Pattern Inspiration:

This year, 2016, is the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. Smart Knits - a knitting group out of Logan, Utah - thought that a great way to celebrate the National Park Service and the sublime lands that it protects was to design a National Parks blanket. The blanket is made up of 60 blanket squares - one to celebrate each of the 59 National Parks and one square to celebrate the National Park Service itself.

When thinking of Alaska, few people picture sand dunes. A geological oddity, the vast sand dunes of Kobuk Valley National Park are made of rock pulverized by retreating glaciers many thousands of years ago. Established as a national monument in 1978, Kobuk Valley became a national park in 1980 with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Conservation Lands Act. Each year nearly half a million caribou migrate through the park, their tracks crisscrossing the dunes. For at least 9,000 years caribou have crossed the Kobuk River on their annual migration. For just as long, humans have gathered at the site to harvest the animals. Archeologists have found evidence of at least nine distinct cultural groups who camped at Onion Portage, the wide bend in the river where caribou cross. Local Inupiaq Eskimos still hunt caribou at Onion Portage as their ancestors have for thousands of years. The design for this square represents one of the millions of caribou tracks crisscrossing the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes every spring and fall.

This Pattern:

If you purchase this pattern, you will receive only the pattern for the Kobuk Valley National Park blanket square. If you would like to purchase a subscription to all of the blanket squares please buy the eBook.

All proceeds from this pattern will be donated to the National Park Foundation in celebration of the National Park Service Centennial.