(Image: US Fish & Wildlife Service; Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado)
Yellowstone, the Great Smoky Mountains, Mt. Rainier, Yosemite… the names of the USA’s great national parks are branded on the memory of the world. These are places of volcanoes, towering mountains and explosive geysers unlike anywhere else on Earth, and their visitors numbers are accordingly off the scale.
But what about America’s other National Parks? The obscure, the small, the hard-to-get to, and forgotten? Of the 58 Parks currently in existence, dozens are effectively unknown, despite containing some of the most-dramatic scenery in the whole of North America. Here are 10 of America’s least-known, least-visited, yet visually-stunning national parks.
(Want more? Check out Urban Ghosts’ definitive guide to the national parks of England and Wales.)
Capitol Reef National Park, Utah (Est.1971)
(Image: Bigtimepeace)
Situated in the wide emptiness of Utah, Capitol Reef is sometimes called the last word in isolation. Seventy-eight miles from the nearest traffic light, the national park quietly hangs in a state of suspended animation. Ochre cliffs tower above fertile green plains brought to life long ago by early settlers. Strange rock formations jut out of the flat landscape, clawing at the heavens. Cowboys still ride across this eerie, sunset land, like extras wandering across a vast, abandoned film set.
The rocks of the park are famous in their home state for their peculiar, layered quality. Millions of years of geological activity has created exposed cliff faces that shift colour in striking bands that loop and unfold across their surfaces. It looks not unlike a mad giant has gotten hold of a paint roller and amused himself by decorating the natural landscape.
Despite its respectable visitor numbers (around 750,000 a year), Capitol Reef still retains a feel of otherworldly solitude impossible to find in better-known parks.
Congaree National Park, South Carolina (Est.2003)
(Image: Miguel.v)
One of America’s newest National Parks, Congaree is also one of its least-visited. Barely 100,000 people make the trek out here on an average year – around as many as Yellowstone gets in January alone. Yet those who make the effort are rewarded with entrance into a raw wilderness that has never been tamed; a dense and living swampland alive with some of the eastern US’s oldest bald cypresses.
While most of the great woodlands in the region fell to the lumber industry long ago, Congaree was protected by its remoteness, and the difficulty of navigating its densely-packed waterways. Thank God it was. Today, piloting a small boat through its center is like entering another world. Spanish moss dangles from branches and butterweed coats the water’s surface. Bobcats prowl this slice of backcountry, as river otters flit between trees and woodpeckers stir up a chorus of drilling. This is South Carolina as it was before the Europeans came; untamed and beautiful.
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado (Est.2004)
(Image: Phil Armitage)
It’s said approaching Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado is like walking into an hallucination. Visible from miles away, the sand dunes cluster at the foot of mountains, seemingly dwarfed by their ancient, rocky cousins. It’s only as you get closer that the full scale of the dunes themselves hits you. Topping out at 750 ft, these are less dunes than living mountains of sand.
The numbers behind the dunes are phenomenal. 40 mph winds blast across their surface day and night, throwing up huge clouds of grit. The smallest dunes are capable of moving several feet in a single week. Yet a combination of winds funneled from different directions keeps them seemingly static – a permanent feature of the Colorado landscape.
Not that they appear static to those encountering them for the first time. The great dunes have been compared to everything from a sea lashing out in a storm to an ever-shifting fairy tale playground. The largest sand dunes in the whole of North America, they’re nothing if not unique.
Isle Royale National Park, Michigan (Est.1940)
(Image: Ray Dumas)
The least-visited National Park in the Mainland United States, Isle Royale is also perhaps the most mysterious. A 45 mile long island rising out the stormy waters of Lake Superior some 56 miles from Michigan, the Park is almost untouched by humanity. Only 16,000-odd visitors come here each year, fewer than Yellowstone receives in a typical day, and there are no cars, hotels or lodgings. Isle Royale is wilderness in the truest sense of the word, for better and for worse.
For unprepared visitors, this is definitely for ‘the worse’. The island is rough and rude. Moose and wolves roam freely. Paths are bogged down or overgrown. Clouds of blackflies and mosquitoes float above the landscape, ready to descend and make walkers’ lives a living hell. But if you can stomach the hardships and soldier on, the results are more than worth it. Often ringed with fog and near-pristine, Isle Royale is a paradise for wildlife and hikers looking to escape the bustle of modern life. Although its visitor numbers may be low, those who make the journey out are frequently the ones who return, time and time again.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota (Est.1978)
(Image: Matt Zimmerman)
Badlands National Park to the south may get all the visitors, but Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota is one of the most-stunning stretches of badlands left in the whole of America. An almost mystical place, dense with rare animals and watched over by undulating hills that take on wildly different colours as the sun slides up and down the horizon. This is the badlands as they were hundreds of years ago: harsh, remote, and almost unbearably lonely.
The national park is also unique for its inseparable connection to a single man. Teddy Roosevelt spent 13 years on this rugged terrain, cattle ranching, horseback riding and hunting buffalo – an experience he later said physically prepared him for the hard slog of the presidency. It was created specifically to celebrate 26th President and all his contributions to the national parks service, an honour yet to be extended to any other public figure.
