Complete National Parks List: Every Park in the US (2026)

There are 63 national parks in the United States. They sit inside a much larger National Park System, 433 units covering more than 85 million acres, but only 63 carry the capital-letters National Park designation. The parks themselves are spread across 30 states and 2 US territories. This page lists every one of them, by state, with 2025 visitation, acreage, entrance fees, and a link to our full guide for each park.

We’re the Pattiz brothers. We’ve spent the past decade filming in the national parks (we’ve been to 50 of the 63 so far), and we keep this list checked against the National Park Service’s own roster. Last full update June 2026, using the 2025 visitation numbers NPS released in March.

The 433 figure moves more than folks expect. Five units joined the system in 2024 alone. Amache National Historic Site in Colorado, Blackwell School National Historic Site in Texas, Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument in Illinois, Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania, and Frances Perkins National Monument in Maine, the 433rd. The 63 number has held since New River Gorge got the upgrade in 2020. A bill to make Ocmulgee Mounds in Georgia the 64th park (S. 1131) got a Senate subcommittee hearing on December 9, 2025 and is awaiting a committee vote; the prior Congress’s version cleared committee in 2024 and died when that Congress ended. We track all of this in our running count of every NPS unit.

All 63 National Parks at a Glance

One row per park, alphabetical. Visits are full calendar-year 2025 recreation visits straight from the NPS Stats API, not the 2023 numbers most lists are still running. Click any park for our complete guide.

National Park	State(s)	Est.	2025 Visits	Acres	Fee
Acadia	Maine	1919	4,079,318	49,071	$35
American Samoa	American Samoa	1988	43,258	8,256	Free
Arches	Utah	1971	1,511,740	76,678	$30
Badlands	South Dakota	1978	1,139,361	242,755	$30
Big Bend	Texas	1944	568,104	801,163	$30
Biscayne	Florida	1980	486,567	172,971	Free
Black Canyon of the Gunnison	Colorado	1999	250,086	30,779	$30
Bryce Canyon	Utah	1928	1,967,367	35,835	$35
Canyonlands	Utah	1964	796,057	337,597	$30
Capitol Reef	Utah	1971	1,388,476	241,904	$20
Carlsbad Caverns	New Mexico	1930	410,778	46,766	$15*
Channel Islands	California	1980	227,186	249,561	Free
Congaree	South Carolina	2003	287,833	26,692	Free
Crater Lake	Oregon	1902	632,242	183,224	$30
Cuyahoga Valley	Ohio	2000	3,025,325	32,571	Free
Death Valley	California, Nevada	1994	1,320,134	3,408,395	$30
Denali	Alaska	1917	543,300	4,740,911	$15*
Dry Tortugas	Florida	1992	89,355	64,701	$15*
Everglades	Florida	1947	778,198	1,508,938	$35
Gates of the Arctic	Alaska	1980	14,923	7,523,897	Free
Gateway Arch	Missouri	2018	2,209,028	91	Free
Glacier	Montana	1910	3,136,557	1,013,126	$35
Glacier Bay	Alaska	1980	740,044	3,223,383	Free
Grand Canyon	Arizona	1919	4,430,653	1,201,647	$35
Grand Teton	Wyoming	1929	3,800,648	310,044	$35
Great Basin	Nevada	1986	161,210	77,180	Free
Great Sand Dunes	Colorado	2004	432,498	107,345	$25
Great Smoky Mountains	Tennessee, North Carolina	1934	11,527,939	522,426	Free
Guadalupe Mountains	Texas	1972	206,423	86,367	$10*
Haleakala	Hawaii	1916	853,711	33,488	$30
Hawaii Volcanoes	Hawaii	1916	1,877,854	344,812	$30
Hot Springs	Arkansas	1921	2,494,611	5,554	Free
Indiana Dunes	Indiana	2019	2,629,497	15,349	$25
Isle Royale	Michigan	1940	29,091	571,790	$7*
Joshua Tree	California	1994	2,932,644	795,155	$30
Katmai	Alaska	1980	34,479	3,674,529	Free
Kenai Fjords	Alaska	1980	425,369	669,650	Free
Kings Canyon	California	1940	779,791	461,901	$35
Kobuk Valley	Alaska	1980	7,786	1,750,716	Free
Lake Clark	Alaska	1980	19,778	2,619,816	Free
Lassen Volcanic	California	1916	504,777	106,589	$30
Mammoth Cave	Kentucky	1941	660,734	52,830	Free
Mesa Verde	Colorado	1906	463,130	52,485	$30
Mount Rainier	Washington	1899	1,635,342	236,381	$30
New River Gorge	West Virginia	2020	1,958,440	7,021	Free
North Cascades	Washington	1968	46,925	504,780	Free
Olympic	Washington	1938	3,584,187	922,649	$30
Petrified Forest	Arizona	1962	315,951	221,390	$25
Pinnacles	California	2013	343,208	26,685	$30
Redwood	California	1968	1,202,480	138,999	Free
Rocky Mountain	Colorado	1915	4,171,431	265,847	$35
Saguaro	Arizona	1994	847,749	92,876	$25
Sequoia	California	1890	1,378,337	404,062	$35
Shenandoah	Virginia	1935	1,682,152	200,445	$30
Theodore Roosevelt	North Dakota	1978	729,893	70,446	$30
Virgin Islands	US Virgin Islands	1956	471,074	15,052	Free
Voyageurs	Minnesota	1975	206,326	218,222	Free
White Sands	New Mexico	2019	659,742	146,344	$25
Wind Cave	South Dakota	1903	606,258	33,970	Free
Wrangell-St. Elias	Alaska	1980	108,840	8,323,146	Free
Yellowstone	Wyoming, Montana, Idaho	1872	4,762,988	2,219,790	$35
Yosemite	California	1890	4,278,413	761,747	$35
Zion	Utah	1919	4,984,525	147,242	$35

