US national parks map

All 63 national parks

Year is when Congress gave the area the title "National Park"; many were national monuments first (Grand Canyon was a monument from 1908, Death Valley from 1933). The list excludes the roughly 360 other National Park Service units: monuments, seashores, historic sites, recreation areas and parkways.

Parks by state

• California — 9: Channel Islands, Death Valley (shared with Nevada), Joshua Tree, Kings Canyon, Lassen Volcanic, Pinnacles, Redwood, Sequoia, Yosemite.
• Alaska — 8: Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Katmai, Kenai Fjords, Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, Wrangell–St. Elias. Wrangell–St. Elias, at 13.2 million acres, is the largest; seven of the eight were created together in 1980.
• Utah — 5: Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Zion, all on the Colorado Plateau.
• Colorado — 4: Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain.
• Arizona, Washington and Florida — 3 each. Wyoming has Yellowstone and Grand Teton, and shares Yellowstone with Montana and Idaho.
• Twenty states have no national park, including every state in New England except Maine, and New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia and Louisiana.

Firsts, largests and smallests

• First: Yellowstone, March 1, 1872, the first national park anywhere.
• Oldest in the East: Acadia, Maine, 1919; the first east of the Mississippi.
• Largest: Wrangell–St. Elias, Alaska, about 13.2 million acres, bigger than nine states. Largest in the lower 48: Death Valley, about 3.4 million acres.
• Smallest: Gateway Arch, St. Louis, about 91 acres, an urban monument given park status in 2018.
• Highest point: Denali, 20,310 ft. Lowest: Badwater Basin in Death Valley, 282 ft below sea level.
• Most visited: Great Smoky Mountains, on the North Carolina–Tennessee line, with more than 12 million visits a year, free to enter and within a day's drive of half the US population. Grand Canyon, Zion, Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain follow.
• Two parks lie outside the 50 states: American Samoa, in the South Pacific, and Virgin Islands, on St. John in the Caribbean.

Where the parks are

The map is lopsided. The Rockies, Sierra, Cascades and the canyon country of the Southwest hold most of the parks because the land was still federal when the parks were created; in the East, where land was private, parks came later and had to be bought or donated (Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, Acadia). The deserts have eight parks; the Great Lakes have Isle Royale and Indiana Dunes; the Appalachians have Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, New River Gorge and Mammoth Cave.

Related maps

• Yellowstone · Grand Canyon — the two most famous parks.
• Highest point in each state — several are inside parks.
• Colorado Plateau — eight parks in one region.
• All geography maps.