Dead Tree National Park

Americas Newest (proposed) National Park

Well it’s Official! All those rumors you’ve been hearing about a brand new national park are true. Our confidential source inside the National Park Service has informed us that within days if not weeks or months or even possibly years, the national Park Service is going to submit to our Congress a bill creating Americas newest National Park, Dead Tree National park.

We here at The Institute have been working tirelessly behind the scenes trying to make this new park a reality. Extending from a point just outside of Great Falls in Western Montana to the outer edge of Idaho and from Canada down to a little above Boise, touching the corner of Yellowstone National Park and including all of the sticky-up part of Idaho, this park will be larger than Pakistan, but without all that ritual killing and covered up women and stuff. Rather than being square in shape which everyone involved thought has been done to death and is boring, this new park will be shaped like a partially peeled potato.

The main theme of the park is spelled out in its name, Dead Tree National Park, and consequently all the attractions feature dead trees. Since there are so many of them, dead trees that is, scattered throughout this area of the country, the decision makers at the National Park Service thought that they should be commemorated and the idea of this newest park was born. Here we see a finished portion of the park. Notice the picturesque way the hillside has been landscaped, with carefully charred stumps and the delightful placing of the deadfall.  The Park Service ever mindful of the long-range planning necessary to maintain a national park has included plantings of replacement trees, called the undead, to insure that there will always be a plentiful supply of dead trees in the future.

This park is designed to be a year-round attraction, so much attention has been paid to creating views that enhance the natural seasons. This view is known as blow down alley and is perfect to showcase not only the dead fallen trees but those that are in the process of falling down, and of course, the numerous snowfalls that occur here. Note the inclusion of the undead. One can already see the design possibilities ahead when these trees get to the point where they become dead too.

Because some areas of the park are not considered dead enough or perhaps more clearly, do not have enough dead trees, new and radical procedures are being developed to hurry along the process of creating dead trees. Global warming, usually seen as a detriment to trees and other living things, is seen here being put to use, or at least its solar potential is being used, to burn the needles and leaves off an experimental patch of trees to see if the dead-making process can be accelerated. The results have been promising so far.

In answer to some of the park’s critics that state that this whole concept is anti-wildlife in nature and will result in the loss of animals and birds in this part of the country, the National Park Service says Poppycock!, and proudly points to this healthy, well-adjusted Black bear seen investigating his new environment. Plus they state a bird has been recently seen also.

To conclude our visit to America’s newest national park we’d like to show a completed portion of the park located up near the Canadian border. This is it in all its glory, dead trees for as far as the eye can see. This is a particularly rare collection and shows to what length the parks creators have gone to, to have this many dead trees still in their upright positions, what they like to refer to as Standing Dead, or trees that haven’t fallen over yet. Our friends in the Great White North have been paying close attention to the efforts we have been making in creating this unique park and have stated that they are truly amazed, they say it’s unbelievable and they have never, ever seen anything like it. We take this as the highest form of praise. So keep your eye on Congress and be ready to jump in and help if we meet with any opposition. America needs this new park, our older parks are fine and all that but they are growing a little stale. It’s time to show the world again that we can be a great leader in everything, including protecting and developing our natural resources. Remember its name, Dead Tree national Park, coming to a bumper sticker near you soon.