By Charles Leocha

Travel columnist

updated 1:07 p.m. ET June 11, 2008

Charles Leocha Travel columnist • Profile • E-mail

The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR) just released their list of the five quietest national parks in the lower 48 states as well as their five noisiest national parks. Where should you go this summer and fall if you want to escape the rising tide of man-made sound? Here are their findings in their words.

CNPSR Executive Council Chair Bill Wade said, “When people think of national parks, they think of scenery and wildlife. Many also think of a place they can escape the ruckus of everyday life. National Park Service (NPS) policies recognize the soundscape as an important park characteristic that needs to be protected. Some parks remain natural cathedrals to silence and natural sounds, while others now face an onslaught of airplane overflights, traffic sounds, snowmobiles, jet skis and other man-made noise pollution.”

The parks listed in this article are subjective. However, they are based on the thousands of years of experiences of CNPSR members who are among those who know the parks best of all. CNPSR hopes that park visitors will appreciate and pay attention to the preservation of natural sound — an important aspect of our national treasures.

Top five parks for peace, quiet and natural sounds
When you visit these or other national parks, tell the rangers you want to be away from man-made sounds as much as possible and ask their advice for the best sections of the park to visit quietly to enjoy the park and its natural sound:

Great Basin National Park, Nevada
“You can hear the birds’ wings as they fly,” says a retired superintendent of this park. “Come to Great Basin National Park to experience the solitude of the desert, the smell of sagebrush after a thunderstorm, the darkest of night skies, and the beauty of Lehman Caves,” beckons the park’s Web site. The Great Basin region is bounded by the Wasatch Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevada to the west, and the Snake River Plain to the north and includes most of Nevada, half of Utah, and sections of four other states. Its rivers and streams do not drain to either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. Sitting in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains, it is a temperate desert with hot, dry summers and snowy winters. Because of its drastic elevation changes from valleys to peaks, the region supports an impressive diversity of species, from those adapted to the desert to those adapted to forest and alpine environments. Great Basin National Park preserves a small representative piece of this entire region, and also includes reminders of its past human habitation, from Native American to ranching and mining. Hiking here, or especially snowshoeing or cross-country skiing in the winter, are excellent ways to experience peaceful natural sounds in one of the West’s lesser known and lesser visited parks.

Isle Royale National Park, Michigan
Isle Royale is a remote wilderness park, at least remote for the Eastern half of the country. It is surrounded by the large, clear, cold, and untamed waters of Lake Superior. The land base is 99% designated wilderness, although the majority of the park acreage is in Lake Superior where motorized boating is allowed—requiring some attention to location and timing to find places where the sounds of nature prevail. The peak boating is during the month of August; many of the dock accessible campgrounds in spring and fall or outside of August are often vacant of motorboats. The months of May, June, to mid July, September and October give the best opportunities for experiencing the wilderness qualities Isle Royale is known for. These same qualities can be found almost anytime by those in the interior, especially when hiking, paddling and camping in the more remote areas. Many boaters find the best natural qualities in the peak of the season by anchoring out in isolated bays, coves, and harbors.

North Cascades National Park, Washington State
Jagged peaks and deep valleys, encompassing 9000 feet of vertical relief, cascading waterfalls, over 300 glaciers, temperate rainforests and ponderosa pine systems make the North Cascades National Park Service Complex scenic, diverse, and a great place to explore. Three park units in this mountainous region are managed as one and include North Cascades National Park, and Ross Lake, and Lake Chelan National Recreation Areas. Three national forests surround the complex. While recreation includes motor boats in portions of the National Recreation Areas, jet skis are not allowed in any of the three areas. The Steven Mather Wilderness Area includes over 634,000 acres, most of it in the national park. Almost 400 miles of trails allow visitors to experience nature with minimal human-caused intrusions. In the wilderness area, areas such as Cascade Pass, Mt. Shuksan, Thornton Lakes, Easy Pass, and Hidden Lake Peaks receive heavy day use and are therefore somewhat less quiet. Opportunities for solitude are greatest in the more remote cross-country zones. Overnight recreational use is closely managed to provide a high level of solitude, including permits, designated campsites, and party size limits. As in other parks, ask the rangers for their advice to help plan your trip to the quietest parts of the park.

Big Hole National Battlefield, Montana
The battle at Big Hole grew out of a long struggle between non-Indians, hungry for land and gold, and the Nimiipu, or Nez Perce. After failing to uphold an 1855 treaty, the United States signed a second treaty in 1863 that reduced the Nez Perce lands by 90%, a treaty not signed by Nez Perce bands outside the new reservation. During a forced eviction in 1877, three young Nez Perce men took revenge on settlers for Indian deaths, beginning the Nez Perce War. At this site, Nez Perce fleeing to Canada were attacked in their tipis before dawn; while the Nez Perce prevailed and continued their flight, several were killed and buried here. It is considered a sacred burial ground by the Nez Perce. The battlefield sits in the beautiful U-shaped Big Hole Valley near Wisdom, Montana. Characterized by willows, sedges, and grasses—though many are non-natives—and flanked by sagebrush steppes and coniferous forests, the park provides habitat for moose and elk and retains much of its 1877 character. In addition to evoking thoughts about the war, spending quiet time in this park can give hints about what the site must have been like in more peaceful times before the battle of 1877, when the Nez Perce and others used this area to hunt and gather resources, such as tipi poles and camas lilies.

Muir Woods National Monument, California

Eric Risberg / AP file Morning sunlight filters above a pathway at the Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, Calif.

This small park in the greater San Francisco Bay area probably isn’t the first park you would think of if you wanted to get away from it all, with its daily crowds of tour buses from the city. The short half-mile path through the redwood forest is never far from the parking lot, though longer, more remote hikes are available. However, the park takes its responsibilities to protect the primeval qualities of the old-growth redwood forest seriously. To that end, they have embarked on a variety of efforts to document the soundscape and to enlist social scientists to help understand if people value the natural soundscape and what they would change to help protect it. Upcoming is a Centennial DVD of the park soundscape, to complement planned new visitor center exhibits. The Junior Ranger program was reworked to have quieting exercises and a new QUEST (a poetic treasure hunt) also that emphasizes listening and appreciating the natural soundscape. These efforts responded to visitors noting that rambunctious kids were the main source of human noise. The park has also tested quiet days and quiet zones. In December 2007, a Winter Solstice celebration included quiet times and five Quiet Days are planned in 2008.

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Note: The preceding list deliberately omits national parks in Alaska. Many Alaska parks are inaccessible by road and relatively lightly visited. That means less automobile traffic, RV generators and many other sounds of modern life. But airplane transport is required for many of these parks, and snowmobiles and ATVs are normal backcountry travel in the Alaskan bush, bringing their own noise in varying amounts. Compared to sites in the lower 48 states, a trip to a national park in the Alaska bush still provides for plenty of peace and quiet and lots of natural sounds.

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