A few things the table makes obvious. Wrangell-St. Elias tops the column at 8,323,146 acres for the park alone; add its preserve and the full unit runs 13,175,799 acres, which is why you’ll see both numbers floating around. Gateway Arch is the smallest at 91 acres, a rounding error by Alaska standards. NPS itself calls the park 91 acres; the federal acreage report carries 192.83 gross acres for the unit once the Old Courthouse grounds and street easements are counted. Great Smoky Mountains ran away with 2025 again at 11,527,939 visits, more than double second-place Zion, while Kobuk Valley saw 7,786 folks all year. If you want the parks sorted by acreage with the full methodology, that’s our national parks by size post. If you want them ranked by which ones are actually worth your vacation days, we scored all 63 in our national park rankings.

Free Printable National Parks Checklist

Want the printable checklist PDF? It’s free for newsletter folks. Subscribe to our weekly parks dispatch using the signup box at the bottom of this page, then reply to the welcome note that lands in your inbox and ask for the checklist. We send the PDF back personally, usually the same day. No paywall, no $7 a month, no catch. Unsubscribe whenever you want and the PDF is still yours.

If you’d rather have something for the wall, we also make a national parks checklist poster and a framed 24×36 parks map from our own photography. Those cost money. The PDF does not.

List of National Parks by State

Every state and territory with a national park, alphabetical, plus the other NPS sites worth knowing while you’re there. Parks that cross state lines (Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mountains, Death Valley) appear under each state they touch.

Alaska (8 parks)

No state comes close. Alaska holds eight national parks and more than half of all national park acreage in the system.

• Denali, home of North America’s tallest peak at 20,310 feet, and the only Alaska park that charges an entrance fee
• Gates of the Arctic, entirely above the Arctic Circle with no roads and no trails
• Glacier Bay, 3.2 million acres of tidewater glaciers that most folks see from a cruise ship deck
• Katmai, where the brown bears of Brooks Falls live
• Kenai Fjords, Exit Glacier, the Harding Icefield, and the most reachable of the wild Alaska parks
• Kobuk Valley, arctic sand dunes and caribou crossings, and the least visited park in America at 7,786 visits in 2025
• Lake Clark, no roads in or out, floatplane required
• Wrangell-St. Elias, the largest national park in the country, 8.3 million acres of park plus another 4.8 million in its preserve

Beyond the parks, Alaska has Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway and Sitka National Historical Park. Our full Alaska national parks guide covers how to actually reach all eight.

American Samoa (1 park)

The National Park of American Samoa is the only US national park south of the equator, spread across three volcanic islands about 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii. It logged 43,258 visits in 2025, and the folks who make it out there have earned the bragging rights.

Arizona (3 parks)

• Grand Canyon, 277 river miles long and a mile deep, with 4,430,653 visits in 2025
• Petrified Forest, a 225-million-year-old fossilized landscape on old Route 66
• Saguaro, two districts of giant cactus bookending Tucson

Arizona’s national monument roster runs deeper than almost any state’s, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Canyon de Chelly add two more heavyweights. We list all of them in our Arizona national parks guide.

Arkansas (1 park)

Hot Springs is the smallest park outside Gateway Arch at 5,554 acres, and the federal government has protected it since 1832, four decades before Yellowstone. The state’s other heavyweight is Buffalo National River, America’s first national river. More in our Arkansas national parks guide.

