98 Fun Facts About US National Parks

Which U.S. President signed the act establishing the first national park in the United States?

Ulysses S. Grant signed the act creating Yellowstone National Park; its first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, was appointed the same year but Congress gave him no salary, funding or staff.

In what year was the first national park in the United States officially established?

Yellowstone was established in 1872 by the Act of Dedication, which set the land apart as a 'public park or pleasuring-ground'; about 300 people visited that first year.

What was the 1832 Arkansas thermal-water reserve officially called before it became a national park in 1921?

Congress set aside Hot Springs Reservation on April 20, 1832, the oldest federally protected land in the park system; it was redesignated Hot Springs National Park in 1921.

Which is the largest national park in the contiguous US, also its hottest and lowest?

Death Valley covers about 3.4 million acres, the largest national park outside Alaska; its floor at Badwater Basin lies 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in North America.

What is the summit elevation of Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America?

A 2015 US Geological Survey GPS survey put Denali's summit at 20,310 feet, ten feet below the 20,320-foot figure obtained by photogrammetry in 1952.

The park protecting the longest known cave system in the world is in which US state?

Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky protects more than 400 miles of surveyed passages; the network has been called the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System since a 1972 connection was found.

Which is the oldest national park east of the Mississippi River?

Acadia, on Maine's Mount Desert Island, became a national park in 1919, well before Great Smoky Mountains (1934) and Shenandoah (1935).

The Everglades are fed by a slow-moving sheet of water flowing out of which body of water?

The water creeps south-west at about a quarter of a mile per day toward Florida Bay.

Which president signed the Organic Act creating the National Park Service on August 25, 1916?

Woodrow Wilson's signature charged the new agency with conserving park scenery and wildlife so as to leave them unimpaired for future generations.

The Grand Canyon is a gorge cut by which river?

The Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon, cutting down through its bed over millions of years as the Colorado Plateau was uplifted around it.

Old Faithful, perhaps the most famous geyser in the world, erupts in which national park?

Old Faithful is in Yellowstone; the 1870 Washburn Expedition named it after finding it erupted on a dependable schedule, roughly every 60 to 90 minutes.

Which national park was the most visited in the US every year from 1944 through 2024?

Great Smoky Mountains topped 12 million visitors in 2024, helped by having no entrance fee and sitting within a day's drive of much of the eastern US.

Which state has the most national parks, with nine?

California has nine: Channel Islands, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Kings Canyon, Lassen Volcanic, Pinnacles, Redwood, Sequoia and Yosemite; Alaska is second with eight, Utah has five.

At over 8 million acres, which Alaskan park is the largest national park in the United States?

Wrangell–St. Elias covers about 13.2 million acres including its preserve, larger than Switzerland and than each of the nine smallest US states; the next three largest parks are also in Alaska.

At under 193 acres, which is the smallest US national park?

Gateway Arch, about 193 acres in St. Louis, is roughly 3.5% the size of the next-smallest park, Hot Springs; it was Jefferson National Expansion Memorial until redesignated in 2018.

How many national parks did the United States have at the end of 2024?

The 63 national parks are only a slice of the more than 400 units of the National Park System, most of which carry other designations such as monument or seashore.

Which national park protects the deepest body of water in the United States, at 1,949 feet?

Crater Lake, Oregon's only national park, is 1,949 feet deep, the deepest lake in the United States; its caldera formed in a volcanic collapse about 7,700 years ago.

The lake in Oregon's only national park fills the caldera of which destroyed volcano?

Mount Mazama collapsed after a colossal eruption about 7,700 years ago, leaving a caldera roughly 4,000 feet deep that filled with rain and snowmelt to form Crater Lake.

Arches National Park sits above what underground layer, the main cause of its arch formation?

A thick salt bed, the Paradox Formation, lies beneath Arches; as the salt shifted and dissolved, the sandstone above fractured into fins that eroded into more than 2,000 arches.

The General Sherman Tree, the largest tree on Earth by volume, grows in which national park?

General Sherman stands in Sequoia National Park's Giant Forest, which holds five of the ten largest trees in the world; its trunk volume is about 52,500 cubic feet.

Which peak inside a Sierra Nevada national park is the highest point in the contiguous United States?

Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet, rises on the eastern boundary of Sequoia National Park, which spans nearly 13,000 feet of vertical relief.

The abandoned boomtown of Kennecott, in America's largest national park, mined which metal?

