National Parks List Table
| National park | State | Established | Visitors (2025) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acadia | Maine | 1919 | 4,079,318 |
| American Samoa | American Samoa | 1988 | 43,258 |
| Arches | Utah | 1971 | 1,511,740 |
| Badlands | South Dakota | 1978 | 1,139,361 |
| Big Bend | Texas | 1944 | 568,104 |
| Biscayne | Florida | 1980 | 486,567 |
| Black Canyon of the Gunnison | Colorado | 1999 | 250,086 |
| Bryce Canyon | Utah | 1928 | 1,967,367 |
| Canyonlands | Utah | 1964 | 796,057 |
| Capitol Reef | Utah | 1971 | 1,388,476 |
| Carlsbad Caverns * | New Mexico | 1930 | 410,778 |
| Channel Islands | California | 1980 | 227,186 |
| Congaree | South Carolina | 2003 | 287,833 |
| Crater Lake | Oregon | 1902 | 632,242 |
| Cuyahoga Valley | Ohio | 2000 | 3,025,325 |
| Death Valley | California, Nevada | 1994 | 1,320,134 |
| Denali | Alaska | 1917 | 543,300 |
| Dry Tortugas | Florida | 1992 | 89,355 |
| Everglades ‡ | Florida | 1934 | 778,198 |
| Gates of the Arctic | Alaska | 1980 | 14,923 |
| Gateway Arch | Missouri | 2018 | 2,209,028 |
| Glacier ‡ | Montana | 1910 | 3,136,557 |
| Glacier Bay ‡ | Alaska | 1980 | 740,044 |
| Grand Canyon * | Arizona | 1919 | 4,430,653 |
| Grand Teton | Wyoming | 1929 | 3,800,648 |
| Great Basin | Nevada | 1986 | 161,210 |
| Great Sand Dunes | Colorado | 2004 | 432,498 |
| Great Smoky Mountains ‡ | North Carolina, Tennessee | 1934 | 11,527,939 |
| Guadalupe Mountains | Texas | 1972 | 206,423 |
| Haleakalā | Hawaii | 1961 | 853,711 |
| Hawaiʻi Volcanoes ‡ | Hawaii | 1916 | 1,877,854 |
| Hot Springs | Arkansas | 1921 | 2,494,611 |
| Indiana Dunes | Indiana | 2019 | 2,629,497 |
| Isle Royale | Michigan | 1940 | 29,091 |
| Joshua Tree | California | 1994 | 2,932,644 |
| Katmai | Alaska | 1980 | 34,479 |
| Kenai Fjords | Alaska | 1980 | 425,369 |
| Kings Canyon | California | 1940 | 779,791 |
| Kobuk Valley | Alaska | 1980 | 7,786 |
| Lake Clark | Alaska | 1980 | 19,778 |
| Lassen Volcanic | California | 1916 | 504,777 |
| Mammoth Cave ‡ | Kentucky | 1941 | 660,734 |
| Mesa Verde * | Colorado | 1906 | 463,130 |
| Mount Rainier | Washington | 1899 | 1,635,342 |
| New River Gorge | West Virginia | 2020 | 1,958,440 |
| North Cascades | Washington | 1968 | 46,925 |
| Olympic ‡ | Washington | 1938 | 3,584,187 |
| Petrified Forest | Arizona | 1962 | 315,951 |
| Pinnacles | California | 2013 | 343,208 |
| Redwood * | California | 1968 | 1,202,480 |
| Rocky Mountain | Colorado | 1915 | 4,171,431 |
| Saguaro | Arizona | 1994 | 847,749 |
| Sequoia | California | 1890 | 1,378,337 |
| Shenandoah | Virginia | 1935 | 1,682,152 |
| Theodore Roosevelt | North Dakota | 1978 | 729,893 |
| Virgin Islands | U.S. Virgin Islands | 1956 | 471,074 |
| Voyageurs | Minnesota | 1975 | 206,326 |
| White Sands | New Mexico | 2019 | 659,742 |
| Wind Cave | South Dakota | 1903 | 606,258 |
| Wrangell–St. Elias * | Alaska | 1980 | 108,840 |
| Yellowstone ‡ | Wyoming, Montana, Idaho | 1872 | 4,762,988 |
| Yosemite * | California | 1890 | 4,278,413 |
| Zion | Utah | 1919 | 4,984,525 |
There are exactly 63 national parks in the United States - the headline designation inside the 400-plus-unit National Park System - and the number is younger than most people guess: the 'Mighty Five' Utah parks all arrived in the 1970s, and the newest, New River Gorge, was upgraded from river designation in December 2020. Yellowstone is the root of the family tree and of the idea worldwide: signed into being on March 1, 1872, as the first national park anywhere on earth.
