144 Fun Facts About National Park

Which U.S. state contains the highest number of national parks?

California leads with nine national parks, followed by Alaska with eight, making it the state with the most national parks.

Which reserve, set aside in 1872, is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world?

Yellowstone was created by an Act of Congress on 1 March 1872, set aside as a 'public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people', words later carved on its Roosevelt Arch.

Banff, proclaimed in 1885, was the first national park of which country?

Canada's Banff National Park began in 1885 as the Banff Hot Springs Reserve, a 26-square-kilometre tract around the Cave and Basin springs, after rival claims to the springs.

More than 1.5 million of which animal make up the Serengeti's great migration?

About 1.5 million blue wildebeest make the circular Serengeti–Masai Mara migration each year, joined by some 250,000 zebra and hundreds of thousands of Thomson's gazelle.

Kruger, spanning Limpopo and Mpumalanga, became the first national park of which country in 1926?

Kruger became South Africa's first national park under the National Parks Act of 1926; parts of the area had been protected by Paul Kruger's Transvaal government from 1898.

The world's largest national park, about 972,000 square kilometres, is in the north-east of which island?

Northeast Greenland National Park, established in 1974 and expanded in 1988, covers about 972,000 square kilometres, larger than all but around thirty countries.

The Galapagos Islands are protected as the first national park of which country?

Galápagos National Park, Ecuador's first, was declared in 1959 and began operating in 1968; it was among the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978.

Indonesia founded a Lesser Sunda national park in 1980 to protect which reptile?

Komodo National Park was established in 1980 to protect the Komodo dragon, first described by science in 1912 after Dutch reports of giant reptiles on the island.

Tongariro, whose peaks were conveyed to the Crown in 1887, is the oldest national park in which country?

Tongariro was New Zealand's first national park: Ngāti Tūwharetoa chief Te Heuheu Tūkino IV gifted the sacred peaks to the Crown in 1887, and the Tongariro National Park Act passed in 1894.

Which country is home to the UNESCO-listed Plitvice Lakes national park?

Plitvice Lakes, Croatia's oldest and largest national park, was founded in 1949 and added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1979 for its sixteen terraced lakes.

The first area to use 'national park' in its founding legislation was created in 1875 where in Michigan?

Mackinac later lost its national park status and became a Michigan state park.

Australia's first national park, proclaimed near Sydney in 1879, got what name in 1955?

It came seven years after Yellowstone and eleven before Yosemite; the 'Royal' was added after Queen Elizabeth II's 1954 visit.

Which country created Europe's first national parks, a set of nine, in 1909?

Sweden created Europe's first national parks in 1909, nine at once including Abisko and Sarek; Switzerland followed with the Swiss National Park in 1914.

Africa's first national park, created in 1925 by King Albert I, is in which modern country?

Albert National Park, created in the Belgian Congo in 1925 by King Albert I, lies in today's DR Congo and was renamed Virunga National Park in 1969.

The United Kingdom's first national park, designated in 1951, was which?

The Peak District was designated on 17 April 1951, the first under the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act; the Lake District followed in May and Snowdonia in October.

Which English poet called the Lake District a 'sort of national property' in 1810?

William Wordsworth wrote in his 1810 Guide to the Lakes that the Lake District was 'a sort of national property', six decades before Yellowstone became the first national park.

Which US president signed the 1864 act ceding Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to California?

Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant Act on 30 June 1864, giving Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to California; doubts about state management later pushed Yellowstone under federal control.

Who is known as the 'Father of the National Parks' for his work in Yosemite?

John Muir, the Scottish-born naturalist who co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892, is called the 'Father of the National Parks' for his campaign that made Yosemite a national park in 1890.

Argentina's first national park, created in 1934 through the initiative of Francisco Moreno, is which?

Nahuel Huapi, around the Patagonian lake of that name, grew from land Francisco Moreno donated in 1903 and became Argentina's first national park in 1934.

As of 2025, how many US National Park Service units were designated 'National Park'?

