We love national parks. It’s why we hired award-winning journalist Ashley Harrell four years ago to exclusively cover all of California’s. During that time, she’s written more than 240 deeply reported stories on all things parks, from rangers who have to live in a ghost town to a secretive religious group strangling access to California’s most beautiful waterfall. She’s taken on unexpected lakes appearing in Death Valley, gone deep on a lawless campground on the Lost Coast and broken news of a college student slipping on Half Dome and falling to her death.

We’ve believed for some time now that coverage of national parks shouldn’t be relegated to rote travel roundups but instead be rooted........

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