The Park Explorer

EASTON — Aug. 25 will mark the centennial of the creation of the National Park Service. It might be an understatement to say Charles Dean is looking forward to it.

According to the National Park Service website, the National Park System includes more than 84 million acres and comprises more than 400 sites with 28 different designations, including national park, national historical park, national monument, national recreation area, national battlefield and national seashore. Collectively, these sites contain more than 18,000 miles of trails, 27,000 historic and prehistoric structures, 247 species of threatened and endangered species, and 167 million museum items.

Dean, a Ridgely native, has a passion for these sites — so much so that he’s visited one in every U.S. state, and a total of 290.

He and his wife, Rebecca, were even married in a national park — Great Smoky Mountains National Park — and spent their honeymoon in Alaska visiting remote parks north of the Arctic Circle via bush plane. They found their dog, named Parker, while on a road trip to visit Hovenweep National Monument in Utah.

“One of the things we talked about on our first date was our love of travel, and kind of realized we were kindred spirits,” Dean said.

He saw some of his favorite parks on his honeymoon. He said there’s an Alaska list of favorites and an everywhere else list. On the Alaska list, his favorite is the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve; he described the water as “the clearest blue you’ve ever seen.”

On the other list, the favorite is Kings Mountain National Military Park, which sits on the North Carolina/South Carolina state line.

“There’s a dairy farm at the base of the mountain. If it ever goes up for sale, I think I’m going to buy it,” Dean said. “The view is so nice.”

For Dean, a history teacher at Sts. Peter and Paul in Easton, the trips are about more than seeing pretty sites. With each visit, he brings back literature, pictures and anecdotes to supplement his curriculum, and he said he encourages his students to visit sites independently, document the trip and report back to their classmates. The students have gotten on board, even squeezing in trips to various parks while on college visits.

All this travel and firsthand experience, Dean said, has helped to enrich his students’ learning experience. He thinks they’re more prepared to take advanced placement exams because of it.

“I would say my approach is kind of novel,” Dean said. “These travels had made me the teacher that I am and the person that I am.”

Dean said this passion came about early in his teaching career. He was teaching a course on the American Revolution and U.S. Civil War, and saw a number of the battlefields he was talking to his students about while on a drive to Williamsburg, Va. In 2006, the goal shifted from seeing battlefield sites to seeing parks when he bought a National Park Service passport that allowed him to collect stamps at each location.

Dean’s goal now is to see each of the sites maintained by the National Park Service. While his hope when he first began the journey was to see them all before the centennial, he now is aiming to be the youngest person to do so. He said, after some online research, the youngest person he knew of who had visited them all was 51. At 37, he feels good about his odds of breaking that record.

“The most fun will be the last one,” Dean said.

In addition to U.S. history, Dean also has a dedication to local history, working actively with the Caroline County Historical Society, Ridgely Historical Society and Queen Anne’s Museum of Eastern Shore Life in Centreville. He said his trips have helped him see how local history is presented all over the country, and he encourages anyone who can to travel.

“I think travel is therapeutic,” Dean said.

Up next is a road trip during time off around Easter, on which Dean plans to see a dozen or so parks between Maryland and San Antonio, Texas. The most difficult, he said, will be sites in Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands. He has set up an online GoFundMe account to help defray costs of collecting materials for his students at the parks.