Kennecott's mines produced copper, roughly $200 million worth, between 1911 and 1938; the derelict mill buildings are a National Historic Landmark inside the park.

The Old Courthouse in the St. Louis national park is where which landmark Supreme Court case originated?

Dred Scott first sued for his freedom at the Old Courthouse in 1846; the 1935 memorial was created partly to commemorate the slavery debate his case provoked.

Dry Tortugas National Park, reachable only by boat or seaplane, lies about 68 miles from which city?

Dry Tortugas lies about 68 miles west of Key West; its centerpiece, Fort Jefferson, is the largest brick masonry structure in the Western Hemisphere, built from more than 16 million bricks.

Isle Royale National Park consists of an island and more than 400 islets in which of the Great Lakes?

Isle Royale sits in the north-west of Lake Superior; it is the fifth-largest lake island in the world and the second-largest in the Great Lakes after Manitoulin.

The name of Maui's Haleakalā National Park is Hawaiian for what?

Haleakalā means 'house of the sun'; legend says the demigod Maui snared the sun there to lengthen the day, and the park was split from Hawaii National Park in 1961.

Which national park's Big Room is the largest cave chamber in North America?

Carlsbad Caverns' Big Room is almost 4,000 feet long and 255 feet high, covering about 8 acres; visitors can reach it by elevator from the visitor center.

Mesa Verde National Park, home to Cliff Palace, protects sites built by which people?

Ancestral Puebloans built Mesa Verde's dwellings between about 600 and 1300 CE; the park holds nearly 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings, and is Colorado's only World Heritage Site.

Grand Teton National Park includes most of the northern sections of which valley?

Jackson Hole is the valley east of the Teton Range; Grand Teton lies just 10 miles south of Yellowstone, linked to it by the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway.

Which federal agency oversaw construction of Rocky Mountain's Trail Ridge Road from 1929 to 1932?

The Bureau of Public Roads supervised Trail Ridge Road's construction from 1929 to 1932, a year before the Civilian Conservation Corps existed; the park also holds the Colorado River's headwaters.

Which highly endangered mammal was reintroduced to the wild in the Badlands Wilderness of South Dakota?

Black-footed ferrets, once thought extinct, were reintroduced to the Badlands Wilderness in 1994; the park also protects the largest undisturbed mixed-grass prairie in the United States.

Which historic highway crosses Petrified Forest National Park roughly east to west?

Petrified Forest is the only national park containing a stretch of historic U.S. Route 66; Interstate 40, the BNSF Southern Transcon and the Puerco River also cross the park.

How many of the eight Channel Islands are included in Channel Islands National Park?

Anacapa, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, San Miguel and Santa Rosa joined the park in 1980; The Nature Conservancy owns three-quarters of Santa Cruz.

Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota is named after which group?

Voyageurs honours the French-Canadian fur traders who paddled canoes along its lakes; its Kabetogama Peninsula makes up most of the land area and is reached only by water or, in winter, over ice.

Congaree National Park, the largest old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the US, is in which state?

Congaree lies along the Congaree River south-east of Columbia, South Carolina; its floodplain has one of the tallest temperate deciduous canopies in the world, and it became a national park only in 2003.

Big Bend National Park in West Texas takes its name from a large bend in which river?

The Rio Grande swings around Big Bend, forming the park's 118-mile border with Mexico; the Chisos Mountains are the only US range contained entirely within a national park.

Skyline Drive runs along the Blue Ridge crest of which national park?

Skyline Drive runs 105 miles through Shenandoah; almost 40% of the park is designated wilderness, and its highest peak is Hawksbill Mountain at 4,051 feet.

Kīlauea shares Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park with which volcano, Earth's largest active volcano?

Mauna Loa, rising 13,681 feet above sea level, is Earth's largest active volcano; the park became a World Heritage Site in 1987 and appeared on a 2012 America the Beautiful quarter.

Katmai's Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes was created by the 1912 eruption of which volcano?

Novarupta's June 1912 eruption, the largest of the 20th century, buried the valley in a 40-square-mile ash flow up to 700 feet deep; Katmai's Brooks Falls brown bears later made the park famous.

Nevada's Great Basin National Park is known for groves of which trees, the oldest known non-clonal living organisms on Earth?

Bristlecone pines share the park with Lehman Caves and some of the darkest night skies in the contiguous United States.

Zion Canyon's reddish walls were carved through Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of which river?

