The United States National Parks

All 63 of America's national parks in one place: the geysers and canyons, glaciers and giant sequoias, coral reefs and live volcanoes the country set aside for everyone. From the Grand Canyon to the Everglades to the wilds of Alaska, this is the complete collection, each one worth building a whole trip around.

63 places · United States

More to explore

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Crater Lake National Park

Klamath Falls, OR · Cascade Range, Southern Oregon

Crater Lake fills the collapsed caldera of Mount Mazama, a volcano that blew its top roughly 7,700 years ago, leaving the deepest lake in the United States at nearly 1,950 feet. Fed only by rain and snow, its water is so clear it glows an almost unreal sapphire blue, with Wizard Island, a cinder cone, rising near the western shore. Drive the 33-mile Rim Drive in summer or strap on skis when winter buries the road.

🌋 Volcanoes

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Volcano, HI · Big Island, Hawaii

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island puts you on the slopes of two of the world's most active volcanoes, Kilauea and the massive Mauna Loa. Walk through the lush Nahuku lava tube, peer into the steaming Halemaumau crater, and follow Chain of Craters Road nearly 4,000 feet down to where old lava flows meet the sea. When Kilauea is erupting, the caldera glows red after dark.

🌲 Forests

Redwood National Park

Orick, CA · Northern California Coast

Redwood National Park, stretching inland from the foggy coast near Orick, shelters the tallest trees on Earth, coast redwoods that soar past 300 feet in cathedral-quiet groves. Pick up a free permit at the Kuchel Visitor Center to hike into the legendary Tall Trees Grove, or wander among giants like Big Tree on the Prairie Creek trails. Cool ocean fog keeps the forest lush and green year round.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Death Valley National Park

Furnace Creek, CA · Mojave Desert

Death Valley National Park is the hottest, driest, and lowest national park in the country, a vast basin of salt flats, sculpted badlands, and dunes near Furnace Creek, California. Walk out onto the cracked white polygons of Badwater Basin at 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in North America, then catch sunrise over the rippled ridges of Zabriskie Point. Come October through April, when the desert heat eases to comfortable hiking weather.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Canyonlands National Park

Moab, UT · Southern Utah

Carved where the Green and Colorado rivers meet, Canyonlands splinters into mesas, spires, and stacked canyons spread across four wild districts outside Moab. Most visitors head to Island in the Sky, where the half-mile walk to Mesa Arch frames a sunrise that ignites the underside of the stone above a thousand-foot drop. For solitude, the Needles offers redrock pinnacles and miles of backcountry trail.

⛰️ Mountains

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park

Copper Center, AK · Southcentral Alaska

Wrangell-St. Elias is the largest national park in the country, over 13 million acres of south-central Alaska where the Wrangell, St. Elias, Chugach, and eastern Alaska ranges converge. It holds nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the US and some of the continent's largest icefields, plus the red ruins of the Kennecott copper mill near McCarthy. Two rough roads and bush planes are the only ways in.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Big Bend National Park

Terlingua, TX · Chihuahuan Desert, West Texas

Big Bend is named for the sweeping curve where the Rio Grande turns north along the Texas-Mexico border, wrapping over 800,000 acres of Chihuahuan Desert, river canyons, and the entire Chisos mountain range. Walk the short Santa Elena Canyon trail beneath limestone walls that rise some 1,500 feet and narrow to a slot barely wide enough for the river. One of the most remote parks in the lower 48, it rewards visitors with vast solitude and famously dark night skies.

🕳️ Caves

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Carlsbad, NM · Guadalupe Mountains, Chihuahuan Desert

Carlsbad Caverns drops visitors into a hidden world beneath the New Mexico desert, where a self-guided trail winds through the Big Room, the largest single cave chamber in North America at over 8 acres. Stalagmites, soaring columns, and delicate formations fill the dim, cool dark. From spring through October, hundreds of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats spiral out of the natural entrance at dusk in one of the country's great wildlife spectacles.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Badlands National Park

Interior, SD · High Plains

The Badlands rise from South Dakota's prairie as a maze of sharply eroded buttes, spires, and banded pinnacles, the layers stacked in stripes of rust, gold, and gray. Walk the boardwalk-and-scramble Door Trail straight into the formations near Interior, or drive the Badlands Loop Road for bighorn sheep, bison, and prairie dogs. The park also guards one of the world's richest fossil beds, where ancient horses and saber-toothed cats once roamed.