Sixty-three of the roughly 430 National Park Service units carried the 'National Park' title in 2025, New River Gorge (2020) being the 63rd; the rest are monuments, seashores, historic sites and battlefields.

The word Yosemite comes from a Miwok term meaning what?

Yosemite derives from the Miwok yohhe'meti, 'they are killers', the Miwok name for the Ahwahneechee people of the valley, which they themselves called Ahwahnee, 'big mouth'.

Which president signed the act making the Grand Canyon a national park in 1919?

Roosevelt had made it a game preserve in 1906 and a national monument in 1908 but never got the park bill through.

Kruger National Park grew out of which game reserve, established in 1898?

The Sabie Game Reserve, proclaimed in 1898, was merged with the Shingwedzi reserve to form Kruger in 1926; James Stevenson-Hamilton, Sabie's warden from 1902, became Kruger's first warden.

Which Fiordland bird, presumed extinct, was rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains in 1948?

The South Island takahē, unrecorded since 1898, was rediscovered by Geoffrey Orbell near Lake Te Anau in November 1948; the Murchison Mountains of Fiordland National Park became its sanctuary.

Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal, established in 1976, tops out at the summit of which mountain?

Sagarmatha is the Nepali name for Mount Everest; the park, created in 1976 and World Heritage-listed in 1979, climbs from 2,845 m at Monjo to the 8,848 m summit.

Which country's park lies directly across the river from Argentina's Iguazú National Park?

The Brazilian side is Iguaçu National Park, spelled the Portuguese way.

Chitwan, Nepal's first national park, was created mainly to save which animal?

Nepal's first conservation law, in 1957, was likewise aimed at protecting rhinos and their habitat.

Which Wales-sized Australian park is second only to Munga-Thirri–Simpson Desert in area?

Kakadu in the Northern Territory covers about 19,800 square kilometres, roughly the size of Wales; Aboriginal traditional owners, on the land for some 60,000 years, manage it jointly with Parks Australia.

Which uranium mine, closed in January 2021, sits inside a Northern Territory national park?

The Ranger uranium mine, enclosed by Kakadu National Park near Jabiru, stopped processing ore in January 2021 after forty years; Olympic Dam and Beverley are in South Australia.

Under what name did President Taft protect the future Zion National Park as a monument in 1909?

Taft proclaimed Mukuntuweap National Monument on 31 July 1909, using the Paiute name for the canyon; it was renamed Zion in 1918 and became a national park in 1919.

The most visited national park in the United States, with over 11 million visitors in 2025, is which?

Great Smoky Mountains, free to enter and within a day's drive of much of the eastern US, drew over 12 million visitors in 2024, more than double Grand Canyon's total.

Glacier (Montana) and Waterton Lakes (Alberta) were together designated the world's first what, in 1932?

Waterton-Glacier became the world's first International Peace Park in 1932 at the urging of Rotary clubs from Alberta and Montana; in 2017 it was also the first transboundary International Dark Sky Park.

Of roughly 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park in the mid-1800s, how many remained active by 2010?

The park counted 25 active glaciers in 2010, down from about 150 in 1850; the USGS defines an active glacier as at least 0.1 square kilometres of moving ice.

What is the Welsh name of Snowdonia National Park?

Eryri is the park; Yr Wyddfa is the mountain Snowdon, two Welsh names visitors often swap. Snowdonia covers a mountainous region of North Wales, not just its highest peak.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, chartered by Congress in 1934, straddles which two states?

Great Smoky Mountains National Park straddles the Tennessee–North Carolina line along the Appalachian crest; Congress chartered it in 1934, and Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated it at Newfound Gap in 1940.

Which peak, the highest in the contiguous United States, lies in Sequoia National Park?

Mount Whitney, 14,505 feet, stands on Sequoia National Park's eastern boundary, the same park that holds the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree on Earth by volume.

The first European settler in what is now Sequoia National Park, Hale Tharp, built his home out of what?

