest Greek building was the Brandenburg Gate by Carl Gotthard Langhans, who modelled it on the Propylaea. Ten years after the death of Frederick the Great, the Berlin Akademie initiated a competition for a monument to the king that would promote morality, similarly, in Munich von Klenzes Glyptothek and Walhalla were the fulfilment of Gillys vision of an orderly and moral German world. The purity and seriousness of the style was intended as an assertion of German national values and partly intended as a riposte to France. By comparison, the Greek revival in France was never popular with either the state or the public, what little there is started with Charles de Waillys crypt in the church of St Leu-St Gilles, and Claude Nicolas Ledouxs Barriere des Bonshommes. It would take until Laboustres Neo-Grec of the Second Empire for the Greek revival to flower briefly in France, the style was especially attractive in Russia, if only because they shared the Eastern Orthodox faith with the Greeks.
The historic centre of Saint Petersburg was rebuilt by Alexander I of Russia, the Saint Petersburg Bourse on Vasilievsky Island has a temple front with 44 Doric columns. Leo von Klenzes expansion of the palace that is now the Hermitage Museum is another example of the style, following the Greek War of Independence, Romantic Nationalist ideology encouraged the use of historically Greek architectural styles in place of Ottoman or pan-European ones
Vocal school
A vocal school, blab school or ABC school or Old-time School was a type of childrens primary school in North America and obsolete as the 19th century progressed. The school children recited their lessons out loud separately or in chorus with others as a method of learning, blab is the shortened form of the word blabber, meaning to talk much without making sense. From Old English comes the word muðettan, meaning to blab, middle English had the noun blabbe, one who does not control his tongue. A blab school was where the children repeated back their teachers oral lesson at the top of their voices. The school children vocalized out their lesson in Chinese fashion as harmonized voices in unison, in more elegant terms, instead of saying they were blab schools they were referred to as vocal schools. A blab school was popular in days of the American West. These one-room schools were called old field schools and were log cabins, the students sat on wooden backless benches. This type of school was referred to as an Old-time School in the Appalachian region of Virginia in the 19th century, a blab school was basically without books and paper for the students.
The schooling consisted of a teacher, with one or two books, speaking a short oral lesson and the schoolchildren reciting it back with a loud voice several times until memorized. The only requirement needed to become a teacher was to know how to read, reciting the information learned was a form of entertainment in frontier days as well as a means of learning. In those days paper was scarce so memorizing was the method over writing things down. The subjects of reading and arithmetic were the basic ABC items in the 19th century typically learned by the young children reciting out loud the lesson, in blab schools it was typical for a teacher to comment about a child grasping his lesson. This student was referred to as a leather-head and was awarded with praise from his teacher. In many of the ABC schools of the United States each pupil was to recite first thing in the morning of the new day the lesson they learned of their homework assignment of the previous day. The ambitious ones reached the house by sunrise since they recited in the order of their arrival in the morning.
The school rule was first come, first called and after a recital the teacher called out Next as they knew the order of each students arrival. The method of reciting ones lesson to memorize it was referred to as loud studying, many people of the time believed that listening to one blabbing out loud their lesson benefitted the education of the other students. Teachers were not shy in dishing out punishment to those who didnt loudly shout out their lesson
United States National Forest
National Forest is a classification of protected and managed federal lands in the United States. The National Forest System was created by the Land Revision Act of 1891, abbot Kinney and forester Theodore Lukens were key spokesmen for the effort. In the United States there are 155 National Forests containing almost 190 million acres of land and these lands comprise 8.5 percent of the total land area of the United States, an area about the size of Texas. Some 87 percent of National Forest land lies west of the Mississippi River in the ranges of the Western United States. Alaska has 12 percent of all National Forest lands, the U. S. Forest Service manages all of the United States National Grasslands, and around half of the United States National Recreation Areas. There are two different types of forests within the National Forest system. Those east of the Great Plains in the Midwestern and Eastern United States were primarily acquired by the government since 1891. The land had long been in the domain and sometimes repeatedly logged since colonial times.
These are mostly lands that were kept in the domain, with the exception of inholdings. Land management of these areas focuses on conservation, timber harvesting, livestock grazing, watershed protection, unlike national parks and other federal lands managed by the National Park Service, extraction of natural resources from national forests is permitted, and in many cases encouraged. National Forests are categorized by the U. S. as IUCN Category VI protected areas, the first-designated wilderness areas, and some of the largest, are on National Forest lands. There are management decision conflicts between conservationists and environmentalists, and natural resource extraction companies and lobbies, over the protection and/or use of National Forest lands, many ski resorts and summer resorts operate on leased land in National Forests
Native Americans in the United States
In the United States, Native Americans are people descended from the Pre-Columbian indigenous population of the land within the countrys modern boundaries. These peoples were composed of distinct tribes and ethnic groups. Most Native American groups had historically preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork, at the time of first contact, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the proto-industrial and mostly Christian immigrants. Some of the Northeastern and Southwestern cultures in particular were matrilineal, the majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural lands for use of the entire tribe. Europeans at that time had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of property rights with respect to land that were extremely different. Assimilation became a consistent policy through American administrations, during the 19th century, the ideology of manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement.
Expansion of European-American populations to the west after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands and this resulted in the ethnic cleansing of many tribes, with the brutal, forced marches coming to be known as The Trail of Tears. As American expansion reached into the West and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Basin, Great Plains and these were complex nomadic cultures based on horse culture and seasonal bison hunting. Over time, the United States forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes, in 1924, Native Americans who were not already U. S. citizens were granted citizenship by Congress. Contemporary Native Americans have a relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes. The terms used to refer to Native Americans have at times been controversial, by comparison, the indigenous peoples of Canada are generally known as First Nations. It is not definitively known how or when the Native Americans first settled the Americas and these early inhabitants, called Paleoamericans, soon diversified into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes.