The list is geographically lopsided on purpose: California and Alaska have 8 parks each (with Death Valley's basin shared into Nevada), Utah stacks 5 within a day's drive of each other, and eleven states - mostly in the Northeast and the plains - have no national park at all, a gap the River of No Return wilderness debates keep revisiting. The east's oldest is Acadia (1919); the east's only canyon-of-consequence park is New River Gorge.
Visitation is where the list stops being alphabetical: Great Smoky Mountains has run the table for decades with roughly 12 million recreation visits a year - twice what Zion and Yellowstone see - while Gates of the Arctic and Lake Clark in remote Alaska measure theirs in the tens of thousands. The same designation covers both extremes, which is why the visitor column below is the most useful planning column on the page.
How to use
- Sort mentally by the column you actually care about: state (road-trip clustering - Utah's five, the Alaska eight), year established (the 1872-1919 classics versus the 1970s-2000s additions), or 2025 visitors (the crowd forecast - anything over 4 million needs shuttle reservations in peak season).
- Read the pairings the table implies: Great Smoky Mountains (about 12.2 million) versus Gates of the Arctic (under 12,000) is a 1,000x spread under one designation; the middle band - 1 to 3 million - is where most parks live, busy but not reservation-walled.
- Check the year column against your history: parks signed before 1956 were often Boone-and-Crockett conservation plays, the 1970s cluster came from the Mission 66 era's expansion, and the 1994-2021 additions (Death Valley, Black Canyon, New River Gorge) are upgrades from other protective designations rather than newly protected land.
Frequently asked questions
How many national parks are there in the US?
Exactly 63 carry the 'national park' designation (the count below), inside the larger National Park System of 430+ units that also includes seashores, battlefields, historic sites and parkways. The number last changed in December 2020, when New River Gorge in West Virginia became the 63rd.
What are the oldest and newest national parks?
Yellowstone, March 1, 1872 - the world's first national park. The oldest in the east is Acadia (1919). The newest is New River Gorge, West Virginia, redesignated December 27, 2020 (its river protection dates to 1978); before it, the 'newest' title had sat with Indiana Dunes (February 2019, upgraded from national lakeshore) and Pinnacles (2013, from national monument).
Which states have the most national parks?
California and Alaska lead with 8 each (Death Valley is counted with California but spills into Nevada), followed by Utah with 5 - Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches, the famous Mighty Five - then Colorado with 4. Eleven states have none, concentrated in the Northeast, the Great Plains and the South.
What is the most and least visited national park?
Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited at roughly 12 million recreation visits in 2025 - no reservation system and two highway crossings keep it accessible; the runner-up band is the Grand Canyon/Zion/Rocky Mountain/Yosemite group around 5 million. The least visited is Gates of the Arctic in Alaska, with on the order of 10-12 thousand visits a year - no roads, no trails, float-plane access.
What is the difference between a national park and a national monument?
The designation is a legal line, not a beauty ranking: national parks are created by an act of Congress, while national monuments can be proclaimed by the president under the Antiquities Act - which is why many monuments (Bryce until 1919, Death Valley until 1994, White Sands until 2019) were later 'upgraded' to parks, and why the park list is short while the monument list keeps growing.