The Western Mono people showed him the Giant Forest, which holds five of the ten largest trees in the world.

The oldest legally protected areas in the world include a 1776 forest reserve on which Caribbean island?

The Tobago Main Ridge Forest Reserve was set aside to protect farmland from drought, not for recreation.

Which US president signed the act creating Yellowstone National Park in 1872?

Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act on 1 March 1872, passed by the 42nd Congress after the Hayden Survey's reports, photographs and paintings of the region.

Which arm of the US government ran Yellowstone from 1886 until the Park Service took over?

The U.S. Army administered Yellowstone from 1886 to 1918, building Fort Yellowstone at Mammoth Hot Springs; the new National Park Service assumed control in 1918.

Yellowstone lies mostly in which US state?

Small slices of the park spill into Montana and Idaho, but the bulk sits in Wyoming's northwest corner.

Which 1870 expedition named Old Faithful after timing its regular eruptions?

The Washburn–Langford–Doane expedition of 1870 named Old Faithful after timing eruptions at roughly 60–90 minute intervals; Nathaniel Langford later became Yellowstone's first superintendent.

Which Yellowstone geyser is the tallest active geyser in the world?

Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin throws water more than 300 feet, the tallest active geyser on Earth; Grand Geyser is the tallest predictable one.

Roughly what share of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone?

Yellowstone holds roughly two-thirds of the world's geysers: a 2011 study counted at least 1,283 that have erupted there, with about 465 active in a typical year.

How tall is the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, the park's highest waterfall?

The Lower Falls drops 308 feet, nearly twice Niagara's height, into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone; the park has some 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet.

In the great fires of 1988, roughly how much of Yellowstone burned?

Despite dire headlines, surveys found only about 345 elk, 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears and 9 bison died in the fires.

Which architect's 1903 Old Faithful Inn kicked off the 'Parkitecture' style?

Robert Reamer designed the log-and-stone Old Faithful Inn, built over the winter of 1903–04; it became a National Historic Landmark in 1987 and defined the National Park Service Rustic look.

Which cartoon bear's home, 'Jellystone', was based on Yellowstone?

Yogi's creators reportedly had little first-hand experience of the park, borrowing its public image instead.

Grand Canyon National Park was which numbered US national park to be named?

Grand Canyon became the 15th US national park on 26 February 1919; Senator Benjamin Harrison had first proposed protecting it in 1882, when it would have been only the third after Yellowstone and Mackinac.

Which president proclaimed the Grand Canyon a national monument in 1908?

Roosevelt had visited in 1903, calling it 'the one great sight which every American should see'.

The Grand Canyon is a gorge carved by which river?

The Colorado River has cut the Grand Canyon about a mile deep and 277 river miles long; the park covers more than 1.2 million acres and drew 4.9 million visitors in 2024.

In which year did UNESCO designate the Grand Canyon a World Heritage Site?

UNESCO inscribed the Grand Canyon in 1979, a year after the first US sites, Yellowstone and Mesa Verde; the park marked its centenary on 26 February 2019.

Zion Canyon's reddish walls are cut from which sandstone by the Virgin River?

Zion Canyon's walls are Navajo Sandstone, a Jurassic dune deposit some 2,000 feet thick; the North Fork of the Virgin River cut the canyon 15 miles long and up to half a mile deep.

Zion National Park lies near which small Utah town?

Springdale sits at Zion's south entrance, where the park shuttle begins; the park lies where the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin and Mojave Desert meet, giving it four life zones.

Which National Park Service official proposed renaming Mukuntuweap to Zion in 1918?

Acting NPS director Horace Albright, after touring the monument in 1917, pushed the 1918 renaming to Zion, a term used by local Mormons; historian Hal Rothman saw bias against Indian names in the change.

About what share of Yosemite National Park is designated wilderness?

About 95 percent of Yosemite's 759,620 acres is designated wilderness under the Yosemite Wilderness of 1984, the year the park also became a World Heritage Site.

Which militia attacked the Ahwahneechee in Yosemite Valley in 1851, the first documented entry?

