Biscayne National Park
Mangrove shoreline, Biscayne Bay, coral reefs, shipwrecks, and the northern Florida Keys require a boat or paddlecraft for the park’s full scale.
United States: places and wildlife — page 62
Browse the published Explore collection for United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Dry Tortugas National Park
Fort Jefferson, clear shallows, coral, seabirds, shipwrecks, and open Gulf water reward careful transport planning more than spontaneous arrival.
Big Cypress National Preserve
Cypress strands, wet prairie, hardwood hammocks, canals, backcountry routes, and tribal homelands protect the western Everglades watershed.
Canaveral National Seashore
Barrier-island dunes, lagoon, shell middens, sea-turtle nesting beaches, historic structures, and launch-zone closures shape Florida’s longest undeveloped Atlantic coast.
Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park
Sinkhole-driven water levels shape a vast prairie where bison, wild horses, alligators, cranes, and historic routes occupy radically changing ground.
Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park
Clear spring water, a 1930s lodge, cypress forest, river boats, manatees, alligators, and diving history meet south of Tallahassee.
Ichetucknee Springs State Park
Blue holes, submerged plants, limestone, hardwood hammock, tubing runs, and paddling routes protect a spring-fed tributary of the Santa Fe River.
Silver Springs State Park
A vast artesian spring, historic glass-bottom boats, river paddling, gardens, archaeology, and rhesus macaques expose both natural wonder and tourism’s consequences.
Myakka River State Park
Wet prairie, palm islands, oak hammock, alligators, wading birds, a canopy walkway, and seasonal boat tours occupy one of Florida’s largest state parks.
Bahia Honda State Park
Beaches, shallow channels, seagrass, snorkeling, campsites, and a surviving section of Flagler’s Overseas Railway occupy a narrow island passage.
Florida National Scenic Trail
More than 1,500 miles of orange-blazed trail cross Florida from Big Cypress to Gulf Islands through landscapes far more varied than flatness suggests.
Florida Scrub-Jay
Bold blue-gray jays cache thousands of acorns, post sentries, and raise young in family groups among low, fire-shaped oaks.
Florida Grasshopper Sparrow
A flat-headed sparrow delivers an insectlike song from treeless dry prairie where fire keeps saw palmetto and wiregrass low.
Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow
A small olive-gray sparrow nests just above the ground in seasonally flooded marl prairie where water timing determines reproductive success.
Florida Panther
Long-tailed tawny cats move through pinelands, swamps, ranches, and road crossings, requiring enormous connected territories rather than one protected park.
Key Deer
House-dog-sized white-tailed deer swim between islands and browse pineland, hammock, and wetland habitat around Big Pine and neighboring keys.
Florida Bonneted Bat
Enormous ears curve over the head of a rare free-tailed bat that roosts in tree cavities and buildings across a fragmented subtropical landscape.
Lower Keys Marsh Rabbit
Smaller and darker than mainland marsh rabbits, this Lower Keys endemic feeds along saltmarsh, buttonwood, and freshwater vegetation near dense escape cover.
Key Largo Woodrat
This large native rat builds bulky stick nests in limestone crevices beneath the tropical hardwood canopy of northern Key Largo.
Miami Blue Butterfly
Brilliant blue males and darker females use coastal host plants in one of America’s smallest and most storm-exposed butterfly ranges.
Schaus’ Swallowtail
Chocolate-brown wings crossed by yellow bands move through tropical hammock where torchwood and wild lime feed caterpillars.
Florida Torreya
Flat sharp needles and plumlike seeds identify a devastated evergreen surviving on steep cool bluffs above the Apalachicola River.
Florida Yew
Dark evergreen needles and red arils mark a slow-growing understory tree found only on shaded bluffs beside the Apalachicola River.
West Virginia State Museum
Archaeology, settlement, Civil War statehood, extraction, industry, music, protest, and daily life fill the Culture Center beside the Capitol.
Huntington Museum of Art
American and European art, glass, firearms, folk art, a tropical conservatory, maker studios, and nature trails share an intimate hilltop campus.
Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences
Hands-on science, Avampato art galleries, immersive water exhibits, a planetarium, and performance halls invite different kinds of attention.
Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine
A former drift mine, rail cars, camp buildings, exhibits, and miner-led interpretation connect geology to dangerous labor and company-town life.
West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
Artifacts, photographs, maps, oral histories, and immersive displays interpret strikes, Matewan, Blair Mountain, and their aftermath.
Heritage Farm Museum & Village
Seven museums, historic buildings, craft demonstrations, animals, and outdoor activities turn regional material culture into a full-campus visit.
Museum of American Glass in West Virginia
Pressed, blown, cut, colored, and commercial glass reveals changing technology, design, labor, and regional industry in an unusually concentrated collection.
Green Bank Science Center
Interactive exhibits, scheduled tours, and views of the 485-foot Green Bank Telescope explain how astronomers detect signals too faint for human senses.
Mothman Museum
Newspaper clippings, witness material, props, memorabilia, and local interpretation follow how a red-eyed figure became Point Pleasant’s durable folklore.
West Virginia Independence Hall
Restored interiors, period objects, and statehood exhibits occupy the federal building where wartime conventions and government reshaped Virginia’s western counties.
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
At the Potomac–Shenandoah confluence, preserved streets and trails connect the federal armory, John Brown’s raid, Civil War, Black education, and Appalachian geography.
Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
Long wings, wards, grounds, and archives support guided tours of a psychiatric hospital that operated from the Civil War era into the late twentieth century.
West Virginia Penitentiary
Cellblocks, yards, work areas, execution spaces, and interpretation confront the systems and people behind one of America’s most imposing former prisons.
Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex
The conical mound, archaeology exhibits, and research center interpret Indigenous engineering, burial practice, nineteenth-century excavation, and preservation.
Cass Scenic Railroad State Park
Company houses, shops, mill traces, museum exhibits, and operating Shay locomotives connect mountain rail engineering to industrial logging and community life.
Matewan Historic District
Brick storefronts, the rail corridor, floodwall, depot landscape, and markers situate the 1920 confrontation within the longer Mine Wars.
New River Gorge National Park and Preserve
Overlooks, trails, historic districts, climbing walls, and one of America’s great whitewater rivers reveal both Appalachian ecology and industrial transformation.
Blackwater Falls State Park
A 57-foot waterfall, canyon overlooks, wooded trails, winter recreation, and dark tannin-stained water make this one of West Virginia’s clearest landscape signatures.
Coopers Rock State Forest
The main overlook, Raven Rock, historic CCC structures, climbing areas, and rock-strewn trails combine broad geology with close forest detail.
Babcock State Park
Glade Creek Grist Mill is the famous image, but more than twenty miles of trails reveal rugged New River Gorge plateau terrain.
Seneca Rocks
A steep summit trail, technical climbing routes, historic homestead, and valley-floor discovery center make folded Appalachian geology unusually visible.
Dolly Sods Wilderness
A high plateau above the Allegheny Front supports exposed heath barrens, red spruce, wetlands, rocky overlooks, and a dense network of unblazed wilderness routes.
Spruce Knob
A short loop, observation tower, boulder-strewn meadow, and nearby trails provide an accessible introduction to the state’s highest highland ecosystem.
Cranberry Glades Botanical Area
A half-mile boardwalk enters an acidic wetland complex more typical of northern latitudes, surrounded by red spruce and Allegheny hardwoods.
Lost World Caverns
A self-guided commercial cave route descends through flowstone, stalactites, stalagmites, columns, and the immense Snowy Chandelier formation.