Wonderful Places To Visit

The National Park System is full of many fascinating and wonderful places to visit. Two such places are the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site and the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, located in Atlanta, GA, commemorates the life and times of the slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient. King, the son of a Baptist minister, was born and raised in Atlanta where he graduated from Morehouse College before receiving his Ph. D. from Boston University.

King's '57 visit to India had a defining impact on his commitment to Gandhi's teachings of nonviolence. Upon returning, King increasingly assumed leadership of the civil rights movement. His insistence that American society fulfill its promises of equality for all culminated with the 1963 march on Washington and his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The year 1964 saw the historic passing of the first civil rights bill of this century, not only accomplishing a central goal of the civil rights movement but also inspiring countless other liberation movements at home and abroad.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site is comprised of the Martin Luther King, Jr. birth home, the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the MLK grave site and a preservation district which helps maintain the historic atmosphere of the Sweet Auburn community that produced our nation's foremost civil rights leader.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Site is a must for anyone interested in the American quest to achieve its ideals and the inherently spiritual, one might say sublime, nature of America's complex and evolving history.

Similarly, the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks speak to the sublime core of American being and destiny. America's second oldest national park, Sequoia exists largely from the efforts of San Joaquin Valley residents and others to preserve and protect Sierra tracts from logging interests in the 1880's. By act of Congress, Sequoia National Park was created on September 25, 1890, and quickly grew to quadruple it's initial size.

Home of the giant sequoia tree, the earth's largest living thing, Sequoia National Park is situated on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Along with King's Canyon National Park, both jointly managed since 1943, Sequoia's mission is to forever protect and preserve the Sierran ecosystem.

From atop Moro Rock, one can quickly grasp the awe-inspiring scope and diversity of Sequoia. The giant forrest plateaus to the north where sequoias rise cathedral like, the dry foothills to the west, the Kaweah River, to the south, lies at the base of a canyon some 5000 vertical feet down, and to the east, the snowcapped peaks of the Great Western Divide.

Here one senses something of primal America in it's alien and fundamentally unconstrained fullness. Here one senses something of the sentient and essentially unpertubable nature of the American landscape.

 

Both the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks embody that which is most American yet transcends any narrowly conceived borders.