History
Joseph Whidbey, master of the Discovery during George Vancouver's 1791-95 expedition, found Icy Strait, at the south end of Glacier Bay, choked with ice in 1794. Glacier Bay itself was almost entirely covered by one large tidewater glacier. In 1879 naturalist John Muir found that the ice had retreated almost all the way up the bay, a distance of around 48 miles (77 km). By 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier was at the head of Tarr Inlet about 65 miles (105 km) from Glacier Bay's mouth. This is the fastest glacier retreat ever documented. That said, not all of park's glaciers are in retreat. Scientists working in the park and preserve hope to learn how glacial activity relates to climate change.
Read more about this topic: Glacier Bay National Park And Preserve
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)