The Mariposa Battalion, a state militia led by James D. Savage and commissioned by Governor John McDougal, entered Yosemite Valley in March 1851 during the Mariposa War.

How far above the valley floor does Half Dome rise in Yosemite?

Half Dome's summit stands about 4,800 feet above the Yosemite Valley floor, at 8,839 feet elevation; exfoliation of widely jointed granite shaped it and Sentinel Dome.

Denali National Park is larger than which US state?

Denali National Park and Preserve covers more than six million acres (about 9,500 square miles) of Interior Alaska, slightly more than New Hampshire's 9,350, centred on North America's highest mountain.

Which conservationist first proposed preserving the Denali region as a national park in 1906?

Charles Alexander Sheldon, a hunter-naturalist who wintered near Denali in 1907–08, pitched the park to his fellow Boone and Crockett Club members; Mount McKinley National Park followed in 1917.

What is the longest glacier in Denali National Park?

The Kahiltna Glacier, about 44 miles long, is the longest in the Alaska Range and the base-camp route for Denali climbers; the Ruth and Muldrow glaciers are shorter.

Which nonnative snake, breeding in the Everglades since about 2000, preys on its mammals?

Burmese pythons, escaped or released pets, have bred in the Everglades since around 2000; a 2012 study linked them to declines of over 85 percent in raccoons, opossums and bobcats.

The Everglades' 'river of grass' flows out of which lake toward Florida Bay?

Water spilling south from Lake Okeechobee creeps through the sawgrass at about a quarter mile a day toward Florida Bay; the park holds the Western Hemisphere's largest mangrove ecosystem.

In which year was Everglades National Park formally dedicated?

President Truman dedicated Everglades National Park on 6 December 1947, thirteen years after Congress authorized it in 1934; Marjory Stoneman Douglas's The Everglades: River of Grass appeared the same year.

Which endangered big cat is among the Everglades' 36 threatened or protected species?

The Florida panther, a puma subspecies numbering only a couple of hundred adults, is among the park's 36 threatened or protected species, alongside the American crocodile and West Indian manatee.

How far below sea level is Badwater Basin in Death Valley, the lowest point in North America?

Badwater Basin lies 282 feet (86 m) below sea level, the lowest point in North America and second-lowest in the Western Hemisphere after Argentina's Laguna del Carbón.

Death Valley's famous 134 °F temperature was recorded in which year?

The 134 °F (56.7 °C) reading was taken at Greenland Ranch, now Furnace Creek, on 10 July 1913; the WMO recognised it as the world's highest air temperature after disqualifying a 1922 Libyan reading in 2012.

Which ore was the only long-term profitable mineral mined in Death Valley?

Borax, scraped from the valley floor and hauled out by twenty-mule teams from 1883, was the only mineral mined profitably for long; the gold and silver boom towns were short-lived.

How many people from the lost 1849 party actually died in Death Valley, giving it its name?

Only one member of the 1849 emigrant party, which had tried a shortcut to the California goldfields, died there; the survivors' farewell, 'Goodbye, Death Valley', gave the valley its name.

Which Maine mountain in Acadia is the tallest on the US Atlantic coast?

Its summit stands 1,530 feet, and it is named for French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.

Who financed Acadia's historic carriage road system, closed to motor vehicles?

John D. Rockefeller Jr. financed and helped lay out Acadia's 45 miles of carriage roads and their stone bridges between 1913 and 1940, keeping them closed to motor cars.

Under what name was Acadia designated a national park in 1919, before its 1929 renaming?

Lafayette National Park, named for the Revolutionary War general, was the first national park east of the Mississippi in 1919; it grew from the 1916 Sieur de Monts National Monument and became Acadia in 1929.

How many natural sandstone arches does Arches National Park contain?

Arches contains more than 2,000 documented natural sandstone arches, the densest concentration in the world; Landscape Arch is the longest of them.

Arches National Park sits about four miles north of which Utah town?

