41 facts across the U.S.
Little River Canyon National Preserve in northeast Alabama is carved by one of the longest mountaintop rivers in the Uni…
Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska is the largest national park in the United States at 13.2 millio…
The Grand Canyon, located in Northern Arizona, is one of the first National Parks in the United States and is one of the…
47 hot springs flow from the southwestern slope of Hot Springs Mountain in Arkansas with an average temperature of 143 d…
Yosemite Falls in California's Yosemite National Park plunges 2,425 feet in three cascades, making it the tallest waterf…
The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Central Colorado is home to some of the most exceptionally preserved fos…
Everglades National Park is the only place on Earth where American alligators and American crocodiles live side by side.…
Dry Tortugas National Park sits 70 miles west of Key West and can only be reached by boat or seaplane. Its centerpiece,…
Biscayne National Park, just outside Miami, is 95% water, protecting a living coral reef, mangrove shorelines, and part…
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park, in present-day Macon, Georgia, has evidence of 17,000 years of continuous huma…
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, established in 1916, contains Kīlauea and Mauna Loa — two of the world's most active vol…
The Craters of the Moon National Monument in central Idaho covers 618,000 acres of lava fields so surreal that NASA sele…
The Indiana Dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan have been described as the birthplace of ecology. Starting i…
Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeastern Iowa preserves more than 200 prehistoric earthen mounds built by Native…
Mammoth Cave in central Kentucky is the longest known cave system in the world, with over 400 miles of explored passages…
Maine's Acadia National Park, established in 1919, was the first national park east of the Mississippi River. Its Cadill…
Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts was established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy — a Cape Cod native. It…
The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on the northwestern shore of Michigan's Lower Peninsula features sand dunes r…
Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota is one of the few national parks best experienced on the water — roughly 4…
Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis is the smallest national park in the United States at just 192 acres. The stainl…
Montana has the largest population of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states, with roughly 1,000 to 1,500 bears living pri…
Glacier National Park in Montana has about 25 named glaciers remaining, down from an estimated 150 when the park was est…
Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice, Nebraska, commemorates the Homestead Act of 1862 — a law that transferre…
Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada shelters Great Basin bristlecone pines — among the longest-lived organisms o…
Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southeastern New Mexico contains the largest natural cave chamber in North America. Th…
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, straddling the North Carolina-Tennessee border, is the most visited national pa…
Theodore Roosevelt arrived in the Dakota Territory in September 1883 as a young, sickly New York politician looking to h…
Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park follows 33,000 acres of the Cuyahoga River — the same river whose pollution-fueled…
Oklahoma's Chickasaw National Recreation Area was originally Platt National Park — the smallest national park ever creat…
Crater Lake in southern Oregon is the deepest lake in the United States at 1,943 feet and the ninth deepest in the world…
Congaree National Park in South Carolina protects the largest intact expanse of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest re…
The Badlands of South Dakota form one of the richest fossil beds in the world, and the sedimentary layers exposed by ero…
The Great Smoky Mountains straddling the Tennessee-North Carolina border are named for the natural blue haze that perpet…
Big Bend National Park in the remote trans-Pecos region of southwest Texas contains some of the darkest night skies in t…
Utah contains five national parks within a relatively compact area of the Colorado Plateau: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol…
Shenandoah National Park, stretching along the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Virginia, was created during the 1930s t…
The temperate rainforests of Washington's Olympic Peninsula receive between 12 and 14 feet of rainfall per year, making…
New River Gorge became the United States' 63rd national park in December 2020. Despite the name, the New River is one of…
Wisconsin's Apostle Islands National Lakeshore protects 21 islands on Lake Superior. In rare, cold-enough winters, the m…
Yellowstone National Park, established by Congress in 1872 as the world's first national park, sits atop one of the larg…
Devils Tower in the Black Hills of northeastern Wyoming was the first U.S. National Monument, designated by President Th…