How Many National Parks Are There In The U.S.?

Above, Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

If you've wondered how many national parks in the U.S., you're in luck. Travel + Leisure has them all listed for people who want to plan a trip to visit them.

The National Park Service is in charge of more places than just national parks and they're listed too. The Lincoln Home National Historic Site (pictured above) is one of them.

They begin with:

The United States just added a new national park to its roster of incredible public lands: New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. This West Virginia park runs along 53 miles of the New River and encompasses over 70,000 acres of the beautiful wooded gorge.  Plus, it offers plenty of opportunities for hiking, biking, climbing, and white water rafting.

Its addition to the long list of U.S. national parks made us wonder — just how many national parks are there?

The U.S. National Park Service was founded in 1916, but the country’s first national park predates it — Yellowstone National Park debuted in 1872 when President Ulysses S. Grant signed it into law. In the years since, America has amassed a total of 63 national parks, from the northern reaches of Alaska to the waters of the Florida Keys. (To see them all, you’d need to visit 30 states and two U.S. territories.)

While the National Park System comprises 423 national park sites, only 63 of them have the “National Park” designation in their names. The other sites fall into different National Park System categories like National Historic Sites, National Monuments, National Seashores, National Recreation Areas, and others. The NPS’s website has a handy U.S. National Parks map, as well as a U.S. National Parks list for reference.

Above, Wizard Island at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

To read more, go here.