The park entrance lies a few miles north of Moab on US 191; the arches formed above an underground salt bed deposited in the Paradox Basin some 300 million years ago.

Whose 2006 free climb of Delicate Arch exposed a loophole in the ban on climbing named arches?

Dean Potter free-soloed Delicate Arch in May 2006; the park attorney judged the old rule's wording unenforceable, and Arches rewrote its regulations to ban climbing any named arch.

Which river's two dams, removed in 2011–14, restored salmon runs into Olympic National Park?

The Elwha and Glines Canyon dams on the Elwha River came down between 2011 and 2014, then the largest dam removal in US history, reopening some 70 miles of salmon habitat.

Which native elk species does Olympic National Park exist partly to protect?

Olympic's enabling purposes include protecting the Roosevelt elk, named for Theodore Roosevelt, whose largest unmanaged herds live in the park's rainforest valleys of Sitka spruce and western hemlock.

How tall is Grand Teton, the peak that names Grand Teton National Park?

Grand Teton stands 13,775 feet, rising some 7,000 feet above the valley floor; it is the high point of the 40-mile Teton Range.

What was the 1943 monument later merged into Grand Teton National Park called?

Jackson Hole National Monument, proclaimed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 over fierce local opposition, survived repeal attempts and was merged into an enlarged Grand Teton National Park in 1950.

Which road connects Grand Teton to Yellowstone, 10 miles to the north?

The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, a 24,000-acre corridor created in 1972, links the two parks; with surrounding national forests they form the 22-million-acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Which Estes Park naturalist led the campaign that created Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915?

Enos Mills, an Estes Park innkeeper and naturalist, lobbied for six years until Woodrow Wilson signed the Rocky Mountain National Park Act on 26 January 1915; he is called the park's father.

What is the highest point in Rocky Mountain National Park?

Longs Peak, 14,259 feet, is the park's only 'fourteener' and the northernmost in the Rockies; the park floor lies at about 7,860 feet.

Which visitor center, designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright School, is Rocky Mountain's headquarters?

Beaver Meadows Visitor Center near Estes Park, designed by Taliesin Associated Architects in 1967, is the park headquarters and has been a National Historic Landmark since 2001.

Bryce Canyon is famous for spire-shaped rock formations called what?

Bryce's hoodoos, spires eroded from the Claron Formation by frost wedging, fill natural amphitheaters cut into the Paunsaugunt Plateau; despite its name Bryce is not a canyon.

Bryce Canyon is named after a Mormon pioneer who homesteaded there in which year?

Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon shipwright, homesteaded below the amphitheater in 1874 and gave his name to 'Bryce's Canyon'; President Harding made it a national monument in 1923.

Joshua Tree National Park is slightly larger than which US state?

Joshua Tree's 795,000 acres (about 1,240 square miles) edge out Rhode Island's 1,214; the park spans the higher Mojave and lower Colorado deserts and was upgraded from monument to park in 1994.

Which 1994 law redesignated Joshua Tree from a national monument to a national park?

The California Desert Protection Act of 31 October 1994 promoted Joshua Tree, a national monument since 1936, and Death Valley to national parks and created the Mojave National Preserve.

Which mountain range is the only one in the US fully contained within a national park?

The Chisos Mountains, topping out at Emory Peak, lie wholly inside Big Bend National Park, which also protects the largest stretch of Chihuahuan Desert in the United States.

Big Bend National Park is named for a bend in which river?

The Rio Grande swings from southeast to northeast around the park, the 'big bend'; Big Bend administers about 118 miles of the international boundary along the river's deepest channel.

In which year was Carlsbad Caverns recognized as a World Heritage Site?

UNESCO listed Carlsbad Caverns in 1995, sixty-five years after it became a national park in 1930; its Big Room is almost 4,000 feet long and up to 255 feet high.

Carlsbad Caverns sits in which mountain range of southeastern New Mexico?

The caverns formed in a Permian reef about 250 million years old, later uplifted and dissolved.

