A complete reference of every US National Park officially designated by Congress. Includes the park name, state(s) it lies in, year established, area in acres, latest annual visitor count, and lat/lng coordinates for mapping.
Pro tip: “National Park” is one specific designation managed by the National Park Service — there are over 400 NPS units total (monuments, historic sites, seashores, parkways), but only 63 carry the full National Park name. This dataset is just the 63.
Select which columns to include in your download.
About the US National Parks Dataset
The National Park System manages over 400 sites, but only a subset are designated National Parks by Act of Congress. National Parks are typically large natural areas with diverse resources and minimal infrastructure modification. The first was Yellowstone in 1872; the most recent additions are New River Gorge (2020) and Indiana Dunes (2019, redesignated from National Lakeshore).
Common Use Cases
Travel-planning apps, road-trip itinerary builders, outdoor and adventure content sites, geo-targeting for national-park-related advertising, education resources, photographer location databases, ranger employment portals, and tourism-data dashboards.
Column Reference
- park_name — official park name as designated by Congress.
- state — state(s) the park spans (slash-separated when multi-state).
- established_year — year the National Park designation was granted.
- area_acres — total area in acres including all park lands.
- annual_visitors_2023 — most recent NPS reported annual visitor count.
- latitude / longitude — park centroid coordinates.
Multi-State Parks
Five National Parks span multiple states or territories: Great Smoky Mountains (TN/NC), Yellowstone (WY/MT/ID), the original three. Some park complexes share names across state lines (Grand Teton and Yellowstone are contiguous but separately designated). Use the state column as a string match rather than splitting it programmatically unless you handle slash delimiters.
Visitor Counts Update Annually
NPS publishes visitor counts each spring for the prior year. The numbers in this dataset reflect the most recent NPS publication. We refresh annually around May; check the last-updated timestamp at the top of this page for the current figures.
