Fishhook Creek Trail
A gentle trail follows Fishhook Creek through lodgepole forest and open meadow to a clean view of the Sawtooth skyline, making it a useful first mountain walk.
United States: places and wildlife — page 39
Browse the published Explore collection for United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Alice Lake Trail
From Pettit Lake, a long wilderness trail climbs creek crossings and forest toward Alice Lake beneath the serrated El Capitan massif.
Boise River Greenbelt
Paved and natural paths follow the Boise River through parks, neighborhoods, cottonwood habitat, civic spaces, and multiple jurisdictions rather than forming one simple loop.
Tubbs Hill
A compact trail network circles rocky Lake Coeur d’Alene shoreline through ponderosa and Douglas-fir, with swimming coves, steep spurs, and city views minutes away.
Palisades Creek Trail
A shaded trail follows Palisades Creek beneath steep limestone and forest before reaching Lower and Upper Palisades lakes in grizzly country.
Idaho Botanical Garden
Native plants, water-wise design, cultivated collections, and seasonal displays occupy the former prison nursery beneath Boise’s sandstone foothills.
University of Idaho Arboretum and Botanical Garden
University slopes hold native Idaho plantings, Asian and European collections, ponds, memorial groves, and long views across Moscow and the Palouse.
Japanese Friendship Garden
Stone, water, planting, lanterns, paths, and a pavilion mark the relationship between Idaho Falls and its Japanese sister city, Tōkai-Mura.
Zoo Boise
An urban zoo pairs close animal viewing with a conservation-fee model that connects every admission to field projects, especially in Africa.
Aquarium of Boise
A small nonprofit aquarium uses touch pools, reef displays, sharks, rays, reptiles, and conservation messaging to make ocean life immediate in Boise.
World Center for Birds of Prey
Live raptors, breeding science, migration research, falconry history, and the California Condor recovery program reveal what saving a predator actually requires.
Mountain Bluebird
Idaho’s state bird flashes an almost unbroken blue across open mountain and sage country, often hovering briefly before dropping onto ground prey.
Cassia Crossbill
A crossbill found as a distinct species only in southern Idaho evolved around lodgepole cones and is often identified more securely by voice than plumage.
Northern Idaho Ground Squirrel
One of the world’s most range-restricted mammals spends only a few months above ground in scattered meadows of west-central Idaho.
Southern Idaho Ground Squirrel
This southwestern Idaho endemic compresses feeding, breeding, and juvenile growth into the cool green months before dry-season dormancy.
Idaho Giant Salamander
Idaho’s largest native salamander hides in cold forest water and wet night cover, where its marbled body can disappear against stone and bark.
Idaho Pocket Gopher
This mostly invisible western mammal announces itself through fan-shaped earthworks, clipped roots, and a tunnel system that mixes soil beneath meadows and sage.
Bruneau Hot Springsnail
One of Idaho’s smallest endemics survives only in warm-spring outflows where groundwater quantity, temperature, and chemistry must remain within a narrow envelope.
Shoshone Sculpin
This small fish exists only around a handful of cold Hagerman spring outlets, where camouflage and a broad head keep it nearly indistinguishable from gravel.
Wood River Sculpin
A fish confined to the Wood River drainage survives by disappearing against cobble, where cold current, clean substrate, and cover are its real field marks.
Kootenai River White Sturgeon
A landlocked population of ancient white sturgeon persists in the Kootenai basin, where altered flow and recruitment failure made human-assisted recovery essential.
Idaho Point-headed Grasshopper
A sharply sloped face and grass-stem posture help this obscure Idaho insect disappear into the dry structure of Snake River Plain vegetation.
Bruneau Dunes Tiger Beetle
A high-speed predator found only around Bruneau’s dunes hunts across open sand while its larvae ambush prey from tiny vertical burrows.
Slickspot Peppergrass
This tiny mustard is easy to overlook because its entire world is a scattered set of clay-rich slickspots within Idaho sagebrush.
Christ’s Indian Paintbrush
A yellow paintbrush known from a single Idaho summit turns Mount Harrison’s brief alpine summer into one of the state’s most geographically precise wildflower encounters.
Western White Pine
Idaho’s state tree once dominated vast northern forests, and its five-needle sprays now tell a story of blister-rust loss, selective breeding, and restoration.
Museum of the Rockies
World-class dinosaur fossils share a museum with Yellowstone science, regional history, Indigenous continuities, and a living-history farm.
Montana Heritage Center
Montana’s new heritage center joins state history, fine art, archives, and Indigenous perspectives in a purpose-built public institution.
C. M. Russell Museum
More than a cowboy-art shrine, this campus places C. M. Russell’s paintings and sculpture beside his home, log studio, contemporaries, and Indigenous art.
World Museum of Mining
An intact mine yard, reconstructed mining town, machinery, archives, and underground tours make Butte’s industrial system physically legible.
Yellowstone Art Museum
Montana’s largest contemporary art museum builds its identity around artists who live, work, and argue with the modern West.
Glacier Art Museum
Inside a former Carnegie library, Glacier-centered art and changing regional exhibitions connect mountain imagery with the communities that made and preserved it.
Holter Museum of Art
Five changing galleries, a permanent collection, and a busy education program connect contemporary art to Helena and the wider region—without pretending that every visit presents the same museum.
Missoula Art Museum
Missoula’s contemporary museum pairs free admission with a nationally important commitment to living Indigenous art and Montana modernism.
Western Heritage Center
A regional museum reads the Yellowstone Valley through Tribal homelands, migration, agriculture, industry, neighborhoods, and objects saved by local families.
Museum of the Plains Indian
A federal museum on the Blackfeet Reservation holds exceptional Northern Plains clothing, beadwork, painted hides, sculpture, and contemporary art.
Mai Wah Museum
Two surviving Chinatown buildings preserve the businesses, families, discrimination, networks, and persistence of Chinese Montanans in a mining city.
American Computer & Robotics Museum
Original objects connect four millennia of writing and calculation to cryptography, communications, mainframes, personal computing, robotics, and artificial intelligence in a compact museum built for close reading.
Moss Mansion
A largely intact Preston Boyd Moss family home reveals architecture, domestic labor, technology, taste, and the uneven wealth of early Billings.
Conrad Mansion Museum
A preserved 1895 mansion uses original family objects and service spaces to explain Charles Conrad, Kalispell, and the economics of the Flathead Valley.
Montana Dinosaur Center
A working paleontology center pairs research collections and a vast model display with field programs in one of Montana’s richest fossil regions.
Montana Natural History Center
A community natural-history center turns specimens, teaching collections, native habitat, and guided programs into practical ways of reading western Montana outdoors.
Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center
Overlooking the Missouri, this center makes the Corps of Discovery’s portage, labor, logistics, encounters, and environmental observations tangible at the landscape where they occurred.
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
A rolling battlefield and national cemetery hold Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Arikara, and U.S. Army histories that cannot be reduced to “Custer’s Last Stand.”
Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site
A preserved cattle-ranch headquarters uses buildings, herds, machinery, and daily work to explain the open-range industry and the people who sustained it.
Big Hole National Battlefield
At Big Hole, the Nimiipuu camp, siege area, memorials, and visitor center tell a devastating 1877 battle through Tribal memory and preserved terrain.
Bear Paw Battlefield
Forty miles from Canada, a self-guided prairie battlefield preserves the place where the Nimiipuu flight ended after a five-day siege.
Bannack State Park
More than sixty structures preserve a gold-rush town whose courthouse, hotel, school, homes, and street plan reveal boom, government, violence, and decline.