Which enslaved guide mapped and named many features of Mammoth Cave in the 1840s?

Stephen Bishop, enslaved at Mammoth Cave from 1838, crossed the Bottomless Pit, found the Echo River, and drew an 1842 map of the cave from memory that guided explorers for decades.

Which river runs through Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky?

Its tributary the Nolin joins it just inside the park; the cave itself dates back some 330 million years.

Which two active volcanoes lie within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

Kīlauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes, and Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on Earth, both lie in the park, carved from the original 1916 Hawaii National Park in 1961.

Which other Hawaiian park was split from the original 1916 Hawaii National Park?

Haleakalā on Maui became a separate national park in 1961 when Hawaii National Park was divided; the Big Island half, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes, was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1987.

Which president first proclaimed Glacier Bay a national monument in 1925?

Calvin Coolidge proclaimed Glacier Bay National Monument on 26 February 1925; Jimmy Carter enlarged it in 1978, and the 1980 Alaska lands act (ANILCA) made it a national park and preserve.

Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States, reaches what maximum depth?

It fills the caldera of Mount Mazama, which collapsed about 7,700 years ago, and has no streams in or out.

Crater Lake occupies the caldera of which collapsed volcano?

Mount Mazama, a 12,000-foot Cascade stratovolcano, collapsed after a huge eruption about 7,700 years ago; rain and snow filled the caldera to form Crater Lake, Oregon's only national park (1902).

What is the cinder cone rising inside Crater Lake called?

Wizard Island, a cinder cone rising about 760 feet above the lake surface, formed from eruptions after the caldera began to fill; summer boat tours land on it.

What is the name of the world's tallest living tree, found in Redwood National Park in 2006?

Hyperion, a coast redwood measured at 115.9 m (380 feet) after its 2006 discovery by Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor, stands at an undisclosed site in Redwood National Park.

Roughly what share of remaining old-growth coast redwood forest do the Redwood parks preserve?

Redwood National and State Parks protect about 45 percent of the old-growth coast redwood left, some 39,000 acres, from a forest that once covered more than 3,100 square miles before Gold Rush-era logging.

What is the main scenic road running the length of Shenandoah National Park?

Skyline Drive runs 105 miles along the Blue Ridge crest from Front Royal to Rockfish Gap near Waynesboro, where the Blue Ridge Parkway continues south.

Which movies were partly filmed in Badlands National Park?

Dances with Wolves (1990) and Thunderheart (1992) both shot scenes in the Badlands; the park also administers the nearby Minuteman Missile National Historic Site.

Which highly endangered mammal was reintroduced to the wild in Badlands National Park?

Black-footed ferrets, once thought extinct, were reintroduced into Badlands' Conata Basin area in 1994; the Badlands Wilderness protects the largest undisturbed mixed-grass prairie in the United States.

Isle Royale is unique as the only place where wolves and moose coexist without which animal?

Isle Royale has no bears, so its wolves and moose, tracked since 1958 in the world's longest-running predator–prey study, interact alone; around 30 wolves and 1,000 moose shared the island in the early 2020s.

Isle Royale National Park lies in which Great Lake?

Isle Royale, the largest natural island in Lake Superior, anchors a park of about 450 islands some 15 miles off the Minnesota–Ontario shore; the park closes entirely each winter.

About how many bricks make up Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas?

Fort Jefferson, begun in 1846 and never finished, contains more than 16 million bricks, the largest brick masonry structure in the Americas; it lies about 68 miles west of Key West.

Which doctor who treated John Wilkes Booth was imprisoned at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas?

Samuel Mudd, who set Booth's broken leg, was imprisoned at Fort Jefferson from 1865; Andrew Johnson pardoned him in 1869 after he treated prisoners in the 1867 yellow fever outbreak.

Congaree National Park in South Carolina protects the largest US tract of which forest type?

Congaree holds the largest intact tract of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the southeastern United States, with one of the tallest temperate deciduous canopies left; it became a national park in 2003.