The North Fork of the Virgin River cut Zion Canyon 15 miles long and up to 2,640 feet deep; the park sits where the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin and Mojave Desert meet.

Which railroad built Glacier National Park's historic hotels and chalets after 1910?

The Great Northern Railway, under Louis W. Hill, built Glacier Park Lodge, Many Glacier Hotel and the backcountry chalets to lure tourists; Going-to-the-Sun Road was finished in 1932.

Bryce Canyon is famous for which spire-shaped rock formations, carved by frost and stream erosion?

Bryce's hoodoos are spires left as frost wedging and runoff erode the Claron Formation limestone; despite its name, Bryce is a string of natural amphitheaters along the Paunsaugunt Plateau.

Olympic National Park's wilderness was renamed in 2017 after which Washington politician?

Daniel J. Evans, governor and later senator, co-sponsored the 1988 bill that set aside 95 percent of Olympic as wilderness, the largest wilderness area in Washington.

Which 1994 act of Congress turned Joshua Tree from a national monument into a national park?

The California Desert Protection Act of 1994 promoted Joshua Tree to a national park; it is slightly larger than Rhode Island and straddles the higher Mojave and lower Colorado deserts.

Roughly what share of Yosemite National Park is designated wilderness?

About 95 percent of Yosemite, some 704,000 of its 748,000 acres, was designated wilderness by the California Wilderness Act of 1984, confining roads and development to the valley and a few corridors.

The South Unit of Badlands National Park is co-managed by the National Park Service and which tribe?

The Stronghold District lies on the Pine Ridge Reservation and is co-managed with the Oglala Lakota (Oglala Sioux Tribe); it holds 1890 Ghost Dance sites and a former Air Force bombing range.

Redwood National and State Parks in California preserve roughly what share of all remaining old-growth coast redwood forest?

45 percent of what survives is inside the parks' 139,000 acres; redwood forest once covered more than 3,100 square miles of coast before Gold Rush-era logging.

Saguaro National Park's two separate districts sit on either side of which Arizona city?

The Tucson Mountain District lies about 10 miles west of the city and the higher, wetter Rincon Mountain District about 10 miles east.

Which is Biscayne National Park’s largest island and the northernmost true Florida Key?

Elliott Key, about 7 miles long, is built of fossilized coral reef; more than 40 documented shipwrecks lie on the reefs within the park's boundaries.

What did Stiltsville, a 1930s cluster of shacks on pilings in Biscayne Bay, offer?

Stiltsville offered gambling and alcohol: Eddie 'Crawfish' Walker built the first shack in 1933, and the colony sat about a mile offshore, beyond the reach of Florida's gambling laws.

Why is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison called 'black'?

Some stretches of the gorge get only about 33 minutes of direct sun a day, leaving the walls in near-permanent shadow.

How wide is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison at its narrowest point down at the river?

At The Narrows the canyon is just 40 feet wide at the river; the Gunnison drops an average of 34 feet per mile, more than four times the Colorado's gradient through the Grand Canyon.

Which president signed the 1964 law creating Canyonlands National Park in Utah?

Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Canyonlands bill on September 12, 1964; Interior Secretary Stewart Udall had championed the park after flying over the Green and Colorado confluence in 1961.

Which Arches superintendent began campaigning in the 1950s for a park at Canyonlands?

Bates Wilson, Arches superintendent from 1949, ran jeep trips to sell officials on a Canyonlands park; he was struck by the Needles district south of Moab.

Capitol Reef National Park preserves most of which nearly 100-mile-long rocky upthrust?

The Waterpocket Fold is a 65-million-year-old monocline named for the rain-catching pockets eroded into its sandstone; 'reef' was local slang for any rocky barrier to travel.

Ohio’s only national park follows its river between Cleveland and which other city?

The park follows its river about 22 miles between Cleveland and Akron; it holds a scenic railroad and about 100 waterfalls, the tallest being 65-foot Brandywine Falls.

Which is the northernmost US national park, lying entirely inside Alaska's Brooks Range?

Gates of the Arctic lies wholly north of the Arctic Circle; about 85% of it is wilderness, which with the adjoining Noatak Wilderness forms the largest contiguous wilderness in the country.

Which president first protected Alaska's Glacier Bay by proclamation in 1925?

Calvin Coolidge proclaimed Glacier Bay National Monument in 1925; Congress upgraded it to a national park and preserve in 1980, and it joined the binational Kluane/Wrangell–St. Elias World Heritage Site in 1992.