⛰️ Mountains

Glacier Bay National Park

Gustavus, AK · Southeast Alaska

Glacier Bay is a living showcase of ice meeting the sea, a network of fjords near Gustavus where more than ten tidewater glaciers spill toward salt water. The headliner is Margerie Glacier at the head of Tarr Inlet, a mile-wide wall that calves house-sized slabs into the bay with a crack like thunder. More than 90 percent of visitors arrive by cruise ship, but summer kayakers and tour boats also catch the roughly 100 humpback whales that feed here.

🌋 Volcanoes

Haleakala National Park

Pukalani, HI · Maui, Hawaii

Haleakala National Park crowns Maui with a 10,023-foot summit whose name means house of the sun, and watching dawn break over its vast, cinder-cone-studded crater is the park's signature ritual (a reservation is required to enter before 7 a.m.). Hike the otherworldly Sliding Sands Trail down into the basin, or drop to the Kipahulu coast for waterfalls and bamboo forest. Pack warm layers; the summit is far colder than the beach below.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Kenai Fjords National Park

Seward, AK · Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Kenai Fjords is where ice meets the sea, a 600,000-acre park outside Seward, Alaska where the 700-square-mile Harding Icefield feeds roughly 40 glaciers that grind down to the Gulf of Alaska. Exit Glacier is the one spot reachable by road, with trails leading right up to the receding ice or climbing 3,000 feet to an icefield overlook. Most visitors take a summer boat tour to watch tidewater glaciers calve and spot whales, sea otters, and puffins.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Kings Canyon National Park

Fresno, CA · Sierra Nevada

Kings Canyon plunges deeper than the Grand Canyon, with rock walls rising more than 8,000 feet above the roaring South Fork of the Kings River east of Fresno. The park also shelters giant sequoias, including the General Grant, the third-largest tree on Earth and the nation's official Christmas tree. Drive the dramatic Kings Canyon Scenic Byway down to Cedar Grove in summer, then hike the granite high country of the southern Sierra Nevada.

🌋 Volcanoes

Katmai National Park

King Salmon, AK · Alaska Peninsula

Katmai National Park on the Alaska Peninsula is famous for its brown bears, which gather at Brooks Falls each summer to snatch leaping salmon midair, the scene behind the wildly popular Fat Bear Week. The park was born from catastrophe: the 1912 Novarupta eruption, the largest of the 20th century, buried a valley in ash now called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Most visitors arrive by floatplane.

⛰️ Mountains

North Cascades National Park

Newhalem, WA · North Cascades, Washington

North Cascades National Park packs more than 300 glaciers into a wall of jagged, snow-streaked peaks, the most heavily glaciated park in the Lower 48. Pull off Highway 20 at the Diablo Lake overlook, where glacial rock flour turns the water a brilliant milky turquoise, then climb the Cascade Pass trail to alpine meadows beneath Sahale Arm. Summer and early fall offer the clearest access to this rugged corner of Washington near Newhalem.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

White Sands National Park

Alamogordo, NM · Tularosa Basin, Southern New Mexico

White Sands National Park near Alamogordo, New Mexico, protects the world's largest gypsum dune field, 275 square miles of blinding-white sand that stays cool underfoot even in the desert heat. Drive the eight-mile Dunes Drive into the heart of it, then sled the slopes on a waxed disc or hike the marked Alkali Flat Trail across an ancient lakebed. Time a ranger-led sunset stroll, when the dunes glow pink against the San Andres Mountains.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Capitol Reef National Park

Torrey, UT · Southern Utah

Capitol Reef wraps around the Waterpocket Fold, a nearly 100-mile wrinkle in the earth's crust where white Navajo sandstone domes stack above red cliffs near Torrey. Hike the moderate trail to Hickman Bridge, a 133-foot natural span, then drop into the historic Fruita district to pick apples and peaches from pioneer orchards and grab a pie at the Gifford House. Spring blossoms and fall harvest are the sweetest times to come.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Mesa Verde National Park

Cortez, CO · Four Corners, Southwest Colorado

Mesa Verde preserves the cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloans, who tucked entire stone villages into sandstone alcoves above the canyons of southwest Colorado some 800 years ago. The centerpiece is Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America, with roughly 150 rooms and 23 kivas reached on a ranger-led tour by ladder and footpath. Spring and fall bring the best weather and ticketed access near Cortez.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Montrose, CO · Western Slope, Colorado

