Park Number: 16/63

First Visited: March 6, 2011

Of the Sierra Nevada national parks, this one gets the least recognition. This is because Kings Canyon abuts Sequoia and they are monitored as one park. And then, over this conglomeration, Yosemite casts its mighty shadow.

Kings is an afterthought to a family vacation. But that’s what I like about Kings. You get lost there. You feel wild. Free to wander the contiguous United States’ second largest expanse of unpaved land.

The park, however, as with the entire Sierra range, is facing unprecedented challenges with the threats of climate change, air pollution, and invasive species. This has resulted in California’s worst droughts in the last thousand years.

Now is the time to find meaningful solutions to our anthropogenic catastrophes, to enforce them, and to begin alleviating the environmental stress we've gifted this planet.

Kings Canyon is ancestral lands to the Owens Valley Paiute (Eastern Monos) Tribe.

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