How tall are the highest dunes at Great Sand Dunes, the tallest in North America?

Star Dune and Hidden Dune top out near 740 feet, so the tallest dunes reach up to 750 feet; about 30 square miles of dunes hold an estimated 1.2 cubic miles of sand.

Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas, rises to what elevation?

Guadalupe Peak rises to 8,751 feet, crowned by a stainless-steel pyramid placed by American Airlines in 1958; the range continues into New Mexico to Carlsbad Caverns about 25 miles away.

Indiana Dunes National Park runs for about 15 miles along the southern shore of which Great Lake?

Michigan's southern shore got a national park only in February 2019, after more than 50 years as a national lakeshore, with a steel plant sitting in the middle of its shoreline.

Kenai Fjords National Park is built around which ice field, source of 38-plus glaciers?

The Harding Icefield, about 700 square miles of ice, feeds Exit Glacier at the end of the park's only road; the rest of the park is reached by boat, plane or on foot from Seward.

Under what name was Kings Canyon first established as a national park in 1890?

General Grant National Park was a small grove saved from logging in 1890; Franklin Roosevelt folded it into the new Kings Canyon National Park in 1940 after decades of fighting over dam proposals.

Kobuk Valley National Park protects Arctic dunes and the migration routes of which animal?

Caribou of the Western Arctic herd cross the Kobuk River at Onion Portage on their migrations, hunted there for thousands of years; the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes rise up to 100 feet.

Whose solitary life at Twin Lakes, Alaska, became the film Alone in the Wilderness?

Richard Proenneke built his Twin Lakes cabin by hand in 1968 and filmed the work himself; the 2003 documentary cut from his footage became a public-television staple.

Lassen Peak in California is the world's largest example of which type of volcano?

Lassen Peak is the largest plug dome volcano on Earth, rising about 2,000 feet from its base; it erupted repeatedly between 1914 and 1917, and the park shows all four volcano types.

Which national park's Paradise area measured a then-record 1,122 inches of snow in 1971–72?

Mount Rainier's Paradise ranger station recorded 1,122 inches of snow in the 1971–72 season, a world record until Mount Baker's 1,140 inches in 1998–99.

Which Mount Rainier glacier is the largest by volume in the contiguous United States?

Carbon Glacier holds about 0.2 cubic miles of ice and reaches 700 feet thick, the greatest volume in the lower 48; Emmons takes the other title as the largest by surface area.

Roughly how long is the Wonderland Trail, which loops all the way around Mount Rainier?

The Wonderland Trail, completed in 1915, runs about 93 miles around the mountain and racks up roughly 22,000 feet of climbing; most hikers take 10 to 14 days.

Which river splits North Cascades National Park into its northern and southern sections?

The Skagit River corridor, dammed into Ross, Diablo and Gorge lakes, forms Ross Lake National Recreation Area between the park's two units; the park holds more than 300 glaciers, the most in the lower 48.

Pinnacles National Park is a release site for which captive-bred endangered bird?

Pinnacles has released captive-bred California condors since 2003; its spires are remnants of the Neenach volcano, carried about 195 miles north along the San Andreas Fault.

Which river flows through all three units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park?

The Little Missouri River winds through the North Unit, South Unit and Elkhorn Ranch Unit, which are linked by the 144-mile Maah Daah Hey Trail across the badlands.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the only one named for one person, is in which state?

Theodore Roosevelt ranched in the badlands near Medora, North Dakota, retreating there after his wife and mother died on the same day in February 1884.

Which island in a US Caribbean territory has about 60% of its land inside a national park?

Virgin Islands National Park covers about 60% of Saint John, more than 5,500 acres of surrounding water and nearly all of Hassel Island off Charlotte Amalie harbour.

The dunes of White Sands National Park in New Mexico are made of which mineral?

White Sands is the largest gypsum dunefield on Earth, holding roughly 4.5 billion tons of the soft white crystals washed down from surrounding mountains into the Tularosa Basin.

White Sands National Park is completely surrounded by what?

White Sands Missile Range, which includes the Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945, surrounds the park; Holloman Air Force Base lies next door.

Which is the only US national park that began as a national recreation area?

Cuyahoga Valley was a national recreation area from 1974 until its 2000 redesignation; the park contains county parks, a scenic railroad and private businesses within its boundary.

Which South Dakota park, created in 1903, was the first underground site made a national park?

Wind Cave 'breathes' as air rushes in or out with changes in barometric pressure, which gave it its name; it holds about 95 percent of the world's known boxwork formations.

