Stupid Facts - National Park System (United States)

Courtesy of Hey Ranger! by Jim Burnett

• The National Park Service was established on August 25, 1916

• Largest national park site: Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska: 13,200,000 acres (an area larger than New Hampshire and Vermont combined).

• Smallest national park site: Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, Pennsylvania, 0.02 acre.

• Total number of acres in the national park system: 83 million

• The only state without a National Park Service site: Delaware

• First national park in the world: Yellowstone (Wyoming and Montana), established March 1, 1872

• Highest elevation in North America.: Mount McKinley in Denali National Park & Preserve, Alaska, 20,320 feet above sea level.

• Lowest elevation in North America.: Badwater, Death Valley National Park, California, 282 feet below sea level.

• Longest cave: Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky) with more than 345 miles of explored passageways is the longest known cave system in the world.

• Highest waterfall in the U.S.: Yosemite Falls in Yosemite National Park California has a vertical drop of 2,425 feet.

• Largest volcano on Earth: Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (Hawaii) is the largest volcano both in terms of volume and height above its base. It contains about 19,000 cubic miles of lava and rises more than 50,000 feet above its base, including the portion which is beneath the ocean.

• Deepest lake in the U.S.: Crater Lake in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, 1,932 feet deep.

• Tallest sand dunes in North America: Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, Colorado has dunes that are 750 feet high.

• Tallest active geyser in the world: Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park can erupt to more than 300 feet.

• Tallest manmade monument in the U.S.: Gateway Arch in Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri is 630 feet tall.

• Largest reservoir in the U.S.: Lake Mead at Lake Mead National Recreation Areas (Arizona/Nevada) has a volume of 29,000,000 acre feet when at maximum capacity

• Longest reservoir in the U.S.: Lake Powell in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (Utah) is 186 miles long.