A complete break down of the US National Parks by Size

The National Parks come in all shapes and sizes.  The largest national park in the United States is the size of Maryland.  While the smallest is 9 times smaller than Central Park in New York City, New York.  It is truly astounding when one realizes that the national parks of the United States take up 52 million acres of the land area. That is about 2% of the land area of the United States.  Here is a break down of the US National Parks by Size:

The article was published in December 2018. It was updated in July 2018, November 2019 and August 2020.

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• For Flights: Use Skyscanner to get the best prices on your flights.
• For Rental Vehicles: Browse for deals on rental cars at RentalCars.com. Or rent an RV or campervan with RVshare or Outdoorsy.
• For Hotels: I book my hotels on Hotels.com and Booking.com.
• For Vacation Rentals: I love VRBO for my vacation rentals.
• For Camping: If making camping reservations in the parks, I use Recreation.gov. For private campgrounds, I use Campspot.
• Buy Outdoor Gear: I get most of my outdoor gear at REI.
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List of the Largest National Parks

US National Parks Ranked by Size

Here are the national parks from largest to smallest.

National Park Size by State

All National Parks by Size data collected from the National Park Service Reports.

Frequently Asked Questions about National Park Size

What is the largest National Park in the US?

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the biggest National Park in the US. This massive National Park is 8,323,146.48 acres in size.

Like many Alaskan National Parks, Wrangell-St. Elias is made of two National Park Service units. Wrangell-St. Elias is both a National Park and a National Preserve. NPS treats both the Park and the Preserve as a single unit for management and staffing. Most park visitors do not differentiate these duel units as two units and when they visit one unit of the park, they count that visit as a visit to both units.

Wrangell-St. Elias National Preserve is 4.85 million acres and the combined unit of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is 13,175,799 acres. Making it the largest National Park in the United States. Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is the 2nd largest National Park in the world or the 12th largest protected area in the world.

What is the largest National Park in the lower 48 states?

Death Valley National Park is the largest National Park in the contiguous United States. Death Valley National Park is 3,373,063.14 acres in size.

Which U.S. National Park is the smallest in size?

Gateway Arch National Park is the smallest National Park in the US. Gateway Arch is made of 90.9 acres in downtown St. Louis, MO.

While Gateway Arch is the smallest of the NPS units bearing the title National Park. It is not the smallest national park in the National Park System. That title belongs to Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial. Thaddeus Kosciuszko is 0.02 acres.

How many square miles of National Parks are in the US?

The 62 National Parks of the US protect 81,423.43 square miles or 52,110,996.53 acres of land. The entire National Park System protects 132968.51 square miles or 85,099,844.97 acres of land.

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