List of national parks of the United States

The United States has 59 secured ranges known as national stops that are worked by the National Park Service, an office of the Department of the Interior. National parks must be set up by a demonstration of the United States Congress. The principal national park, Yellowstone, was marked into law by President Ulysses S. Gift in 1872, trailed by Mackinac National Park in 1875 (decommissioned in 1895), and after that Rock Creek Park (later converged into National Capital Parks), Sequoia and Yosemite in 1890. The Organic Act of 1916 made the National Park Service "to moderate the view and the characteristic and memorable items and natural life in that, and to accommodate the pleasure in the same in such way and by such means as will abandon them whole for the happiness regarding future generations." Many current National Parks had been already ensured as National Monuments by the President under the Antiquities Act before being redesigned by Congress. Seven national parks (six in Alaska) are matched with a National Preserve. While directed together, they are considered as discrete units and their regions are excluded in the figures beneath.

Criteria for the choice of National Parks incorporate common magnificence, novel topographical elements, bizarre biological systems, and recreational open doors (however these criteria are not generally thought to be as one). National Monuments, then again, are as often as possible decided for their authentic or archeological essentialness.

Twenty-seven states have national parks, as do the regions of American Samoa and the United States Virgin Islands. California has the most (nine), trailed by Alaska (eight), Utah (five), and Colorado (four). The biggest national park is Wrangell–St. Elias in Alaska: at more than 8 million sections of land (32,000 km2), it is bigger than each of the nine littlest states. The following three biggest parks are likewise in Alaska. The littlest park is Hot Springs, Arkansas, at under 6 thousand sections of land (24 km2). The aggregate zone secured by national parks is roughly 51.9 million sections of land (210,000 km2), for a normal of 895 thousand sections of land (3,620 km2) yet a middle of just 317 thousand sections of land (1,280 km2). The most-went to national park is Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, with more than ten million guests in 2014, trailed by Arizona's Grand Canyon, with more than 4.7 million. Interestingly, just 12,669 individuals went by the remote Gates of the Arctic in Alaska around the same time. Fourteen national parks are assigned UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS).

A couple of previous national parks are no more assigned thusly, or have been disbanded. Different units of the National Park Service (413 inside and out) are now and again inaccurately or comprehensively alluded to as national parks; they are recorded here.- 4

See also

Rundown of regions in the United States National Park System

Rundown of the United States National Park System official units (the 413)

History of the National Park Service

Rundown of National Monuments of the United States

Rundown of U.S. National Forests

Rundown of World Heritage Sites in the United States

Outside links

Official site of the National Park Service

Discover a Park by the NPS

The National Parks: America's Best Idea by PBS

Guest use measurements

America's Natural Heritage - The Essential Guide to the National Parks by the Washington Post