Which is the smallest US national park by area, at under 200 acres?

Gateway Arch National Park covers just 192.8 acres on the St. Louis riverfront, about a thirtieth of the next-smallest, Hot Springs; it was redesignated from the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in 2018.

How tall is the catenary steel arch that towers over St. Louis?

The Gateway Arch rises 630 feet and spans 630 feet at its base, a weighted catenary by Eero Saarinen topped out on 28 October 1965.

Which slavery-era case began in the Old Courthouse now inside St. Louis's national park?

Dred Scott and his wife Harriet first sued for their freedom at the Old Courthouse in 1846; the memorial's 1935 purposes include commemorating the debate over slavery the case raised.

In which year did Congress first set aside the Arkansas thermal reservation for recreation?

Congress set the Arkansas springs aside as a federal reservation on 20 April 1832, forty years before Yellowstone; the reservation became a national park in 1921.

Which national park was the first to get its own America the Beautiful quarter in April 2010?

It got the honor as the oldest park maintained by the National Park Service; Hawaiʻi Volcanoes was the 14th quarter in 2012.

Voyageurs National Park, established in 1975 on the Ontario border, lies in which state?

Voyageurs, near International Falls on the Ontario border, is Minnesota's only national park; established in 1975, its Kabetogama Peninsula can be reached only by water.

Which abandoned copper boomtown sits at the center of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park?

Kennecott's mill town processed ore from some of the richest copper deposits ever found from 1911 until the mines closed in 1938; the ruins are a National Historic Landmark.

What is the highest point in the largest US national park, in south central Alaska?

Mount Saint Elias, 18,008 feet, straddles the Alaska–Yukon border and ranks second in both the United States and Canada, behind Denali and Mount Logan respectively.

Which 1912 eruption created Katmai's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes?

Novarupta's June 1912 eruption, the largest of the twentieth century, buried the valley under a 40-square-mile pyroclastic flow up to 700 feet deep; its magma drained Mount Katmai's summit, forming a caldera.

Since 2014, Katmai National Park has hosted which annual online contest?

Fat Bear Week, begun as 'Fat Bear Tuesday' in 2014, has online voters pick the Brooks River brown bear that bulked up most on sockeye salmon before hibernation.

Petrified Forest's fossil logs come from trees that lived in which geological epoch?

The logs are Late Triassic, about 225 million years old, buried in the Chinle Formation's volcanic ash and silicified; historic Route 66 crosses the park.

Mesa Verde is best known for Cliff Palace and about how many other cliff dwellings?

Mesa Verde holds about 600 cliff dwellings among more than 5,000 archaeological sites, the largest archaeological preserve in the United States and Colorado's only World Heritage Site.

Which ranching family befriended the Utes and helped bring Mesa Verde's dwellings to notice?

They ran cattle near Mancos, Colorado, and were allowed to graze on Ute land in winter.

Which two rivers meet at the Confluence inside Canyonlands National Park?

The Green River joins the Colorado at the Confluence below the Island in the Sky; Interior Secretary Stewart Udall's 1961 flight over it helped spark the park's creation in 1964.

Which author called Canyonlands 'the most weird, wonderful, magical place on earth'?

Abbey was a frequent visitor; the park is split into the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze and the rivers.

Which ancient trees in Great Basin National Park are the oldest known non-clonal living organisms?

Great Basin bristlecone pines grow for millennia in Wheeler Peak's cirque; Prometheus, cut there in 1964, had at least 4,862 growth rings, older than California's living Methuselah.

White Sands National Park's dunes are made of which mineral rather than quartz sand?

It is the largest gypsum dunefield on Earth, holding about 4.5 billion tons of the stuff up to 60 feet high.

White Sands National Park is completely surrounded by what?

White Sands Missile Range, the US Army's largest installation, surrounds the park, with Holloman Air Force Base next door; Hoover proclaimed the monument in 1933 and it became a national park in 2019.

On Bridge Day each October, what is uniquely allowed at the New River Gorge Bridge?

