Frenzy 1 – Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado, USA

Well, Ol’ Joey the master geographer snatched the snocone for week one. No surprise there, given his family history (more on that in a bit). The rest of y’all are gonna have your work cut out for ya if you wanna get in on the frosty treat action.

As for Black Canyon, it’s one of the newest parks in the USA park system. Although first named a National Monument back in 1933 by Herbert Hoover, the area didn’t become a national park until Bill Clinton signed it into being.

Here’s a link to the official park site, and to a photo site with more lovely pics for your enjoyment:

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Black Canyon Pics

(Interesting note: a president may name any piece of land in the country a National Monument by issuing a written decree, but it takes an act of Congress to designate a National Park. As such, most of the parks in the federal system have their starts as monuments, with Congress eventually following the president’s lead and designating a given area a park, which carries much stronger protection than do monuments.)

And now, a brief history of the Cockerham geographical legacy, and why you’ll have to be on your toes to beat out Ol’ Joey for the snoprize each week:

Back in the middle ages, round about 1200 or so, Wild William Cockerham was the mayor, anointed by his own decree, of Cockeville, a fair-to-middlin’ sized village nestled in the briar and heather of the netherlands between England and Scotland. Pledging allegiance to kings from both domains, Wild Willie played off each of them all the while keeping the Druids at bay, a juggling act that earned him the admiration and devotion of many of his minions.

Unfortunately for Willie, he had a predilection for food criticism, and fancying himself something of a dandy, would regularly hold court with withering critiques of vittles offered upon his doorstep. Details are murky, but legend has it that one dark winter’s eve Willie erupted with a particularly bellicose and ill-timed bellow of “That tweren’t no chicken!” at which he was summarily ridden out of town on a rail.

Bereft of domain, and chilled in the gloaming of a short winter’s day, Willie set out for Africa. To tell of his many adventures would take more space than we have here; suffice to say he returned to Cockeville a hero many years hence, with tales of unimagined terror and triumph from all corners of the globe, and eventually founded the Cockerham Royal Ambulatory Party, a society devoted to exploration, and a critical element in developing the wayfaring adventurous spirit that would one day lead to an empire on which the sun did not set.

A couple of centuries later, upon the permanent exile of Wild Willie’s descendants to the New World (another tale for which we have regrettably no space to render), his CRAP society was renamed, largely due to the unfortunate acronym with which it was saddled, the Royal Geographic Society, a name it retains to this day.

And so there you have it – a brief, largely unknown history, and a warning to those that would tangle and/or tussle in search of a snocone. Ol’ Joey is a force with which to be reckoned…

Good luck to all!