We Found Them! The Best Undiscovered National Parks
If you like nature, you may be one of the more than 10 million people who visited Great Smoky Mountains National Park last year or gazed at the Grand Canyon along with 4.7 million of your friends. The National Park Service recently released its visitor numbers for 2014, showing a record-high 293 million visits to parks in its system. But never fear — if you’re not into crowds, you can still find some empty space in the remote areas of the Smoky Mountains. And if you really don’t like crowds, then you should schedule a trip to some of the least-visited parks in the system — nine parks that, combined, had only 350,000 visitors in 2014.
Great Basin National Park, Nevada
Mount Wheeler in Great Basin National Park, Nevada. (Photo: Egmont Strigl/imageBROKER/Corbis)
Visitors: 107,526
Size: 77,000 acres
Located off of “America’s Loneliest Road,” near the Nevada-Utah border, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Great Basin National Park doesn’t get a ton of visitors. But it’s well worth a trip, with scenic mountain trails, a fascinating cave complex, and a grove of bristlecone pine trees, which, at 5,000 years old, are some of the oldest living things on earth.
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska
Lake and mountains in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska. (Photo: Jeremy Taylor/Flickr)
Visitors: 74,722
Size: 13.2 million acres
The largest park in the national park network, Wrangell-St. Elias is nearly twice the size of Wisconsin and big enough to swallow up Yellowstone and Yosemite and still have room for the entire nation of Switzerland (not to mention the park’s modest number of human visitors). The park has nine of the 16 tallest mountains in the U.S., a live volcano, glaciers, access to the Gulf of Alaska and the Yukon border, and just two small gravel roads providing access. Bring a good map.
Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida
Blue waters surrounding Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida. (Photo: Matthew Paulson/Flickr)
Visitors: 64,865
Size: 64,700 acres
The good news: The park is a short commute from Key West, Fla., and has beautiful beaches, snorkeling, and a scenic fort. The bad news: There’s no food, water, lodging, fuel, or road access to the islands. Visitors can arrive via a regular ferry service, sea planes, or private boat, but will need to be self-sufficient once getting there, though guided tours (and, of course, a gift shop) are available at 19th-century Fort Jefferson on the main island.
A coastal brown bear wades into a stream along Kinak Bay while fishing for salmon at Katmai National Park, Alaska. (Photo: Paul Souders/Corbis)
Visitors: 30,896
Size: 3.7 million acres
In Katmai National Park, a volcanically active area along the southern coast of Alaska that includes the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes — along with an area that could be called the “Forest of Two Thousand Bears” — it’s no surprise that human intrusion is minimal. Most visitors make a stop for bear-watching at Brooks Camp, with platforms perched above the salmon-swallowing brown bears.
North Cascades National Park, Washington
Hiking trails and stunning mountain views in North Cascades National Park, Washington. (Photo: Christopher Kimmel/www.auroraphotos.com/Corbis)
Visitors: 23,865
Size: 505,000 acres
According to the park’s website and Facebook page, “The North Cascades are calling,” but apparently not many people are answering. This scenic mountain area just a three-hour drive from Seattle received fewer visitors in 2014 than the Mariners averaged for a single baseball game. Plenty of hiking, camping, picnicking, and guided-tour opportunities are available in the alpine forests and along the rivers, and you won’t have to worry about crowds.
Lake Clark National Park, Alaska
Canoeing through Lake Clark National Park, Alaska. (Photo: Michael DeYoung/Design Pics/Corbis)
Visitors: 16,100
Size: 2.6 million acres
Your only competition while catching fish at Lake Clark will likely be the plentiful black bears patrolling the river inlets for salmon. Located in south-central Alaska, the park is not on any road system, requiring an “air taxi” to fly you in. (It’s a two-hour hop from Anchorage.) Once inside the park, it’s a good idea to have a guide, as most of the more than 2 million acres is untracked mountain (and volcanic) terrain. The good news: no admission fee!
Isle Royale National Park, Michigan
Moose in the misty lake, Isle Royale National Park, Michigan. (Photo: Jim Brandenburg/Minden Pictures/Corbis)
Visitors: 14,560
Size: 572,000 acres
You’d think a national park in the middle of America would attract more visitors, but this scenic island wilderness in the middle of Lake Superior is accessible only by ferry, private boat, and seaplane, and the whole island is closed to visitors from November 1 to April 16. While the ferries to the island can be crowded in summer, once in the backcountry, you’re as likely to see a moose or wolf as a person.
National Park of American Samoa, American Samoa
The beautiful beaches and tropical rainforests of Tutuila Island, American Samoa. (Photo: Michael Runkel/Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis)
Visitors: 13,953
Size: 9,000 acres
Admittedly, American Samoa is a bit harder to get to than the Smoky Mountains, but 14,000 still seems like a small number of people to travel to this corner of paradise in the South Pacific Ocean. The park consists of jungled rainforests across three islands, making for a beautiful tropical retreat. But you won’t be able to hike the whole park, as almost half the area is underwater in a protected marine zone. You can snorkel and dive it, though.
Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska
Oolah Valley in Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska. (Photo: Paxson Woelber, Expedition Arguk)
Visitors: 12,669
Size: 7.5 million acres.
Even if every single visitor to Gates of the Arctic chose the same day to explore the massive wilderness on the edge of the Arctic Circle, there’d still only be about one person for every 600 acres of the park. (The most congested park by this measure is Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, which would have 256 people per acre — good for a hot tub party, bad for a wilderness.) Gates of the Arctic offers the ultimate in personal space, along with an amazingly scenic — albeit inhospitable — countryside of mountains, lakes, and untracked tundra.
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