California (9 parks)

California has more national parks than any other state.

• Channel Islands, five islands off the Ventura coast, boat access only
• Death Valley, shared with Nevada, the hottest place on Earth and the largest park in the lower 48 at 3.4 million acres
• Joshua Tree, where the Mojave and Colorado deserts meet
• Kings Canyon, granite canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon and the General Grant Tree
• Lassen Volcanic, all four types of volcano in one park
• Pinnacles, talus caves and California condors
• Redwood, the tallest trees on the planet
• Sequoia, home of General Sherman, the largest tree on Earth by volume
• Yosemite, the valley that started the whole preservation idea, 4,278,413 visits in 2025

Add Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Point Reyes National Seashore, Lava Beds, and Devils Postpile, and California’s NPS roster runs deeper than most countries’. Full rundown in our California national parks guide.

Colorado (4 parks)

• Black Canyon of the Gunnison, with the 2,250-foot Painted Wall, Colorado’s tallest cliff
• Great Sand Dunes, the tallest dunes in North America, rising about 750 feet
• Mesa Verde, ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings, protected since 1906
• Rocky Mountain, 4,171,431 visits in 2025 and a timed-entry system to manage them

Colorado also picked up one of the system’s newest units, Amache National Historic Site, a WWII Japanese American incarceration site added in 2024. See our Colorado national parks guide.

Florida (3 parks)

• Biscayne, 95 percent water, just south of Miami
• Dry Tortugas, Fort Jefferson on a remote island 70 miles past Key West, boat or seaplane only
• Everglades, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States

Big Cypress National Preserve and Canaveral National Seashore round out the state. Details in our Florida national parks guide.

Hawaii (2 parks)

• Haleakala, sunrise above the clouds from a 10,023-foot volcano on Maui
• Hawaii Volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island, both established in 1916

Pearl Harbor National Memorial is the state’s other essential NPS stop. More in our Hawaii national parks guide.

Idaho (1 park, sort of)

A small slice of Yellowstone crosses into Idaho, which counts, and the state will take it. Idaho’s headline NPS site is really Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, a volcanic landscape big enough to swallow several actual parks. See our Idaho national parks guide.

Indiana (1 park)

Indiana Dunes stretches along 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and pulled 2,629,497 visits in 2025, more than Glacier Bay, Big Bend, and Crater Lake combined. Our Indiana national parks guide has the rest of the state’s sites.

Kentucky (1 park)

Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system on Earth, with more than 400 mapped miles and counting. Entry to the park is free; the cave tours are not. Kentucky also has Abraham Lincoln Birthplace and Cumberland Gap. More in our Kentucky national parks guide.

Maine (1 park)

Acadia set an all-time record with 4,079,318 visits in 2025. From October through early March, Cadillac Mountain catches the first sunrise in the United States. Maine also gained Frances Perkins National Monument in December 2024, the 433rd unit in the system. Our Maine national parks guide covers both, plus Katahdin Woods and Waters.

Michigan (1 park)

Isle Royale sits in Lake Superior, reachable only by boat or seaplane, and it’s the only national park that closes completely for winter. Folks who go tend to go back; it has one of the highest repeat-visit rates in the system. Michigan’s lakeshores, Pictured Rocks and Sleeping Bear Dunes, are in our Michigan national parks guide.

Minnesota (1 park)

Voyageurs is a water park in the original sense, a maze of lakes and islands along the Canadian border best explored by boat. Grand Portage National Monument and the Mississippi River corridor are in our Minnesota national parks guide.

Missouri (1 park)

Gateway Arch is the smallest national park at 91 acres and the most urban, sitting on the St. Louis riverfront. Whether a 630-foot stainless steel monument is really a “national park” is a fight we cover in our rankings. Ozark National Scenic Riverways is the state’s wilder side; see our Missouri national parks guide.

Montana (2 parks)

• Glacier, Going-to-the-Sun Road and 3,136,557 visits in 2025
• Yellowstone, three of the park’s five entrances are in Montana

Little Bighorn Battlefield and Bighorn Canyon are the other Montana sites worth a detour. Full list in our Montana national parks guide.

Nevada (2 parks)

• Great Basin, Wheeler Peak, ancient bristlecone pines, and Lehman Caves, all without an entrance fee
• Death Valley, shared with California, including the Nevada-side ghost town country

Lake Mead National Recreation Area and Tule Springs Fossil Beds sit minutes from Las Vegas. See our Nevada national parks guide.

New Mexico (2 parks)

• Carlsbad Caverns, an underground room big enough to hold several football fields
• White Sands, the world’s largest gypsum dunefield, a park since 2019

Bandelier and Chaco Culture cover a thousand years of human history in between. Our New Mexico national parks guide has the full list.

