Don't get us wrong, we're huge fans of Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon is one of the most spectacular places on Earth. But we're also firm believers that America has dozens of national parks that are just as stunning, but which rarely make it onto travelers' radars, despite having endless reasons to visit. So we've put together a guide to the 21 underrated national parks to add to your list.
Click through the gallery to see our well-traveled editorial team's favorite unappreciated national parks – and how we've ranked them...
Spectacularly biodiverse, this pocket-sized park in South Carolina has the largest intact expanse of old-growth hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern US. Much of Congaree is floodplain, and it’s best explored via the boardwalks that twist through the park, or by kayak (the Congaree River Blue Trail is a great option for visitors relying on the latter).
The park is especially popular with bird-spotters, with many who visit hoping to glimpse its red-cockaded woodpeckers.
This is one of North America’s least-visited national parks – on average, it receives just 390,000 visitors a year. To put that into perspective, the Grand Canyon gets around five million.
It’s a wonderfully wild place, and one of the most popular activities is a hike across the Harding Icefield, one of only four major icecaps in America and a remnant of the Pleistocene ice masses that once covered half of Alaska.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the highlight of this beautiful park is Crater Lake, a sapphire-blue body of water surrounded by 1,970-foot cliffs. The lake is the world’s seventh-deepest crater lake and formed inside the caldera of Mount Mazama, which exploded almost 8,000 years ago.
The best time to visit the park is between July and October, although it’s also popular in spring, when wildflowers fill its meadows with color. Accommodation in Crater Lake National Park includes the historic Crater Lake Lodge, built in 1915.
The Grand Canyon National Park might be one of Arizona’s most famous parks, but Saguaro National Park is just as beautiful. Famous for its biodiversity and towering saguaro cacti (known as "kings of the desert,") it’s incredibly easy to explore, thanks to a network of hiking trails and scenic driving routes which weave between thick forests of pine and conifer trees.
The park is the ancestral home of the Tohono O’odham people, who come here in the summer to pick saguaro fruit.
One of America’s newest national parks was established in 2020. Its highlight is a 52-mile chunk of the New River, formed 260 million years ago. The waterway carves its way through the park’s stunning gorge, and one of its most visited spots is the 3,030-foot-long steel bridge that spans the river and claims the accolade of being America’s longest steel arch bridge.
Other unmissable locations include Canyon Rim (a great place from which to soak up views of the park) and Sandstone Falls – the New River’s starting point.
For proof that bigger isn’t always better, look no further than this Floridian paradise, 70 miles west of Key West. Covering 99 square miles, the park consists mainly of open water and coral reefs, although it’s also home to Fort Jefferson, a hexagonal fort built in 1846 to protect one of the most strategic deep-water anchorages in North America.
Once home to over 2,000 people, it can be explored on tours led by park rangers.
Exploring this park is like taking a step back in time – countless sea fossils and dinosaur bones have been found here, and it’s also regarded as one of America’s top stargazing spots. In addition to a 90-mile network of roads, a 117-mile stretch of the Rio Grande borders the park, making it a fantastic spot for kayaking, rafting, and stand-up paddleboarding.
Accommodation options include, rather unexpectedly, the world’s first 3D printed hotel, El Cosmico.
Kings Canyon is split into two areas – Grant Grove and Cedar Grove. Both are filled with enormous sequoias, although no visitor should miss Redwood Canyon, the world’s largest remaining grove of sequoia trees.
Famous for its jagged gorges, the park was a favorite retreat of 19th-century mountain climber John Muir, who called it "a rival to Yosemite."
It’s hard to pick a favorite spot in this ridiculously diverse park. For some, it’s the Lehman Caves, with their supersized stalagmites, while for others it’s the fragrant clusters of bristlecone pine, a rare species that can survive for up to 4,000 years.
The park's most scenic places include Teresa Lake, which is one of the locations on the Alpine Lakes Loop Trail, and the Mather Overlook, which is the best spot to soak up views of Wheeler Peak.
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While Utah’s Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks are famous for their rock formations, Capitol Reef National Park can feel much more open, with endless expanses of shrub-dotted prairie fringed by soaring peaks.
Not that there aren’t plenty of geological features here too – it’s filled with cliffs, canyons, and domes, and the highlight is the Waterpocket Fold, a 99-mile warp in the Earth’s crust which pushed layers of sedimentary rock to the surface 50 million years ago.