It is the only day the bridge closes to traffic; rappelling and ascending are permitted too.

Indiana Dunes became which numbered US national park in 2019?

Indiana Dunes became the 61st national park on 15 February 2019, after 53 years as a national lakeshore; it stretches some 15 miles along Lake Michigan's southern shore.

Cuyahoga Valley is the only US national park that began as what kind of unit?

Designated a national recreation area in 1974 to save green space between Cleveland and Akron, Cuyahoga Valley was upgraded to Ohio's only national park in 2000, the only park with that origin.

What is the tallest waterfall in Cuyahoga Valley National Park?

Brandywine Falls plunges some 65 feet over Berea Sandstone near the park's northern end, the tallest of the valley's roughly 100 waterfalls; Blue Hen Falls is a 15-foot drop.

The Serengeti is home to the largest population of which big cat in Africa?

The Serengeti's roughly 3,000 lions make up the largest lion population in Africa, sustained by the wildebeest migration; the park also holds sizeable cheetah and leopard numbers.

The Ngorongoro area was split from Serengeti National Park as a conservation area in which year?

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area was carved out of Serengeti National Park in 1959 so the Maasai could keep grazing rights there, leaving the Serengeti as a strictly protected park.

As of 2025, Fiordland was the largest of how many New Zealand national parks?

New Zealand had 13 national parks in 2025, Te Urewera having left the system in 2014; Fiordland, at 12,607 square kilometres, is the largest and forms much of the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Site.

Which Canadian Rockies park, Banff's northern neighbor, began life in 1907 as a 'Forest Park' and became a national park in 1930?

Jasper was a 'Forest Park' for 23 years before Canada made it a national park in 1930; UNESCO added it to the Rockies World Heritage Site in 1984.

Etosha National Park in Namibia takes its name from what feature?

The Etosha pan covers 4,760 km2, about 23% of the park; explorers Andersson and Galton recorded it in 1851.

Which Thai park, established in 1962, was the country's first national park?

Khao Yai, straddling four provinces northeast of Bangkok, became Thailand's first national park on 18 September 1962 and is the country's third largest.

Which Scottish park, established in 2003, is the largest national park in the United Kingdom?

The Cairngorms, designated in 2003 and enlarged in 2010, cover 4,528 square kilometres, about twice the Lake District; some 18,000 people live inside it in towns such as Aviemore and Braemar.

Roughly what share of Iceland's land area does Vatnajökull National Park cover?

Vatnajökull National Park, founded in June 2008 and enlarged since, covers about 14 percent of Iceland, wrapping around Europe's largest glacier by volume; UNESCO listed it in 2019.

Newfoundland's Gros Morne is an outlying range of which larger mountain system?

Gros Morne's Long Range Mountains are an outlier of the Appalachians; UNESCO listed the park in 1987 for the Tablelands, where deep ocean crust and mantle rock lie exposed, a rare window on plate tectonics.

Which Gunung Mulu cave shelters some three million wrinkle-lipped bats that stream out each dusk?

Deer Cave, its main passage up to 174 m high, houses some three million wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bats; it was rated the world's largest cave passage until Vietnam's Son Doong was surveyed in 2009.

Hwange National Park lies beside the road from Bulawayo to which Zimbabwean resort town?

Hwange, Zimbabwe's largest national park at some 14,600 square kilometres, lies beside the Bulawayo–Victoria Falls road; it began in 1928 as a game reserve under its first warden, Ted Davison.

In which year was Colorado's Black Canyon of the Gunnison upgraded from monument to park status?

Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a national monument since 1933, became a national park on 21 October 1999; the Gunnison drops 34 feet per mile through it, against 7.5 for the Colorado in the Grand Canyon.

Under what name was Kings Canyon originally established in 1890?

General Grant National Park, created on 1 October 1890 around Grant Grove, was absorbed into the new, much larger Kings Canyon National Park on 4 March 1940; the General Grant tree is the world's second largest by trunk volume.