U.S. national parks checklist: how many of the 63 have you visited?

Ask anyone who loves the outdoors how many national parks they've been to and you'll get a guess, never a number. "A dozen? Maybe fifteen?" But almost nobody has actually sat down and counted. So let's count.

There are 63, scattered across nearly every landscape the country has, from the red-rock canyons of Utah to the glaciers of Alaska and the volcanoes of Hawaii. Tick off the ones you've been to as you read, and you'll probably land on a number that surprises you, one way or the other.

The checklist

Here's all 63. Tick off the ones you've set foot in, and your progress saves on this device so you can come back later.

California and the Pacific Northwest

The densest cluster on the map. California alone holds nine parks, from the granite cathedral of Yosemite and the giant trees of Sequoia and Kings Canyon to the surreal heat of Death Valley and the tide pools of Channel Islands. Head north and the Pacific Northwest takes over: Crater Lake in Oregon, then Olympic, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades stacked up the Washington coast. A single West Coast summer can rack up a serious count.

Canyon country and the Southwest

The postcard parks. Utah's "Mighty 5", Zion, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef, sit within a few hours of each other and make the classic Southwest road-trip loop. Add the Grand Canyon and Saguaro in Arizona, Carlsbad Caverns and the dunes of White Sands in New Mexico, Great Basin in Nevada, and the wide-open Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains down in Texas.

The Rockies and the Mountain West

Big peaks and bigger skies. Yellowstone and Grand Teton anchor Wyoming, Glacier crowns Montana, and Colorado stacks up four of its own: Rocky Mountain, Mesa Verde, Great Sand Dunes, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Out on the plains you'll find the Badlands and Wind Cave in South Dakota and Theodore Roosevelt up in North Dakota.

The East and the South

The parks people forget the country even has. Great Smoky Mountains, on the Tennessee and North Carolina line, is the most-visited park in the whole system. Acadia holds down the coast of Maine, Shenandoah runs the ridgeline of Virginia, and New River Gorge is West Virginia's newest addition. Then come the quieter ones: Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, Congaree in South Carolina, Hot Springs in Arkansas, the Everglades, Dry Tortugas, and Biscayne down in Florida, plus Cuyahoga Valley, Indiana Dunes, Isle Royale, Voyageurs, and the Gateway Arch across the Midwest.

Alaska

The wild ones, and the ones most people save for last. Alaska has eight parks, several of them roadless and larger than entire states: Denali, Katmai, Lake Clark, Gates of the Arctic, Kenai Fjords, Glacier Bay, Wrangell–St. Elias, and Kobuk Valley. Getting to even a couple of these is a trip you plan a life around.

The islands and territories

The furthest-flung of all. Hawaiʻi Volcanoes and Haleakalā sit in the middle of the Pacific, National Park of American Samoa is the only U.S. park south of the equator, and Virgin Islands National Park guards a stretch of Caribbean coast. These are the stamps that finally close out the collection.

See the whole collection

Every park has its own stamp in Stampie's U.S. National Parks collection, ready to add to your travel journal the moment you visit.

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U.S. National ParksPRO

63 stamps

A friendly note: Stampie is a small indie project made by people who love travel and collecting stamps. Our park stamps are our own designs, curated by our editorial team, not official National Park Service arrowheads, logos, or seals. They're just a fun way to mark where you've been. 🏞️

Keep your count for real

The checklist above is a nice start, but it lives on one device. To keep your parks for good, sync them across your phone and the web, and sit them next to every country, state, and city you've visited, that's what Stampie is for. Each park becomes a stamp you can keep in your travel journal, with your photos and the dates you went, ready to revisit any time.

So, how many of the 63 have you got so far?