Fund news #1

FUND NEWS #1

You're invited - Pinnacles National Park and Pinnacles Partnership celebrate a completed National Park Project for People !

This Saturday, September 24, at 12:30 a dedication ceremony will be held for six wayside exhibits that have been installed at the Bacon Homestead site, made possible by a grant from the Fund for People in Parks. These exhibits will help visitors understand and appreciate the rich history of the pioneer era in this land recently added to the park. We would be delighted to see you there! See Pinnacles Partnership for event detail.

Schooner CA Thayer re-christened

San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park celebrated the restored 1895 schooner CA Thayer with a re-christening ceremony on August 20th. Brian Thayer Mullins, a descendant of the vessel's last captain, helped raise one of the new sails provided in part by donors to the Fund for People in Parks.

The Thayer will go back into dry dock to have a forward deck house built and final fitting. Steve Bumgartner will continue to film the work until she returns to San Francisco Bay in ship-shape!

Featured Park: Great Basin

A hidden gem in plain sight in the middle of nowhere

You've never heard silence like this. You've never seen a night sky this full of stars. And you may not know that 400 miles due east of Lake Tahoe in Nevada there’s alpine scenery with bristlecone pines. Wheeler Peak dominates the park, rising from sagebrush to alpine summit at 13,063 feet.

But Wheeler Peak is just the centerpiece. Great Basin National Park represents a quintessential portion of the vast expanse of mountain ranges and low basins that cover this isolated area of the Western United states. The region is called the Great Basin because its streams and rivers have no outlet to the sea; instead, water collects in salt lakes, marshes and playas, where it eventually evaporates.

The park, for all practical purposes, is three parks in one, with focal points at Great Basin, Lehman Caves and Great Basin National Heritage Area.

There aren't many places like this left. A recent study showed that approximately 80% of North Americans can no longer see the Milky Way from where they live due to light pollution. To share the desert skies with more people, the Great Basin National Park Foundation raised funds for a new observatory with a 28-inch telescope. Astronomers, students and school children will be able to use the recently installed telescope. Images captured will be posted online for all to see.

The Fund for People in Parks is supporting the foundation and park with a project: creating a visitor center display of an intact Winchester Model 1873 rifle, found in Great Basin in 2014. It had been mysteriously left leaning against a tree in the wilderness over 100 years ago. This project will relate the gun to the pioneer history of the time in which it was abandoned.

Read more about Great Basin National Park

Fun Facts for People in Parks

America's best idea also has America's best bargain

If you are at least 62 years old and a US citizen you can buy a lifetime Senior Pass for $10 that gives you, and passengers in a car with you, free entrance to all National Parks!

San Francisco Bay sailing on the "flat bed truck" of its day

you can sail on the bay for three hours aboard San Francisco Maritime National Historical park's scow schooner Alma at a cost of $40 or less

Superintendents don’t just lead parks, sometimes they lead hikes

Joshua Trees National Park Superintendent, David Smith occasionally leads hikes up different peaks in the park.

OMG Fact #1

San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park holds the largest museum collection in the national park system: over six million catalogued items.

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The Fund for People in Parks!

The Fund for People in Parks is a fiscally sponsored project of

Community Initiatives, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.