One of America's deepest, narrowest gorges, Black Canyon of the Gunnison drops as much as 2,722 feet through dark, lichen-stained walls so steep and shadowed that parts of the canyon floor see only minutes of sun a day. Stand at the South Rim's Painted Wall Overlook, where pink pegmatite stripes streak the tallest cliff in Colorado, then drive the South Rim Road between viewpoints near Montrose. Designated a Dark Sky Park, it hosts a summer astronomy festival.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Great Sand Dunes National Park

Mosca, CO · San Luis Valley, Colorado

Great Sand Dunes National Park holds the tallest dunes in North America, a 30-square-mile sea of sand rising up to 750 feet against the jagged Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Mosca, Colorado. Climb the ridgeline to Star Dune or sandboard down the slopes, then cool off in seasonal Medano Creek at the dune base. Spring through early summer is prime, when snowmelt feeds the creek's wide, beachy flow.

🕳️ Caves

Mammoth Cave National Park

Cave City, KY · Kentucky Cave Country

Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system on Earth, with more than 426 mapped miles of passages winding through Kentucky limestone laid down hundreds of millions of years ago. Ranger-led tours drop visitors into a constant 54-degree underworld of vast rotundas, vertical shafts, and tight squeezes like Fat Man's Misery. The Historic Tour traces the same corridors people have walked since the early 1800s, past Broadway and the Bottomless Pit.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Saguaro National Park

Tucson, AZ · Sonoran Desert

Saguaro National Park wraps around Tucson in two desert districts, protecting the country's densest forests of the giant saguaro, the towering candelabra cactus that can climb 50 feet and live two centuries. Walk the paved Cactus Garden Trail at the Red Hills Visitor Center or drive the unpaved Bajada Loop on the west side through thick cactus stands. Visit in cooler winter months, when the park doubles as a certified dark-sky place for stargazing.

⛰️ Mountains

Shenandoah National Park

Front Royal, VA · Blue Ridge Mountains

Just 75 miles from Washington, D.C., Shenandoah strings 105 miles of Skyline Drive along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with more than 70 overlooks gazing out over the Shenandoah Valley and the rolling Virginia Piedmont. Beyond the road, over 500 miles of trails lead to waterfalls, granite summits, and quiet forests rich with deer, black bears, and wildflowers. It is a classic four-season escape, blazing with color in autumn and cool and green when the lowlands swelter in summer.

🏖️ Beaches

Virgin Islands National Park

Cruz Bay, VI · St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands

Virgin Islands National Park covers roughly two-thirds of St. John, wrapping powder-white Caribbean beaches in protected tropical forest just a ferry ride from Cruz Bay. Snorkel the marked underwater trail at Trunk Bay among coral, rays, and sea turtles, or hike the Reef Bay Trail past Taino petroglyphs to sugar-mill ruins. Come early; the small North Shore parking lots fill before noon.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Channel Islands National Park

Ventura, CA · Southern California Coast

Often called the American Galapagos, Channel Islands National Park spans five rugged, undeveloped islands off the Ventura coast, home to roughly 145 species found nowhere else on Earth, including the diminutive island fox. Boat out to Santa Cruz or Anacapa to kayak sea caves and kelp forests, or hike past Anacapa's iconic 40-foot Arch Rock. Reach it by ferry from Ventura Harbor, where the park's mainland visitor center sits on Spinnaker Drive.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

New River Gorge National Park

Fayetteville, WV · Appalachian Mountains, West Virginia

New River Gorge National Park follows one of the oldest rivers on the continent as it carves a deep, forested canyon through southern West Virginia near Fayetteville. The 876-foot New River Gorge Bridge arches over it all, framing the most photographed view in the state, while the river below delivers some of the East's best whitewater, including Class IV+ rapids on the Lower New. Spring and fall bring big water and blazing color to the rim trails.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Dry Tortugas National Park

Key West, FL · Florida Keys

Located almost 70 miles west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico, Dry Tortugas National Park is a remote cluster of seven small islands reachable only by ferry or seaplane. Its centerpiece is Fort Jefferson, one of the nation's largest 19th-century masonry forts, surrounded by crystal-clear waters renowned for snorkeling, coral reefs, and shipwrecks. The park is also a haven for nesting seabirds and migratory birds.

