Alphabetical List of National Parks in the US (All 63, With the Ones Worth Going Out of Your Way For)

Most people can name maybe eight national parks off the top of their head. Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion — the famous four that appear on every road trip poster and Instagram reel. But here’s what surprises people who start actually exploring the full list: there are 63 officially designated national parks in the United States, and some of the most extraordinary ones barely get mentioned.

This is the complete alphabetical list of national parks — all 63, with state locations, and honest notes on the ones that deserve more attention than they get. Whether you’re planning a trip, working through a bucket list, or just curious about what’s actually out there, this is the list to bookmark.

A quick note on the numbers: the National Park Service manages over 433 units total — monuments, seashores, battlefields, recreation areas, historic sites. But only 63 carry the official “national park” designation. Those are the parks on this list.

The Complete Alphabetical List of All 63 US National Parks

A

• Acadia National Park — Maine
• American Samoa National Park — American Samoa (US Territory)
• Arches National Park — Utah

B

• Badlands National Park — South Dakota
• Big Bend National Park — Texas
• Biscayne National Park — Florida
• Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park — Colorado
• Bryce Canyon National Park — Utah

C

• Canyonlands National Park — Utah
• Capitol Reef National Park — Utah
• Carlsbad Caverns National Park — New Mexico
• Channel Islands National Park — California
• Congaree National Park — South Carolina
• Crater Lake National Park — Oregon
• Cuyahoga Valley National Park — Ohio

D

• Death Valley National Park — California & Nevada
• Denali National Park — Alaska
• Dry Tortugas National Park — Florida

E

• Everglades National Park — Florida

G

• Gates of the Arctic National Park — Alaska
• Gateway Arch National Park — Missouri
• Glacier Bay National Park — Alaska
• Glacier National Park — Montana
• Grand Canyon National Park — Arizona
• Grand Teton National Park — Wyoming
• Great Basin National Park — Nevada
• Great Sand Dunes National Park — Colorado
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park — Tennessee & North Carolina
• Guadalupe Mountains National Park — Texas

H

• Haleakalā National Park — Hawaii
• Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park — Hawaii
• Hot Springs National Park — Arkansas

I

• Indiana Dunes National Park — Indiana
• Isle Royale National Park — Michigan

J

• Joshua Tree National Park — California

K

• Katmai National Park — Alaska
• Kenai Fjords National Park — Alaska
• Kings Canyon National Park — California
• Kobuk Valley National Park — Alaska

L

• Lake Clark National Park — Alaska
• Lassen Volcanic National Park — California

M

• Mammoth Cave National Park — Kentucky
• Mesa Verde National Park — Colorado
• Mount Rainier National Park — Washington

N

• New River Gorge National Park — West Virginia
• North Cascades National Park — Washington

O

• Olympic National Park — Washington

P

• Petrified Forest National Park — Arizona
• Pinnacles National Park — California

R

• Redwood National Park — California
• Rocky Mountain National Park — Colorado

S

• Saguaro National Park — Arizona
• Sequoia National Park — California
• Shenandoah National Park — Virginia

T

• Theodore Roosevelt National Park — North Dakota

V

• Virgin Islands National Park — US Virgin Islands
• Voyageurs National Park — Minnesota

W

• White Sands National Park — New Mexico
• Wind Cave National Park — South Dakota
• Wrangell–St. Elias National Park — Alaska

Y

• Yellowstone National Park — Wyoming, Montana & Idaho
• Yosemite National Park — California

Z

• Zion National Park — Utah

Some Numbers Worth Knowing

Before we go further — a few stats that reframe the list in interesting ways.

California has the most national parks of any state: 9. Channel Islands, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Kings Canyon, Lassen Volcanic, Pinnacles, Redwood, Sequoia, and Yosemite. All within one state. A California-only national park road trip alone could take three weeks.

Alaska has 8 national parks — including the two largest in the country. Wrangell-St. Elias covers 13.2 million acres. For context, that’s larger than Switzerland. Gates of the Arctic is the second largest at 8.4 million acres. These two parks alone are bigger than most countries, and the vast majority of that land sees almost no visitors.

The most visited park in 2025 was Great Smoky Mountains — with around 13 million visitors. Free to enter (no entry fee, ever), straddling the Tennessee-North Carolina border, and easily accessible from the East Coast’s major cities. That combination makes it consistently the busiest park in the system.