The archaeological periods used are the classifications of archaeological periods and cultures established in Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips 1958 book Method and they divided the archaeological record in the Americas into five phases, see Archaeology of the Americas. The Clovis culture, a hunting culture, is primarily identified by use of fluted spear points. Artifacts from this culture were first excavated in 1932 near Clovis, the Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and appeared in South America. The culture is identified by the distinctive Clovis point, a flaked flint spear-point with a notched flute, dating of Clovis materials has been by association with animal bones and by the use of carbon dating methods. Recent reexaminations of Clovis materials using improved carbon-dating methods produced results of 11,050 and 10,800 radiocarbon years B. P, other tribes have stories that recount migrations across long tracts of land and a great river, believed to be the Mississippi River.
Genetic and linguistic data connect the people of this continent with ancient northeast Asians
Nancy Lincoln
Nancy Hanks Lincoln is best known as the mother of United States President Abraham Lincoln. Her marriage to Thomas Lincoln produced a daughter, Sarah Lincoln, when Nancy and Thomas had been married for just over 10 years, the family moved from Kentucky to Spencer County, Indiana. Nancy Lincoln died from sickness at the Little Pigeon Creek Community in Spencer County when Abraham was aged 9. This article reflects the prevailing theories regarding Nancy Hanks Lincolns heritage, there is information, published about the Shipley and Berry family and for Kentucky heritage sites that differs from the prevailing theory. This is explored in detail in the Nancy Hanks Lincoln heritage article. Nancy Hanks Lincoln was born to Lucy Hanks in what was at that part of Hampshire County. Today, the location is in Antioch in Mineral County. Years after her birth, Abraham Lincolns law partner William Herndon reported that Lincoln told him his maternal grandfather was a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter. It is believed that Nancy Hanks Lincolns grandparents were Ann and Joseph Hanks, at the time of Nancys birth and his wife and children were all living on 108 acres near Patterson Creek in then-Hampshire County, Virginia.
In March 1784, Joseph Hanks sold his property via a mortgage and moved his wife,8 children, the family lived on land along Pottingers Creek, in a settlement called Rolling Fork in Nelson County, until patriarch Josephs death in 1793. Nancys grandmother, who was called by the formal name Ann rather than its common nickname Nancy, decided to return to her homeland. At that time, Nancy went to live with her mother, having married Henry Sparrow in Harrodsburg, Kentucky two or three years earlier. Lucys sister Nancy Hanks gave birth to a son in 1799 named Dennis Friend Hanks, Nancy Hanks Lincolns cousin. At the home of Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow, Nancy would have learned the skills and crafts a woman needed on the frontier to cultivate crops and clothe and she learned to read by the Bible and became an excellent seamstress, working at the Richard Berry home before her marriage. Lucys marriage to Henry Sparrow produced 8 children, and Lucy had a reputation as a fine Christian woman, two sons were loyal to the Union during the Civil War and were preachers.
Nancy was brought to the home to work as a seamstress by her friend Polly Ewing Berry, Polly was a friend of Nancys from Mercer County and Richard Berry, Jr. was a good friend of Thomas Lincoln. Lincoln proposed to her in his home at what is now Lincoln Homestead State Park or in the Francis Berry house in front of the fireplace. Nancys marriage bond was signed by Richard Berry, Jr. who identified himself as her guardian, per Warren, The title had no legal significance, Berry having never been so appointed, and Nancy Hanks was of age
Protected areas of the United States
The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation, as of 2015, the 25,800 protected areas covered 1,294,476 km2, or 14 percent of the land area of the United States. This is one-tenth of the land area of the world. The U. S. had a total of 787 National Marine Protected Areas, covering an additional 1,271,408 km2, some areas are managed in concert between levels of government. The Father Marquette National Memorial is an example of a park operated by a state park system. As of 2007, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, federal level protected areas are managed by a variety of agencies, most of which are a part of the National Park Service, a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior. They are often considered the jewels of the protected areas.
Other areas are managed by the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Army Corps of Engineers is claimed to provide 30 percent of the recreational opportunities on federal lands, mainly through lakes and waterways that they manage. The highest levels of protection, as described by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, are Level I, the United States maintains 12 percent of the Level I and II lands in the world. These lands had an area of 210,000 sq mi. A confusing system for naming protected areas results in some types being used by more than one agency, for instance, both the National Park Service and the U. S. Forest Service operate areas designated National Preserves and National Recreation Areas. The National Park Service, the U. S. Forest Service, National Wilderness Areas are designated within other protected areas, managed by various agencies and sometimes wilderness areas span areas managed by multiple agencies. States and local zoning bodies may or may not choose to protect these, the state of Colorado, for example, is very clear that it does not set any limits on owners of NRHP properties.
State parks vary widely from urban parks to large parks that are on a par with national parks. Some state parks, like Adirondack Park, are similar to the National parks of England and Wales, about half the area of the park, some 3,000,000 acres, is state-owned and preserved as forever wild by the Forest Preserve of New York. Wood-Tikchik State Park in Alaska claims to be the largest state park by the amount of protected land, it is larger than many U. S. National Parks. Many states operate game and recreation areas. S, State and tribal wilderness areas Various counties, metropolitan authorities, regional parks, soil conservation districts and other units manage a variety of local level parks. Some of these are more than picnic areas or playgrounds, however