This is a brilliant place for wildlife fans – due to its remote location, certain species such as wolves and moose thrive here, and the park’s animals and plants have been the focus of countless studies. Isle Royale is an island on Lake Superior and is littered with chlorastrolite deposits – striking green semi-precious stones.
It’s also popular with scuba divers who come here to explore the countless wrecks (including paddle steamers and steel freighters) on the lakebed.
This stunning park is a 218,055-acre mosaic of lakes, wetlands, and forests, and a brilliant destination for anyone who loves being on the water, thanks to its four main lakes and 26 smaller ones. If you’re staying inside the park, book a room at the Kettle Falls Hotel, constructed in 1913.
Spring and summer are the most popular times to visit, although we recommend checking it out in winter, when activities on offer include seeing the Northern Lights, ice fishing, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing.
Beaches are overrated – it’s Colorado, not California or Florida, which has America’s highest sand dunes. Which brings us onto the park’s most popular activity: sandboarding and sand-sledding down its towering dunes (you’ll need to bring your own kit, but there are plenty of places to hire or buy equipment in nearby San Luis Valley).
There’s also a huge network of hiking trails, much of which was first created by the park’s first inhabitants, which include the Ute, Cheyenne, Apache, and Pueblo tribes.
This park’s pièce de résistance is the world’s longest cave system, which stretches for over 372 miles. Thankfully, you don’t need to explore it like the very first visitors, who used flaming reed torches to light the way. Park rangers lead regular tours of the cave, which has electric lights throughout.
In some parts of the cave, you’ll be able to see the names of some of the first visitors, who used torches to smoke their names onto the cave’s walls.
Here are some staggering numbers about this stunning New Mexico national park. This haven for wildlife has 54 reptile species, 357 bird species, 17 bat species, 67 mammal species, and 357 bird species. But that’s not the only reason to visit this often-overlooked wilderness, which is famous for its towering cacti.
The star of the show is the Carlsbad Cavern. It’s home to America’s third-largest cave chamber, which is 4,002 feet long and 225 feet high.
This Californian paradise is made up of five islands (San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, and Santa Barbara) off southern California, and it’s also been a Biosphere Reserve since 1976. There are no hotels on the islands, which is why most people base themselves in Ventura or Oxnard, which are a 90-minute drive from LA.
They’re fantastic wildlife-spotting destinations (whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions can be seen year-round), and the glass-clear water attracts divers from around the world.
This high-altitude playground covers 787 square miles of the Cascade mountain range, and it’s one of America’s least-visited national parks. The most popular activities include fishing, boating, and horseback riding, and it’s a magnet for trekkers – over 300 glaciers in the park can be reached on foot.
It’s also got 260 prehistoric sites, including former sheep herders' camps, sawmills, and homesteads, many of which have contributed to our understanding of the Indigenous groups that once inhabited this region.
Famous for its soft peaks of white gypsum sand, this New Mexico park has endless appeal, partly because it’s constantly changing – the sand dunes shift by around 32 feet every year.
A tangle of trails fans out through the park, but choose your route carefully, because their difficulty level ranges from easy to incredibly tough.
Love volcanoes but don’t know your fissures from your fumaroles? Head to Northern California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, which has four types of volcanoes and more hydrothermal activity than you can shake a stick at. Camp or stay at Drakesbad Guest Ranch (the park’s only lodge), although most visitors choose to stay just outside the park.
Once you’re inside, the best way to explore it is by driving the 30-mile Lassen Volcanic National Park Highway.
Proof that California isn’t just about beaches comes courtesy of Pinnacles National Park, formed 23 million years ago in the wake of various volcanic eruptions. The result is a stunning expanse of canyons, forests, and twisting stone spires. The park turned 10 in 2023, marking a decade since its designation by Barack Obama.
Today, it’s the wildlife that attracts many of its visitors, who flock (excuse the pun) to see peregrine falcons, golden eagles, and California condors.
This Colorado stunner takes the top spot by being a double whammy of greatness – it’s not just a national park, but a dark sky park too. Its dramatic landscape is a jagged explosion of craggy chunks of metamorphic rock pushed to the surface almost 30 million years ago, and it’s a magnet for mountain climbers.
We recommend camping in order to make the most of the park’s dark sky status, which is carefully preserved – all outdoor lighting devices use low-energy with shields that direct light to the ground.
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