Yet even if you aren’t interested in history, Theodore Roosevelt Park remains a place to see. A rugged, rough and tumble world where great men have been forged in nature’s fire.
National Park of American Samoa, American Samoa (Est.1988)
(Image: Peter Craig)
It’s likely no other National Park on Earth is as remote as the National Park of American Samoa. Lost in the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean, it is as far from Hawaii as Hawaii is from San Francisco. Getting there requires fortitude and careful planning (or, alternatively, bundles of cash and a private jet). Those who make the long journey will be rewarded with sights unlike any others in the whole of the United States.
The first thing that strikes you about this national park is its largely aquatic nature. The park is divided between three separate islands over a large stretch of territory, and takes in much marine life in between. For visitors, that means pristine white beaches, clear blue waters, coral reefs and vast volcanic ridges rising from virgin forest. It was here that the Polynesian people were born, before spreading out across the endless Pacific. Interestingly, the park itself is only leased from the Samoan chiefs who still live here, on a 50 year contract. That makes the National Park of American Samoa so much rarer and more precious. After all, 30-odd years from now, it could vanish forever.
Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Alaska (Est.1980)
(Image: Paxson Woelber)
Imagine an empty world where the sun never sets. A jagged, bitter landscape of ice and rock and burning wind. A place so far from any trace of humanity that a mere 11,000 people make the pilgrimage there each year, braving inhospitable logging roads and precarious two-man plane flights. Welcome to Gates of the Arctic, the northernmost pational park in the whole of the United States. Situated within the Arctic Circle, the interior of this American national park is about as far from civilization as you can possibly get.
Those who brave the long journey are confronted by a landscape as brutal as it is tender. The winding rivers, broken peaks and distant glaciers speak of a harsh and unforgiving world, yet Gates of the Arctic is also surprisingly fragile. According to National Geographic, a single hiker’s footstep can destroy lichen that have taken 150 years to grow. Then there are the grizzlies, wolverines, wolves and caribou that roam the land, foraging for food, always only a single slip away from starvation. This is nature at its deadliest and most-delicate, a land of midnight sun and freezing rain… and awe-inspiring beauty.
Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas (Est.1921)
(Image: Chris Light)
Every American national park fan should take at least one trip to Hot Springs in Arkansas. The smallest national park, it spreads over a mere 22.46 sq km (however, it is not the smallest area under the protection of the National Park Service. That honour goes to the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, which covers just 0.02 acres). Yet a lot of history is packed into this tiny space. By some measures, Hot Springs can consider itself the oldest National Park in existence.
Forty years before the creation of Yellowstone, Andrew Jackson signed a law making Hot Springs a ‘special reservation’. Although it technically didn’t become a national park until 1921, this still marked the first time a wilderness area was given such protection in law. Except Hot Springs isn’t a wilderness. Not really. Uniquely for a national park, it borders right onto a spa town, which has long used its natural springs to restore and replenish the frail and moneyed.
Because of this, Hot Springs Park is inseparable from Hot Springs the town. Wandering its small area means also taking in its great bathhouses and Art Deco spas, each as grand and as handsome now as the day when they opened.
Wrangell-St Elias, Alaska (Est.1983)
(Image: Eric Rolph)
Mere words cannot do justice to the sheer, awe-inspiring majesty of America’s largest national park. At over 53,000 sq km, Wrangell-St. Elias is larger than Belgium, Israel and Luxembourg combined. One of its glaciers – Malaspina – is bigger than Rhode Island (for our UK readers, imagine a field of ice the size of Cornwall). It’s an endless, shifting landscape of ice, a place where you can fly for an hour straight over an endless electric blue icefield that seemingly has no end in sight. This is nature as God always intended it: raw, dangerous, magnificent.
The American national park’s centerpiece is its magnificent abundance of glaciers. There are over 150 crammed in here, nestling between mountains that contain 9 of the 16 highest US peaks. So astonishing are their diversity that areas of the park (along with neighboring parts of Canada) have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. If you had the time and inclination, you could spend a lifetime trekking their contours and still not see everything the park has to offer.
Pinnacles National Park, California (Est.2013)
(Image: Inklein)
This is it: the newest national park in the whole of the United States. Only created in 2013, Pinnacles is the new kid on the block, the unknown park with everything to prove. But locals needn’t worry about being overlooked. Their national park has enough twisted rock formations and jaw-dropping sights to become a future big hitter.
Pinnacles gets its name from its delightfully freakish geology. 150 million years ago, volcanic rock was spewed into the air, eventually settling to create a series of jagged peaks and broken towers. Seen from a distance, it looks like dozens of giants are hiding underground, thrusting their stubby fingers out through the earth. This is about as close to the surreal rock wonderland of Turkey’s world-famous Cappadocia as you can get.
A Mecca for adrenaline junkies, Pinnacles is also capable of strange and silent beauty. Seen toward sunset, as the dying light of the day turns the peaks an otherworldly red, it can seem like the most lonely, alien place in the entire world. (It does have competition, though – explore the spectacular Pinnacles Desert in Western Australia.)
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