🌋 Volcanoes

Lake Clark National Park

Port Alsworth, AK · Southwest Alaska

Lake Clark is a land of fire and ice where two active volcanoes, Redoubt and Iliamna, rise above 10,000 feet over turquoise glacial lakes and the Chigmit Mountains. The roadless park near Port Alsworth holds one of Alaska's densest brown bear populations, drawn to the coastal sedge flats and the salmon-rich waters that feed Bristol Bay. Fly in to watch bears graze the tidal meadows, paddle the 40-mile namesake lake, or hike the Tanalian trails for sweeping Aleutian Range views.

🌋 Volcanoes

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Mineral, CA · Southern Cascades, Northern California

Lassen Volcanic National Park is a working showcase of every volcano type on earth, crowned by Lassen Peak, one of the largest plug-dome volcanoes in the world, which erupted as recently as 1915. Hike the 2.7-mile trail to Bumpass Hell, the park's largest hydrothermal basin, where boardwalks thread between roaring steam vents, boiling mud pots, and milky turquoise pools. Snow lingers into summer, so the high country near Mineral opens late and stays cool.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Medora, ND · North Dakota Badlands

Theodore Roosevelt National Park protects the rugged North Dakota badlands that shaped a future president, a sweep of striped buttes and prairie above the Little Missouri River near Medora. Drive the South Unit's 36-mile scenic loop and you will likely meet bison, prairie dog towns, and the park's wild horses right along the road. The quieter North Unit runs its byway out to Oxbow Overlook, where the river bends through the wilderness.

⛰️ Mountains

Great Basin National Park

Baker, NV · Eastern Nevada

Great Basin packs an improbable range of worlds into one quiet corner of eastern Nevada near Baker, rising from sagebrush desert to 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak. Take the ranger-led tour through Lehman Caves, a marble cavern threaded with delicate shields and stalactites, then climb to the bristlecone pine grove where some trees have stood nearly 5,000 years. As an International Dark Sky Park, its nights deliver some of the blackest, most star-thick skies in the country.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Petrified Forest National Park

Holbrook, AZ · Painted Desert, Northern Arizona

Petrified Forest is where an ancient forest turned to stone, with fallen logs near Holbrook, Arizona that have weathered into rainbow-banded quartz over 200 million years. Walk the Crystal Forest or Giant Logs trail to see fossilized trunks streaked with jasper and amethyst, then drive north into the candy-striped badlands of the Painted Desert. The roughly 28-mile park road links it all, and fall brings the clearest, mildest days.

⛰️ Mountains

Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Salt Flat, TX · West Texas / Chihuahuan Desert

Guadalupe Mountains National Park rises from the West Texas desert as an exposed fossil reef from the Permian sea, crowned by Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,751 feet. Hike the steep trail to that summit or stand beneath El Capitan, the sheer limestone prow that signals the range from miles away. In late October, McKittrick Canyon blazes with bigtooth maples, a rare burst of fall color in the desert.

⛰️ Mountains

Gates of the Arctic National Park

Bettles, AK · Brooks Range, Interior Alaska

Gates of the Arctic is the least-visited and most uncompromising park in the system, 8.5 million roadless acres straddling the Brooks Range entirely above the Arctic Circle near Bettles, Alaska. There are no trails, no campgrounds, and no cell service, so you bush-plane in and route your own way past granite spires like the Arrigetch Peaks and along wild rivers such as the Alatna. Come in summer, when the Western Arctic caribou herd, some 225,000 strong, threads through the valleys.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Isle Royale National Park

Houghton, MI · Lake Superior, Upper Peninsula

Isle Royale National Park is a remote, roadless archipelago in far western Lake Superior, reachable only by ferry or seaplane and almost entirely designated wilderness. Backpackers trace ridgeline trails like the Greenstone past inland lakes while paddlers thread the rocky coves of Rock Harbor. The island anchors the longest-running predator-prey study on Earth, tracking its wolves and moose since 1958.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Voyageurs National Park

International Falls, MN · Northern Minnesota

Voyageurs is a watery wilderness on the Minnesota-Canada border near International Falls, where four big lakes and countless islands are reached almost entirely by boat. Rent a houseboat or canoe to explore Rainy and Kabetogama Lakes, fish for walleye, and camp on a quiet shoreline once paddled by fur-trade voyageurs. As a certified Dark Sky park, it delivers brilliant stargazing, and winter visitors stand a real chance at the northern lights.

🕳️ Caves

Wind Cave National Park

Hot Springs, SD · Black Hills

Wind Cave protects one of the world's longest and most complex caves beneath the South Dakota prairie, named for the wind that whistles through its natural entrance as pressure shifts. Below ground it holds the planet's largest concentration of rare boxwork, a honeycomb of thin calcite fins. Above, a mixed-grass prairie shelters bison, elk, and prairie dogs at the edge of the Black Hills.

