To celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service, Conor Knighton spent all of 2016 "On The Trail,” visiting each one of our national parks. Along the way, he produced a series of reports for CBS Sunday Morning. Some of those segments can be found below.
Conor Knighton is winding up his year-long journey through our National Parks. He's returned with a backpack full of picture postcards, along with some thoughts.
As Conor Knighton discovered in Alaska's Denali National Park, sled dogs are a significant part of the park's 100-year-old legacy.
Conor Knighton continues his trek through our National Parks, visiting the only U.S. soil south of the Equator, where U.S. nationals born in the American territory in the South Pacific are only confirmed some rights.
At Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, there can be found an abundance of fossilized wood dating back hundreds of millions of years, lining the trails and topping the hillsides. Although it's illegal, many visitors steal this beautiful wood from the park. But surprisingly, a lot of it has been returned, with apologetic notes!
Devils Hole sounds like a scary place, but it's really a sanctuary. Conor Knighton take us to this tranquil place near Death Valley National Park, a refuge for one of the rarest fish in the world.
If you go home when the sun goes down at Great Basin National Park in Nevada, you'll miss one of the park's greatest attractions. The stars shine so brightly there, because the place is so unbelievably dark. Conor Knighton checks out the awesome night visions.
Contuning his year-long exploration of America's National Parks, Conor Knighton's latest destination is Biscayne National Park, where the best scenery is under water, on a barrier reef off the coast of Florida.
Over the last few months, there's been a lot of talk about walls on the U.S.-Mexico border. Conor Knighton, "On The Trail" again, as part of "Sunday Morning"'s celebration of the National Park Service's centennial, takes us to Big Bend, the national park along the border whose natural walls are stunning to behold.
The Everglades in South Florida is called "The River of Grass," and is home to an abundance of plant and animal species. For this reason, the Everglades National Park was established in 1947. Conor Knighton has more on one of the most unique of America's protected spaces.
The National Park Service turns 100 this year. As part of our new series, "On the Trail," Conor Knighton takes a trip to Acadia National Park in Maine. At just under 50,000 acres, it's one of our smallest national parks, but also one of the most popular.
"Their stiff and ungraceful form makes them to the traveler the most repulsive tree in the vegetable kingdom," wrote explorer John C. Fremont when he traveled through the California desert in 1844. Today, travelers find the Joshua tree - as found in Joshua Tree National Park - uncommonly beautiful.
As part of his cross-country journey celebrating the centennial year of the National Park Service, Conor Knighton visits our smallest National Park, and also its most unusual: Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, where visitors have been coming to "take the waters" for more than 180 years.
Conor Knighton ran into quite a mystery at his latest stop on his tour of America's National Parks. At Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, he discovered a special piece of wood that has stumped visitors and park staff alike.
"Lava Flow" homes are sprouting up near Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. So who would live so close to an active volcano? Conor Knighton continues his yearlong exploration of America's National Parks.
Conor Knighton attended a Decoration Day ceremony that took place in a very remote spot: on top of a mountain, inside of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where an entire community had been uprooted decades earlier for a dam project.
"Rephotography" - comparing photos taken at the same spot years apart - can be a detective tool, when comparing archive images of glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park in Alaska and Glacier National park in Montana, to the views found today. Conor Knighton looks at how these natural wonders are disappearing at an astonishing rate.
Mary Colter was the visionary designer behind the Grand Canyon's most recognizable buildings. Drawing on ancient Native American structures for inspiration, Colter (one of a handful of female architects in her day) created buildings that blended in with their settings, physically and culturally, and spawned an architectural movement - National Park Rustic - on display at parks across the country.
At Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, in a wild and remote stretch of Alaska, locals survive with subsistence hunting of the largest caribou herd in the U.S. Conor Knighton reports.
Millions of Americans across the country were out of work during the Great Depression, while there was a huge job that needed be completed in America's parks and public lands. And so President Franklin Roosevelt created the the Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal program that would eventually employ three million Americans.
In Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park, spectacular cliff dwellings created by the ancestral Pueblo people are as awe-inspiring as the park's natural wonders. Conor Knighton reports.
Virgin Islands National Park is not the image most would think of when describing a national park. Pristine beaches, tropical cocktails and sunset cruises likely have a lot to do with the lavish resort that's located within its borders. Conor Knighton has more on the tropical national treasure for our series, On The Trail.
The sand dunes at Great Sand Dunes National Park in south-central Colorado are famous for being the tallest in North America - and among the quietest places in the entire country. Conor Knighton takes a listening tour.
A summertime visit to a National Park is a tradition moving into its second century. But America's parks may have become too successful in attracting visitors from around the world. Conor Knighton takes the measure of park tourism then and now.
Conor Knighton continues a year-long celebration of National Park Service's 100th birthday with a trip underground, to Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky's massive cave system with an unusual history.