There are so many beautiful national parks throughout the United States. From Maine to Florida and Seattle to San Diego, these parks each have unique and magnificent attributes that make them special, including their size. As it happens the largest seven parks are all in Alaska. Take a quick look below to learn more about these monstrous parks and what they have to offer.
Wrangell is number one on the list and is located in St. Elias Alaska. The park is 8,323,147.59 acres. It includes several mountain ranges; the Alaska, Chugach, and Wrangell-Saint Elias Ranges. More than twenty-five percent of this park of volcanic peaks is covered with glaciers.
Gates of the Arctic, also in Alaska, is 7,523,897.74 acres. This northernmost park protects part of the Brooks Range and has no park facilities. The land is home to Alaska natives, who have relied on the land and caribou for 11,000 years.
Denali is centered around Mount Mckinley, the tallest mountain in North America and spans 4,740,911.72 acres. McKinley and other peaks of the Alaska Range are covered with long glaciers and boreal forest.
Number four on the list, Katmai, is located on the Alaska Peninsula. It reaches 3,674,529.68 acres and protects the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, an ash flow formed by the 1912 eruption of Novarupta.
Death Valley, located in Nevada and California has 3,372,401.96 acres and is the hottest, lowest, and driest place in the United States. Daytime temperatures have topped 130°F (54°C) and it is home to Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere.
Glacier Bay in Alaska with 3,224,840.31 acres makes number six on our list. Glacier Bay has numerous tidewater glaciers, mountains, and fjords. When discovered in 1794 by George Vancouver, the entire bay was covered by ice, but the glaciers have receded over 65 miles.
Lake Clark, Alaska with 2,619,733.21 acres has many unique characteristics including active volcanoes, waterfalls, temperate rainforests, a tundra plateau, and three mountain ranges.
Yellowstone, one of America’s most famous National Parks, is located in three states, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, where it encompasses 2,219,790.71 acres. The first national park in the world has vast geothermal areas such as hot springs and geysers, the best-known being Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic Spring.
Kobuk Valley, Alaska is the last Alaskan park on our list and spans 1,750,716.5. Created by glaciers, the Great Kobuk, the Little Kobuk, and the Hunt River Sand Dunes can reach 100 feet high and 100 °F and they are the largest dunes in the arctic.
Florida’s notorious alligators have 1,508,537.9 acres of protection in the Everglades. The largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, this mangrove ecosystem and marine estuary is home to 36 protected species.
For more information on U.S. National Parks visit: www.nps.gov
