Find the Nearest National Park: Which One Is Closest To Me?

How this tool works

Enter your city, use your GPS, or type coordinates. The tool computes the straight-line distance from your point to all 63 designated national parks, shows the nearest with distance and compass direction, lists the next five, and maps the route. Distances are as the crow flies, so actual driving distance will be longer, especially in mountain regions.

What you can do with it

• Find your closest national park for a weekend trip
• See the five next-nearest parks to compare options
• Check park distances from any city you are visiting
• See all 63 parks plotted on one map

Why use it

Most people can name Yellowstone and Yosemite but have no idea which park is actually closest to them, and the answer is often a surprise. One lookup settles it and suggests alternatives.

Data sources and methods

• National Park Service park list via Wikipedia (63 designated national parks)
• Natural Earth populated places (7,342 world cities with coordinates and time zones)
• OpenStreetMap Nominatim (geocoding and reverse geocoding)

All 63 US national parks

Every designated national park with its official National Park Service website:

• Acadia National Park (Maine): Rocky Atlantic coastline, granite peaks, and the first place in the US to see sunrise for much of the year.
• Arches National Park (Utah): Over 2,000 natural sandstone arches in red rock desert, including the iconic Delicate Arch.
• Badlands National Park (South Dakota): Sharply eroded buttes and spires rich in fossils, surrounded by mixed-grass prairie and bison.
• Big Bend National Park (Texas): Chihuahuan Desert wilderness along a great bend of the Rio Grande, with some of the darkest night skies in the US.
• Biscayne National Park (Florida): A park that is 95 percent water, protecting coral reefs, mangroves, and shipwrecks south of Miami.
• Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (Colorado): A canyon so narrow and deep that parts of its floor get only minutes of sunlight a day.
• Bryce Canyon National Park (Utah): Amphitheaters packed with thousands of orange hoodoo rock spires at 8,000 feet.
• Canyonlands National Park (Utah): A maze of canyons, mesas, and buttes carved by the Colorado and Green rivers.
• Capitol Reef National Park (Utah): A 100-mile wrinkle in the earth called the Waterpocket Fold, plus historic orchards you can pick from.
• Carlsbad Caverns National Park (New Mexico): More than 119 caves, including a chamber big enough to hold six football fields.
• Channel Islands National Park (California): Five undeveloped islands off Southern California, often called the Galapagos of North America.
• Congaree National Park (South Carolina): The largest intact old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the southeastern US.
• Crater Lake National Park (Oregon): The deepest lake in the US, an intensely blue caldera formed by a collapsed volcano.
• Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Ohio): A green corridor of waterfalls, forest, and a historic canal towpath between Cleveland and Akron.
• Death Valley National Park (California): The hottest, driest, and lowest national park, dropping to 282 feet below sea level.
• Denali National Park (Alaska): Six million acres of Alaskan wilderness around the highest peak in North America at 20,310 feet.
• Dry Tortugas National Park (Florida): A massive 19th century sea fort and coral reefs on remote islands 70 miles west of Key West.
• Everglades National Park (Florida): The largest subtropical wilderness in the US, a slow river of grass full of alligators and wading birds.
• Gates of the Arctic National Park (Alaska): The northernmost and least visited national park, entirely above the Arctic Circle with no roads or trails.
• Gateway Arch National Park (Missouri): The smallest national park, centered on the 630-foot stainless steel arch on the St. Louis riverfront.
• Glacier Bay National Park (Alaska): Tidewater glaciers calving into fjords that were solid ice just 250 years ago.
• Glacier National Park (Montana): A million acres of carved peaks, turquoise lakes, and the Going-to-the-Sun Road in the northern Rockies.
• Grand Canyon National Park (Arizona): The mile-deep canyon of the Colorado River, exposing nearly two billion years of rock.
• Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming): Jagged granite peaks rising 7,000 feet straight off the Jackson Hole valley floor with no foothills.
• Great Basin National Park (Nevada): Ancient bristlecone pines, the Lehman Caves, and 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak in the Nevada desert.
• Great Sand Dunes National Park (Colorado): The tallest dunes in North America, rising 750 feet against the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Tennessee): The most visited national park, famous for misty ridges, black bears, and synchronous fireflies.