North Carolina (1 park)

North Carolina shares Great Smoky Mountains with Tennessee, and the NC side (Oconaluftee, Cataloochee, Clingmans Dome) is the quieter half of America’s most visited park. The Blue Ridge Parkway and Cape Hatteras National Seashore are giants in their own right. See our North Carolina national parks guide.

North Dakota (1 park)

Theodore Roosevelt protects the badlands where the future president ranched in the 1880s, wild horses included. It’s the only national park named for a person. More in our North Dakota national parks guide.

Ohio (1 park)

Cuyahoga Valley runs between Cleveland and Akron and drew 3,025,325 visits in 2025, free of charge. Ohio’s Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023. Full roster in our Ohio national parks guide.

Oregon (1 park)

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States at 1,943 feet, filling a collapsed volcano with snowmelt and rain. Oregon Caves and John Day Fossil Beds are in our Oregon national parks guide.

South Carolina (1 park)

Congaree holds the largest intact old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the Southeast, with some of the tallest trees east of the Mississippi. Fort Sumter and the Reconstruction Era sites are in our South Carolina national parks guide.

South Dakota (2 parks)

• Badlands, striped rock formations and one of the country’s richest fossil beds
• Wind Cave, one of the world’s longest caves, famous for boxwork formations, with free entry and bison up top

Mount Rushmore, Jewel Cave, and Minuteman Missile are all within an hour or two. Our South Dakota national parks guide maps the loop.

Tennessee (1 park)

Great Smoky Mountains, shared with North Carolina, was the most visited national park in 2025 at 11,527,939 visits. Entry is free, though parking tags now run $5 a day. Big South Fork and the Tennessee end of the Natchez Trace are in our Tennessee national parks guide.

Texas (2 parks)

• Big Bend, 801,163 acres along the Rio Grande with some of the darkest night skies of any park
• Guadalupe Mountains, home of Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,751 feet

Texas also added Blackwell School National Historic Site in Marfa to the system in 2024. San Antonio Missions and Padre Island round out our Texas national parks guide.

US Virgin Islands (1 park)

Virgin Islands National Park covers roughly 60 percent of St. John, including Trunk Bay and its underwater snorkel trail. Buck Island Reef and Christiansted on St. Croix are the territory’s other NPS sites.

Utah (5 parks)

The Mighty 5, all within a day’s drive of each other.

• Arches, more than 2,000 documented stone arches, timed entry dropped for 2026
• Bryce Canyon, the largest concentration of hoodoos on Earth
• Canyonlands, Utah’s largest park, split into four districts by the Green and Colorado rivers
• Capitol Reef, a 100-mile wrinkle in the Earth’s crust with orchards you can pick in season
• Zion, the second most visited park in America in 2025 at 4,984,525

Our Utah national parks guide covers all five plus the monuments in between, and our Utah road trip itinerary strings them together.

Virginia (1 park)

Shenandoah is built around Skyline Drive, 105 miles of Blue Ridge crest within a couple hours of Washington DC. Virginia’s deep bench of historical parks, Colonial to Appomattox, is in our Virginia national parks guide.

Washington (3 parks)

• Mount Rainier, a 14,410-foot glaciated volcano ringed by wildflower meadows
• North Cascades, more than 300 glaciers and just 46,925 visits in 2025, fewer than several Alaska parks
• Olympic, rainforest, alpine ridge, and wilderness coast in a single park, 3,584,187 visits in 2025

All three sit within a few hours of Seattle. Our Washington national parks guide covers the trio.

West Virginia (1 park)

New River Gorge became the 63rd national park in 2020 and drew 1,958,440 visits in 2025, more than Arches. Harpers Ferry and Gauley River are in our West Virginia national parks guide.

Wyoming (2 parks)

• Grand Teton, the most photogenic mountain range in America, 3,800,648 visits in 2025
• Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, established 1872, with most of its 2.2 million acres in Wyoming

The two parks connect via the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, and Devils Tower, the country’s first national monument, anchors the state’s northeast corner. See our Wyoming national parks guide.

States Without a National Park

Twenty states have no national park, but every one of them has National Park Service sites, and a few of those sites would embarrass some actual parks. The standout in each, with our full state guide linked.

