Karns City student has traveled to more than half of nation’s national parks
FAIRVIEW TWP — For at least two months of each year, the MacKrell family piles into a Ford Bronco Raptor to travel hundreds of miles, usually westward, to visit around 20 U.S. national parks and national areas in one go.
The youngest member of the family, Wyatt MacKrell, has visited more than 250 of these national areas — and that’s before he has even graduated high school.
The Karns City Area Jr./Sr. High School senior visited his first national park when he was just 6 months old, when his parents took him to Yellowstone. Wyatt’s summers have been packed with travel to more parks since then. With high school graduation just weeks away, he said he hopes to make his park knowledge more than just a vacation.
“Going to all these places ever since I was little is what inspired me to do the things that I want to once I graduate from here,” Wyatt said during a study hall at school Wednesday, May 13, “go to college and then become a national park ranger.”
Wyatt is the son of Terry MacKrell, gifted program coordinator for Karns City Area School District. MacKrell said he plans a route every year that will help him and his family get to a few dozen national areas per trip — with plans to drive to as many places as possible because “you don't see anything when you fly. You've got to drive to see the stuff.”
Wyatt said he wants to make it to all of the national areas. He has already been to 47 of the 50 states and said he has chosen a favorite park for each state he visited. And while he enjoys seeing the national parks, like Yellowstone and Death Valley, it’s the historic battlefields that he enjoys the most, such as Antietam, the Alamo and especially, Vicksburg.
The Civil War is particularly interesting to Wyatt, possibly because its remnants can be seen in person. They help bring to life historic events that led to the present day.
“It's very influential to think that we had a Civil War here at some point in time that lasted four years and people need to understand the importance of the things,” Wyatt said. “Most of them are national battlefields because they were preserved by veterans of those wars.
“Civil War is probably the biggest one because the veterans were like, 'We should establish this to make a presence that people should learn that these places were important to American history.'”
According to MacKrell, it’s free to enter most of the national parks. However, some, like Yellowstone, require an admission fee that is attached to the vehicle that someone enters the park with.
MacKrell also said he traveled the nation when he was young with his parents, but his count of national parks is about equal to his son’s, because he has taken Wyatt to the ones he visited as a child. However, the younger MacKrell has still yet to check off well-known parks like Yosemite in California and Acadia in Maine.
MacKrell’s classroom at Karns City Area Jr./Sr. High School is filled with souvenirs from his travels — the walls covered by license plates from almost every state in the nation, his desk covered by magnets that he has picked up from the parks. MacKrell also said pewter ornaments are a good collectible. The family’s house has a Christmas tree dedicated to displaying these ornaments.
But one of the most important keepsakes to Wyatt is a booklet listing all the national parks and areas in the U.S., with room for stamps and stickers to help document the date that he first visits a site. The booklet has helped keep track of the family’s journeys.
“We've been to all of them in Kansas, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana,” Wyatt said. “I have not been to Maine, Washington or Oregon yet.”
According to the U.S. National Park Service, there are more than 400 national parks and 85,000 properties in the National Register of Historic Places. MacKrell noted that areas under the National Park Service are broken into different categories. However, the umbrella of the service still tends to many sites nationwide.
The West is not only full of national areas, but it’s where MacKrell owns another home base, a house in the area of Gunnison, Colo. He said it’s a good place to land after driving hours and hours to get out West and the location helps the family regroup during weekslong summer trips.
“Last year we were gone for almost two months. We wash clothes whenever it works out,” he said. “I love the West. I want to live there someday when I retire.”
The summer allows the MacKrells to be on the road a lot. It also leads them to some of the nation’s most extreme climates.
“It's hot when you go to Mississippi because of all the swamps,” Wyatt said. “We go down to Texas, it's dry and not humid, it's like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ We've been to Death Valley, it's like 125 degrees every day.”
Wyatt said he plans to attend the park and recreation management program at Butler County Community College after graduating high school. After that, it’s on to Slippery Rock University in the hopes that he can land an internship or placement at one of the National Park Service’s parks.
He said he would be happy to get his foot in the door for any park. However, after seeing Vicksburg in Mississippi last year, that location might be his top choice post-education. Wyatt explained that the Siege of Vicksburg was a turning point in the Civil War, a battle where Ulysses S. Grant took on forces in a manner that historians are still studying.
“Vicksburg was transformed into a fortress to stop the separation of the Confederacy, but (Grant) managed to get past in April of 1863. He managed to defeat not one, but two, Confederate armies,” Wyatt said. “It's still extremely interesting how he managed to maneuver his naval and land force through an unstoppable fortress.”
The MacKrells have a connection to military history in their own family lineage. Wyatt said one of his great uncles was a Union soldier who was captured by the Confederate Army and died of dysentery in Andersonville Prison in Georgia.
MacKrell got to hold the “Mackerel’s” military sword when he visited a museum in South Dakota as a child. It has since been dispersed because that museum closed.
“He fought in the Civil War, 14th Pennsylvania Company K. He fought in the Shenandoah Valley pretty much after the Battle of Antietam,” Wyatt said.
Once school is out for summer, MacKrell will take a cohort of Karns City Area gifted students on a bus trip to Colorado and Utah to experience some national and historic sites.
Wyatt said he hopes to keep up the travel streak post-high school, but wants to keep learning about national parks so he can pass on the knowledge some day.
“I might go and do history because I am so knowledgeable about history that I feel like I could use this to teach other people what happened at these places and educate these future generations of people who need to understand what happened,” he said.