• Guadalupe Mountains National Park (Texas): The highest point in Texas and the fossil remains of an ancient Permian reef.
• Haleakala National Park (Hawaii): A 10,023-foot volcano on Maui famous for sunrise views above the clouds and rare silversword plants.
• Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (Hawaii): Home of Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, with lava fields and craters.
• Hot Springs National Park (Arkansas): Historic bathhouse row built around naturally heated 143-degree spring water in Arkansas.
• Indiana Dunes National Park (Indiana): Fifteen miles of Lake Michigan shoreline with dunes, bogs, and unusually high plant diversity.
• Isle Royale National Park (Michigan): A remote Lake Superior island wilderness known for its long-running wolf and moose study.
• Joshua Tree National Park (California): Twisted Joshua trees and giant boulder piles where the Mojave and Colorado deserts meet.
• Katmai National Park (Alaska): Volcanic landscapes and the famous brown bears catching salmon at Brooks Falls.
• Kenai Fjords National Park (Alaska): Glaciers pouring off the Harding Icefield into fjords full of whales, otters, and puffins.
• Kings Canyon National Park (California): One of the deepest canyons in North America plus giant sequoia groves, managed jointly with Sequoia.
• Kobuk Valley National Park (Alaska): Arctic sand dunes and a caribou migration crossing, with no roads leading in.
• Lake Clark National Park (Alaska): Volcanoes, turquoise lakes, and brown bears in a park reachable only by plane or boat.
• Lassen Volcanic National Park (California): Boiling springs, mud pots, and all four types of volcano found on Earth in one park.
• Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky): The longest known cave system in the world, with more than 400 mapped miles.
• Mesa Verde National Park (Colorado): Nearly 5,000 archaeological sites including the cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Pueblo people.
• Mount Rainier National Park (Washington): A 14,410-foot glaciated volcano ringed by wildflower meadows above Puget Sound.
• National Park of American Samoa (American Samoa): Paleotropical rainforest, coral reefs, and fruit bat colonies across three South Pacific islands.
• New River Gorge National Park (West Virginia): The newest national park, a deep whitewater gorge crossed by a landmark steel arch bridge.
• North Cascades National Park (Washington): Over 300 glaciers in a jagged alpine wilderness just three hours from Seattle.
• Olympic National Park (Washington): Three parks in one: Pacific beaches, temperate rainforest, and glaciered peaks.
• Petrified Forest National Park (Arizona): Fossilized logs 200 million years old scattered across the colorful Painted Desert.
• Pinnacles National Park (California): Volcanic rock spires and talus caves that shelter released California condors.
• Redwood National Park (California): The tallest trees on Earth, coast redwoods approaching 380 feet, along foggy Pacific coastline.
• Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado): Trail Ridge Road tops 12,000 feet in a park with 77 peaks above 12,000 feet and abundant elk.
• Saguaro National Park (Arizona): Forests of giant saguaro cactus, the symbol of the American Southwest, flanking Tucson.
• Sequoia National Park (California): The largest trees on Earth by volume, including the General Sherman Tree, below Mount Whitney.
• Shenandoah National Park (Virginia): Skyline Drive runs 105 miles along the Blue Ridge crest with 75 overlooks.
• Theodore Roosevelt National Park (North Dakota): North Dakota badlands where Roosevelt ranched, now roamed by bison and wild horses.
• Virgin Islands National Park (US Virgin Islands): Beaches, coral reefs, and sugar plantation ruins covering most of the island of St. John.
• Voyageurs National Park (Minnesota): A water-based park of interconnected lakes on the Minnesota-Canada border, best explored by boat.
• White Sands National Park (New Mexico): The largest gypsum dunefield in the world, 275 square miles of brilliant white sand.
• Wind Cave National Park (South Dakota): One of the densest cave systems anywhere, famous for rare boxwork formations, under prairie bison herds.
• Wrangell-St. Elias National Park (Alaska): The largest national park at 13.2 million acres, bigger than Switzerland, with 9 of the 16 highest US peaks.
• Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming): The first national park in the world, home to Old Faithful, half of the geysers on Earth, and free-roaming bison and wolves.
• Yosemite National Park (California): Granite icons El Capitan and Half Dome, giant sequoias, and the tallest waterfall in North America.
• Zion National Park (Utah): A red sandstone canyon hiked from below at the Narrows and above at Angels Landing.

Related tools