America's National Monuments: Hidden Gems

From the Publisher

Discover less-traveled destinations through introductions from local conservationists and comprehensive photographic coverage of highlights. Plan to visit adventurous alternatives to bustling parks with practical travel notes describing the author's wide-ranging explorations. Discover public lands whose beauty and diversity rival better-known parks.

Immerse yourself in awe-inspiring forests, rivers, mountains, deserts, and canyons. Marvel at otherworldly rock formations or some of the most extensive collections of petroglyphs and ancient ruins in the country. Draw inspiration from more than 300 spectacular, never-before-seen images in a beautifully printed coffee-table book. Get introduced to each of the monuments in 27 essays by local citizen activists who have long advocated for them. Understand why they deserve to be protected for future generations.

Plan your adventure to less-traveled parklands. The monuments in the book are vast, less crowded, and offer a freer way to experience the great outdoors than overwhelmed and strictly regulated national parks. Experience gems out of the beaten path using practical advice not found elsewhere.

Learn about the location of each photo in notes conveying the author's personal experience as a photographer, interesting details about natural and human history, and useful travel tips. Explore new, large national monuments on land. Carefully chosen locations represent the best of each of the twenty-two monuments and cover each of its corners. Enjoy the scenic highlights of each monument and find out how you can visit them with guidebook-grade information.

Survey each monument with a precise map pinpointing the location of each photo in the book. Purchase and download the companion ebook with more detailed maps and resources.

Alternatives to nearby national parks: Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument is a place of solitude, comprising some of the largest and most remote undeveloped areas in the continental United States. Whitmore Canyon Overlook offers the easiest access to the Colorado River inside Grand Canyon National Park.

Giant Sequoia National Monument was proclaimed to protect 33 sequoia groves comprising over half of the population of remaining giant sequoias in the world. The Converse Basin Grove was reputed to be the finest and largest sequoia grove in the world, with the Boole Tree being the largest living giant sequoia.

In Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, I had the entire place to myself when photographing three of the better-known natural arches, unlike the frequently full and closed Arches National Park.

The Sonoran Desert National Monument protects a section including three distinct mountain ranges separated by vast saguaro-covered plains, representing the largest unbroken tract of the Sonoran Desert.

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument is a geologic wonderland of spectacularly colored rock strata, with Coyote Buttes South being an excellent example of a great area under the radar.

Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument protects the last 149-mile free-flowing section of the Missouri River and the surrounding unique landscape of prairies, bluffs, sheer cliffs, and badlands, including the iconic Hole-in-the-Wall rock formation.

Bears Ears National Monument spans wondrous red rock country with immense vistas and more than 100,000 Native American archaeological sites, including the Fallen Roof Ruin.

The five marine national monuments in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are some of the largest protected areas in the world, but also the most remote and less known. Our National Monuments is the first book to survey each of the marine national monuments, offering a glimpse of those almost-inaccessible, yet vitally important areas.

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