The least visited is consistently the National Park of American Samoa — around 11,000 visitors annually. It’s the only US national park located in the Southern Hemisphere. Getting there requires a long flight to the South Pacific, which is exactly why most people never make it. Those who do tend to describe it as one of the most unspoiled places they’ve ever visited.

The Parks That Deserve Far More Attention

This is where most alphabetical lists stop — just the names and locations. But having spent time researching and in many cases visiting these parks, a few keep coming up as genuinely underrated.

Congaree, South Carolina. Barely 200,000 visitors a year. This is one of the largest intact expanses of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the Southeast — massive trees rising from a floodplain that periodically floods and drains, creating an ecosystem unlike anything else in the country. Night hikes during synchronised firefly season (late May to early June) are genuinely extraordinary. It gets overlooked almost entirely because it doesn’t have mountains or dramatic rock formations. Go anyway.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado. The canyon walls drop more than 2,700 feet — steeper and narrower than the Grand Canyon in places. In some sections, the canyon is so narrow that sunlight reaches the bottom for only 33 minutes a day. Despite this, it gets a fraction of the Grand Canyon’s visitor numbers. The South Rim drive is spectacular and takes about an hour. The inner gorge for serious hikers is a different world entirely.

Capitol Reef, Utah. The least-visited of Utah’s famous “Mighty Five” parks. No shuttle system required, rarely crowded even in peak season, and the Waterpocket Fold — a nearly 100-mile long warp in the earth’s crust — is one of the most genuinely unusual geological features in the country. The orchards in Fruita (maintained by the park) let you pick and eat fresh fruit for free in season. It’s the kind of detail that makes Capitol Reef feel like a discovery rather than a destination.

Great Basin, Nevada. The most isolated national park in the lower 48. Wheeler Peak rises to 13,063 feet and has an active glacier — one of only a handful in the entire Great Basin region. The Lehman Caves system underneath the mountain is among the most intact cave systems in the country. And because it’s surrounded by hundreds of miles of remote desert, the night sky is among the darkest in the United States. Stargazing here is borderline absurd in the best possible way.

Isle Royale, Michigan. Accessible only by seaplane or ferry, an island park in Lake Superior that gets fewer than 30,000 visitors a year. No roads. No cars. Just 165 miles of hiking trails, wolves, moose, and absolute quiet. It closes entirely from November to mid-April. For anyone who’s ever wanted a national park experience that genuinely feels like wilderness rather than managed tourism, Isle Royale is it.

The Parks That Require a Reservation in 2026

As of April 2026, eight national parks require advance reservations for entry, plus one additional monument. This list has been expanding steadily and it catches people off guard. Showing up without a reservation at the following parks during peak season means you may not get in:

• Acadia (reservations for the Park Loop Road)
• Arches (timed entry reservations required)
• Glacier (vehicle reservation for Going-to-the-Sun Road)
• Haleakalā (sunrise reservations)
• Rocky Mountain (timed entry)
• Shenandoah (certain sections during peak periods)
• Yosemite (day-use reservations for the Valley)
• Zion (shuttle system; certain hikes require permits)

Book well ahead for any of these, particularly during summer. The recreation.gov website is where all official reservations are made — not third-party booking sites, which often charge unnecessary fees for government-issued permits.

A Few Practical Notes for Working Through the List

The America the Beautiful Pass. If you’re visiting more than three national parks in a calendar year, this $80 annual pass covers entrance fees at all of them. For a family or anyone doing a summer road trip, it pays for itself almost immediately.

Not every state has a national park — only 30 states plus three territories do. Texas has two (Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains), both in the far west of the state and both among the least-visited parks in the system. Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and several other states have none.

The newest park on the list is New River Gorge, designated in December 2020. West Virginia had been lobbying for national park status for the gorge for decades. It remains one of the best whitewater rafting destinations on the East Coast and now carries the designation to match.

The oldest is Yellowstone, established in 1872 — the world’s first national park. There was no template for what a national park was supposed to be. Congress essentially invented the concept and handed Yellowstone to the nation as a result.

How to Use This List

There’s something genuinely satisfying about working through the national parks as a long-term project — not rushing to tick them off, but building visits into trips over years. Plenty of people have seen all 63; it’s a legitimate life goal. Others focus on a region, or a state, or the “undiscovered” ones that most lists skip over.

However you approach it, the alphabetical list above is the complete picture. From Acadia’s granite cliffs on the Atlantic to Zion’s towering red sandstone canyon walls — that’s the full range of what the national park system actually contains.

Start anywhere. Almost every single one of them is worth the drive.