The National Park of American Samoa is the only National Park Service unit located where?

American Samoa lies about 14 degrees south of the equator; because of Samoa's communal land system, the Park Service signed a 50-year lease with village councils in 1993 instead of buying the land.

Stephen Mather, the first National Park Service director, made his fortune in what?

Stephen Mather made millions marketing '20 Mule Team' borax; friends called him the 'Eternal Freshman' for his relentless energy, and he ran the agency from 1917 to 1929.

The 1906 Antiquities Act lets a president proclaim which kind of protected area?

The Antiquities Act lets presidents proclaim national monuments on federal land; Theodore Roosevelt signed it in 1906 to stop 'pot hunters' looting Southwestern ruins and used it first for Devils Tower.

Which president signed the 1864 Yosemite Grant, the first US land set aside to preserve?

Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant on June 30, 1864, in the middle of the Civil War, handing Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to California as a state park.

The dammed Hetch Hetchy Valley inside Yosemite supplies drinking water to which city?

San Francisco's O'Shaughnessy Dam flooded the valley in 1923 after a bitter fight John Muir lost; the water travels about 167 miles west by aqueduct to the Bay Area.

Going-to-the-Sun Road crosses the Continental Divide at which pass?

Logan Pass, at 6,646 feet, is the road's high point; the 50-mile route took from 1921 to 1932 to build and was dedicated in 1933.

Who first climbed Yosemite’s Half Dome in 1875 by drilling iron eye bolts into the rock?

George Anderson, a Scottish-born blacksmith, reached the summit in October 1875 after drilling eye bolts up the final slope; the first woman, Sally Dutcher, followed him up in 1876.

Gray wolves returned to the Lamar Valley of America’s first national park in which year?

Fourteen wolves from Canada were released into Lamar Valley acclimation pens in January 1995, 22 years after the 1973 Endangered Species Act cleared the legal path.

Grand Prismatic Spring, the world’s third-largest hot spring, lies in which geyser basin?

Grand Prismatic sits in the Midway Geyser Basin beside Excelsior Geyser; only Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand and Boiling Lake in Dominica are bigger, and the 1871 Hayden Survey named it.

What creates the rings of orange, yellow and green around Grand Prismatic Spring?

Mats of heat-loving microbes colour the rings: they run orange and red in summer and dark green in winter as the bacteria's chlorophyll-to-carotenoid ratio shifts with sunlight.

Who directed the 2009 PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea?

Ken Burns directed the six-part series, narrated by Peter Coyote, which won two Emmys in 2010 including Outstanding Nonfiction Series.

Which Arches National Park landmark is pictured on Utah's standard licence plates?

Delicate Arch, a 52-foot-tall freestanding span, was dubbed 'the Schoolmarm's Bloomers' by cowboys; the 2002 Winter Olympic torch relay passed beneath it.

The highest peak in Maine’s national park had what name before it became Cadillac in 1918?

Green Mountain was renamed in 1918 for French adventurer Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac, who once held a land grant on the island; from October to early March the summit catches the first sunrise in the contiguous United States.

Maine's national park was first designated a national park in 1919 under what name?

Lafayette National Park, created in 1919, honoured the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution; it had been Sieur de Monts National Monument since 1916 and was renamed again in 1929.

Roughly how much precipitation does Olympic National Park's Hoh Rainforest get in a year?

The Hoh gets about 140 inches of precipitation a year, some 12 feet, mostly as winter rain; it also holds 'One Square Inch of Silence', a 2005 marker for the quietest place in the United States.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas's 1947 book gave the Everglades which lasting nickname?

The Everglades: River of Grass came out in November 1947, a month before Harry Truman dedicated the park on December 6; Douglas spent about five years researching it.

Glacier and Canada’s Waterton Lakes were joined in 1932 as the world’s first what?

Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park was created by acts of the US Congress and Canadian Parliament in 1932; in 2017 the pair also became the first transboundary International Dark Sky Park.

Of Glacier National Park’s roughly 150 mid-1800s glaciers, how many were active in 2010?

Only 25 named glaciers larger than 25 acres remained active in 2010, down from an estimated 150 in 1850; the US Geological Survey tracks the survivors with repeat aerial surveys.

Yellowstone National Park holds the oldest and largest public herd in the United States of which animal?

Bison share the park with a supervolcano caldera and the largest high-elevation lake in North America.