"Belowground, Mammoth Cave National Park in southwestern Kentucky is part of the largest known cave system in the world. Aboveground, the park offers two winding rivers, numerous creeks, and a lush forest full of trails waiting to be explored. Discover all of the activities available in this 50,000 acre wonderland"--Container.

Not only for use in the Mammoth Cave area, this guide is widely useful in a large area, including much of the states of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia. An in-depth field guide to 400 wildflowers found along the trails and roads within the park. Each wildflower is represented by a brilliant full-color photograph and accompanied by identifying characteristic text that specifies the colors, floral and leaf forms, flowering time, native or introduced status, as well as the plant's folklore and history, its past herbal or medicinal use, and myriad other facts and myths. For those enthusiasts eager to search for new discoveries, the appendix provide tables showing the observed flowering period, a flower hunting planning guide, and an index of flowers by trail. A lasting and memorable introduction to the park's wildflowers—nearly all of which extend throughout Kentucky and neighboring states—Wildflowers of Mammoth Cave National Park is an indispensable tool for the amateur enthusiast and the professional botanist alike.

On January 1 of 2016, Stefanie Payne, a creative professional working at NASA Headquarters, and Jonathan Irish, a photographer with National Geographic, left their lives in Washington, D.C. and hit the open road on an expedition to explore and document all 59 of America's national parks during the centennial celebration of the U.S. National Park Service - 59 parks in 52 weeks - the Greatest American Road Trip. Captured in more than 300,000 digital photographs, written stories, and videos shared by the national and international media, their project resulted in an incredible view of America's National Park System seen in its 100th year. 'A Year in the National Parks, The Greatest American Road Trip' is a gorgeous visual journey through our cherished public lands, detailing a rich tapestry of what makes each park special, as seen along an epic journey to visit them all within one special celebratory year.

Eighty-two square miles of rolling hills and valleys in south-central Kentucky make up Mammoth Cave National Park, one of four National Park units in the Commonwealth. Our 26th National Park is home to an enormous labyrinth of underground passages. In fact, Mammoth Cave today is understood to be the world's longest known cave system. Over 400 miles of passages have already been discovered, yet Mammoth Cave is not the only cavern in southern Kentucky. More than 300 other cave systems are known to exist within park boundaries, with many more beyond the reach of the national park. The discovery and exploitation of many of these created opportunity and prosperity for many who would seek to compete with the world famous Mammoth Cave. Roughly one hundred years of competition between enterprising cave managers, guides, locals, outsiders, explorers, and those loyal to one cave or another defined an era known as the Kentucky Cave Wars.

As you enter the world's longest cave you cannot help but wonder about scary stories. Two centuries of tourists and explorers--some of whom got lost, saw or heard the unexplainable, or just wanted to tell a good tale--cannot leave a cave without stories. Scary Stories of Mammoth Cave is a collection of nineteenth and twentieth century fiction, historical and more recent first hand accounts of unusual experiences by National Park Service employees, cave explorers, and scientists.

For the majority of the 1.5 million people who visit Mammoth Cave National Park each year, the cave, forest trails and Green River are the major attractions. Little known are the small isolated communities that were inhabited for more than a century before the park?s creation. Traces of forgotten homesteads, now almost indistinguishable from the surrounding forests, are all that remain of these small communities. Taken from court documents and personal interviews, the author writes about the struggles and livelihood of the people who inhabited the region now within Mammoth Cave National Park. These stories sketch the early pioneers and human interest stories of their descendants?their schools, industries, tragedies, and humor that surrounded their lives.