Jul 18 2024
Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve is Alaska wilderness on a scale that can be difficult to comprehend. Spanning more than 13 million acres, it is the largest national park in the United States, protecting an immense landscape of glaciers, active volcanoes, snow-covered mountains, braided rivers, forests, tundra, historic mining communities, and remote backcountry. Located …
Jul 17 2024
Wind Cave National Park protects two remarkably different landscapes within a single corner of South Dakota’s Black Hills. Above ground, bison, elk, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and other wildlife roam through rolling mixed-grass prairie and ponderosa pine forest. Beneath that landscape lies Wind Cave, a vast three-dimensional maze containing more than 167 miles of surveyed passages …
Jul 16 2024
White Sands National Park protects one of the most unusual desert landscapes in the United States: seemingly endless waves of brilliant white gypsum dunes rising from New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin. Surrounded by rugged mountains and deep blue desert sky, the dunes can look more like snowdrifts than sand, particularly when afternoon light softens their curves …
Jul 15 2024
Voyageurs National Park is a landscape where water replaces roads. Spread across more than 218,000 acres of northern Minnesota near the Canadian border, the park protects a vast network of interconnected lakes, rocky islands, boreal and northern hardwood forests, wetlands, ancient cliffs, and quiet backcountry waterways. For much of the year, boats are the primary …
Jul 14 2024
Theodore Roosevelt National Park protects some of the most dramatic badlands scenery in the northern Great Plains, where the Little Missouri River winds through colorful buttes, grasslands, cottonwood bottoms, and deeply eroded ravines. Located in western North Dakota, the park is divided into three separate areas: the South Unit, North Unit, and remote Elkhorn Ranch …
Jul 13 2024
Shenandoah National Park protects a long, narrow section of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where forested ridges rise above the Shenandoah Valley and the Piedmont. Waterfalls tumble through wooded hollows, rocky summits provide sweeping Appalachian views, black bears roam oak forests, and more than 500 miles of hiking trails explore nearly 200,000 acres of protected mountain …
Jul 12 2024
Sequoia National Park is a place built around extremes. Ancient giant sequoias rise like living skyscrapers from the Sierra Nevada forest, deep river canyons cut through the foothills, granite domes overlook vast wilderness, and Mount Whitney reaches the highest elevation in the contiguous United States. Located in California’s southern Sierra Nevada, the park contains far …
Jul 11 2024
Saguaro National Park protects one of the defining landscapes of the American Southwest: a Sonoran Desert forest filled with towering saguaro cacti, rugged mountains, rocky washes, desert grasslands, and surprisingly diverse wildlife. Surrounding Tucson, Arizona, the park is divided into two separate districts—the Tucson Mountain District to the west and the Rincon Mountain District to …
Jul 10 2024
Rocky Mountain National Park protects one of the most spectacular sections of Colorado’s Front Range, where glacier-carved valleys rise toward alpine lakes, tundra, rugged ridgelines, and peaks exceeding 13,000 and 14,000 feet. Located northwest of Denver between Estes Park and Grand Lake, the park encompasses roughly 265,800 acres and more than 350 miles of hiking …
Jul 09 2024
Redwood National Park protects a landscape that feels almost prehistoric. Along California’s far northern coast, immense coast redwoods rise hundreds of feet above carpets of ferns, moss-covered logs, clear streams, and shadowy forest floors. Beyond the trees are open prairies filled with Roosevelt elk, wild rivers flowing toward the Pacific, rugged beaches, sea stacks, tide …