🌲 Forests

Congaree National Park

Hopkins, SC · Congaree River floodplain, central South Carolina

Congaree National Park protects the largest tract of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the country, a floodplain of towering bald cypress and tupelo near Hopkins, South Carolina. Walk the 2.6-mile elevated Boardwalk Loop past cypress knees and trees over 500 years old, home to some of the tallest trees in the eastern U.S. For two weeks in late spring, the park's synchronous fireflies flash in unison, one of only a few places in North America where that happens.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Pinnacles National Park

Soledad, CA · Gabilan Range, Central California Coast

Pinnacles rises from the chaparral hills east of Soledad, California, a maze of spires and crags left by an ancient volcano that the San Andreas Fault dragged nearly 200 miles north. Scramble the High Peaks trail past towering rock and squeeze through the boulder-jammed Bear Gulch and Balconies talus caves. Look up and you may spot a California condor, one of the rare birds reintroduced here, riding the thermals on a wingspan near 10 feet.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Biscayne National Park

Homestead, FL · The Everglades

Just south of Miami, Biscayne is a national park you mostly explore by boat: about 95 percent of it is water, protecting the northern reaches of the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States. Snorkel or dive the Maritime Heritage Trail, a chain of six shipwrecks spanning nearly a century, or paddle the mangrove shoreline. Boca Chita Key, with its 1930s ornamental lighthouse, makes the classic day trip across the turquoise bay.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Kobuk Valley National Park

Kotzebue, AK · Northwest Arctic Alaska

One of the least-visited parks in the country, Kobuk Valley sits above the Arctic Circle with no roads, trails, or services, reachable only by bush plane or boat from Kotzebue. Its strangest feature is the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, 25 square miles of rolling sand left by Ice Age glaciers, the largest active dune field in the Arctic. Each fall, hundreds of thousands of caribou ford the Kobuk River at Onion Portage in one of North America's great migrations.

🌺 Gardens & wildlife

National Park of American Samoa

Pago Pago, AS · Tutuila, American Samoa (South Pacific)

The National Park of American Samoa is the only U.S. national park south of the equator, spread across three volcanic islands of tropical rainforest, sea cliffs, and coral reef. Snorkel the warm lagoon off Ofu Beach, where reefs shelter hundreds of fish and coral species, or hike Tutuila's Mount Alava trail above Pago Pago Harbor. A homestay program lets visitors stay with Samoan families and share in fa'a Samoa, the Samoan way of life.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Peninsula, OH · Northeast Ohio

Ohio's only national park, Cuyahoga Valley follows the winding Cuyahoga River between Cleveland and Akron, threading waterfalls, wetlands, and old canal towns into one free-to-enter green corridor. Its centerpiece is 65-foot Brandywine Falls, reached by a short boardwalk near Peninsula, while the flat Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail traces the route mules once walked towing canal boats. Ride the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad to hop between trailheads without driving.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Indiana Dunes National Park

Porter, IN · Northwest Indiana, Lake Michigan shore

Indiana Dunes National Park packs roughly 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and 15,000 acres of dunes, marsh, prairie, and woods into the industrial corner of Northwest Indiana. Climb the shifting sand of Mount Baldy, a 120-foot living dune that creeps inland a few feet each year, for views across the water to the distant Chicago skyline. One of the most biodiverse parks in the system, it rewards birders and beachgoers alike.

🌋 Volcanoes

Hot Springs National Park

Hot Springs, AR · Ouachita Mountains

Hot Springs National Park threads through the city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, where 47 thermal springs send roughly 700,000 gallons of 143-degree water flowing up through the Ouachita Mountains each day. Stroll Bathhouse Row, the country's largest collection of early 20th-century bathhouses, and soak the old-fashioned way inside the marble-and-tile Buckstaff or Quapaw. Protected since 1832, it predates Yellowstone as a federal reservation.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Gateway Arch National Park

St. Louis, MO · Gateway to the West, Missouri

Gateway Arch is the most unusual national park in the country, a single 630-foot stainless-steel curve on the St. Louis riverfront that doubles as the nation's tallest monument. Ride the tram up inside one leg to an observation deck for a long look over the Mississippi River and the city, then walk the riverside grounds and the museum tracing America's westward expansion. At about 91 acres it is the smallest national park, easily seen in a day.