LIFE Explores America's National Parks

JUST AFTER CHRISTMAS 2020, as part of a $2.3 trillion pandemic stimulus package, Congress redesignated the New River Gorge National River as a national park and preserve. The 73,000-acre spread in West Virginia lures mountain climbers with the deepest gorge in the Appalachian Mountains, and the river attracts those looking to barrel down 53 miles of whitewater. Visitors can spy kingfishers, beavers and wild turkeys, fish for smallmouth bass and muskellunge, and explore the African American Heritage trail. The U.S. National Park System is made up of 423 sites—battlefields, military parks, historical sites, memorials, parkways, preserves, rivers and the system’s rarefied category of “National Park.” These national parks are found in 30 states and two territories, an area stretching 7,500 miles from the rocky eastern shore of Maine to the…

ESTABLISHED 1919 49,077 ACRES ANNUAL VISITORS: 3.44 M In French, Acadia means “heaven on Earth,” and this ethereal stretch on Mount Desert Island was formed 12,000 years ago as retreating glaciers carved out a lake-studded land and formed its ragged granite cliffs. Financier John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought an estate here in 1910; determined to preserve the area, he not only donated 10,000 acres and bought up other properties but also began building carriage roads so others could visit. Today the park has 120 miles of sinuous roads and trails that offer sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as access to Somes Sound, with its steep bordering cliffs and fishing waters for mackerel, bluefish and striped bass. And on Cadillac Mountain, a rise that boasts the highest peak…

ESTABLISHED 1921 5,554 ACRES ANNUAL VISITORS: 1.47 M Steam billows from the ground, and the Paleo Indians, who bathed here as long as 14,000 years ago, called it the “Valley of the Vapors.” In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans called it “the Nation’s Health Sanitorium” and flocked to the park’s wellness centers to “quaff the elixir,” hoping that the silica-rich water would cure them of everything from gout to metallic poisoning. While such a panacea has long been debunked, the tiny park’s 43 thermal springs still attract those seeking to relax in the soothing waters. Seven hundred thousand gallons of the water—which averages a robust 143°F—rises through sandstone fissures a mile below the Ouachita Mountains, allowing visitors to have a soak in one of the ornate spas…

ESTABLISHED 1934 522,427 ACRES ANNUAL VISITORS: 12.55 M A scrim of blue vapor created by rising mist reflects light and imbues the air. Straddling the southern Appalachian Mountains, the Great Smoky’s 384 miles of mountain roads offer plenty of spots for visitors to lose themselves in the fog-draped landscape. This is the nation’s most visited park, and its enormous popularity is attributable in part to the fact that it is one of very few that are free year-round. Parkgoers can explore Rainbow Falls, where the tumbling waters create light-refracting bands, and also visit the park’s vast, dense forests. Along with some of the 1,500 species of flowering plants and the hundreds of varieties of ferns and fungi, the park is famed as the Salamander Capital of the World. One of…

ESTABLISHED 1935 199,224 ACRES ANNUAL VISITORS: 1.43 M Hundreds of years of farming and logging had denuded this stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountains just 75 miles from Washington, D.C. Seeking to restore it, the U.S. government acquired parcels of the land during the Great Depression. Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps—a work-relief program created by President Franklin Roosevelt—set about reforesting it with hickory, oak, fir and poplar. The park is renowned for having some of the nation’s most popular fishing streams. President Herbert Hoover had a cabin along the Rapidan River and would retreat there to catch trout. Park visitors can take in the cascading waterfalls, wooded hollows and fields of wildflowers or, in the fall, cruise along the famed 105-mile-long Skyline Drive to admire the changing foliage. Throughout…

ESTABLISHED 1941 53,012 ACRES ANNUAL VISITORS: 552,000 If you hiked through the area’s farms, woods and rivers, you would have little idea that below your feet twist 405 miles’ worth of meandering tunnels etched by water over the past 10 million years. And through this, Earth’s largest cave system, flow subterranean rivers and streams; the longest, the Green River, wends for 16 miles. This vast subterranean world is filled with dank chambers packed with stalactites hanging like vanilla icicles from the ceilings, while tapering stalagmites reach upward, all formed by the slow drip, drip, drip of calcite-rich water. Throughout the park’s dark environment live such creatures as eyeless cave fish and transparent Kentucky cave shrimp, along with 15 varieties of bats (though the bat population has dwindled). Spelunkers are welcome…