• Alabama, Little River Canyon National Preserve, a 600-foot-deep canyon on top of a mountain
• Connecticut, Weir Farm National Historical Park, the system’s park for American painting
• Delaware, First State National Historical Park, which finally got Delaware on the NPS map in 2013
• Georgia, Cumberland Island National Seashore, wild horses on an undeveloped barrier island. Watch this space; Ocmulgee Mounds may yet become park number 64
• Illinois, Pullman National Historical Park, plus the new Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument, added in 2024
• Iowa, Effigy Mounds National Monument, sacred mounds above the Mississippi
• Kansas, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, the last big remnant of an ecosystem that once covered 170 million acres
• Louisiana, Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, swamp and jazz in one unit
• Maryland, Assateague Island National Seashore, the one with the wild ponies on the beach
• Massachusetts, Cape Cod National Seashore, 40 miles of Atlantic beach
• Mississippi, Vicksburg National Military Park and the Natchez Trace Parkway
• Nebraska, Scotts Bluff National Monument, the Oregon Trail’s great landmark
• New Hampshire, Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, the sculptor’s studio in the hills
• New Jersey, Paterson Great Falls and a share of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area
• New York, the Statue of Liberty, which outdraws most national parks without being one
• Oklahoma, Chickasaw National Recreation Area, springs and swimming holes
• Pennsylvania, Independence Hall and Gettysburg, plus the new Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument, added in 2024
• Rhode Island, Roger Williams National Memorial and the Blackstone River Valley
• Vermont, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, the birthplace of American conservation thinking
• Wisconsin, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and its sea caves

National Park Fee-Free Days in 2026

The National Park Service waives entrance fees on 10 days in 2026. Big change this year, though. Starting in 2026, fee-free days apply to US citizens and residents only. Everyone else pays the normal entrance fee, plus the new nonresident surcharge where it applies.

• February 16, Presidents Day
• May 25, Memorial Day
• June 14, Flag Day
• July 3, 4, and 5, Independence Day weekend
• August 25, the National Park Service’s 110th birthday
• September 17, Constitution Day
• October 27, Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday
• November 11, Veterans Day

Two fine-print items worth knowing. First, only the entrance fee is waived; timed-entry reservations, camping, and tour fees still apply, and the fee-free crowds are real. Second, as of January 1, 2026, folks visiting from outside the US pay a $100 per person surcharge at 11 of the busiest parks (Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion), or they can buy the $250 nonresident annual pass instead. We break down every park that requires advance booking in our 2026 national park reservations guide, and the Zion changes specifically in our Zion fee and permit explainer.

List of National Parks FAQ

How many national parks are there?

There are 63 national parks among the 433 units of the National Park System. The other 370 units carry designations like national monument, national historical park, national seashore, and national recreation area. Our full breakdown of every designation keeps the running tally.

Which state has the most national parks?

California, with nine. Alaska has eight, Utah five, and Colorado four. Twenty states have none.

What is the largest national park?

Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska, at 13,175,799 acres counting its preserve, about 8.3 million for the park portion alone. Either way it’s bigger than nine US states. The smallest is Gateway Arch at 91 acres. Full table in our parks by size post.

What was the most visited national park in 2025?

Great Smoky Mountains, with 11,527,939 recreation visits, more than double any other park. Zion was second at 4,984,525. The least visited was Kobuk Valley in Alaska at 7,786.

What is the newest national park?

New River Gorge in West Virginia, designated in December 2020. White Sands (2019), Indiana Dunes (2019), and Gateway Arch (2018) came just before it. A bill to make Ocmulgee Mounds in Georgia the 64th park (S. 1131) got a Senate subcommittee hearing on December 9, 2025 and is awaiting a committee vote; the prior Congress’s version died without a floor vote.

What is the oldest national park?

Yellowstone, established March 1, 1872, the first national park in the world. Sequoia and Yosemite followed in 1890.

Do all national parks charge an entrance fee?

No. Twenty-three of the 63 parks are free to enter, including every Alaska park except Denali. The most any park charges is $35 per vehicle, and the $80 America the Beautiful annual pass covers all of them. Nonresidents pay an additional $100 surcharge at 11 popular parks as of 2026.

Why Listen to Us About the National Parks

More Than Just Parks started when we set out to film the national parks, all of them, with cinema cameras instead of phones. A decade later we’ve been to 50 of the 63, our park films have been featured by outlets from the Weather Channel to ABC News, and we maintain this list against the NPS roster and the annual visitation release because we got tired of seeing ranking sites run three-year-old numbers. Every figure on this page is dated and sourced, and when something changes (a new unit, a new fee, a 64th park) we update it.

More National Parks Resources

• The interactive national parks map, all 63 parks plus 500+ NPS sites
• All 63 national parks ranked, scored on a 50-point scale
• National parks by size, every park sorted by acreage
• How many national parks are there?, every designation counted
• List of US national monuments, by state with managing agency
• Which parks require reservations in 2026, the full system-by-system guide