National Park Service

National Park Service: management of United States national parks

The National Park Service (NPS) is a U.S. federal agency responsible for the conservation of special places and for facilitating public access to them. Its official website, hosted on the nps.gov domain, serves as an information and planning portal for national parks and other sites managed by the entity.

Explore the parks

The platform allows users to search for parks by state, with a listing that covers all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and territories such as American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. It also offers themed tours through the country's history and natural heritage.

Nature and history topics

The content is organized into major thematic areas. In the natural realm, groups such as amphibians and reptiles, bats, bears, birds, bison, dinosaurs, fish, insects, mammals, migratory species, mushrooms and fungi, pollinators, wildflowers, and urban wildlife are covered. Phenomena and processes such as air, climate change, diseases and pests, erosion, fire, fossils and paleontology, geology, glaciers, oceans, rocks and minerals, volcanoes, and watersheds are also addressed.

Regarding landscapes, formations such as arches, buttes and rock formations, the Arctic, canyons and canyonlands, caves, caverns and karst, coasts and seashores, deserts, dunes, forests, woods and shrublands, glaciers, grasslands and prairies, islands and atolls, lakes, mountains, rivers, trails, the tropics, waterfalls and gorges, and wetlands, marshes and swamps are cataloged.

The historical and cultural section includes abandoned places, accidents and disasters, armories, battlefields, bridges, buildings, canals, cemeteries, courthouses, dams, factories, farms, fire towers and lookouts, forts, gardens, homes, jails and prisons, lighthouses, mills, mines, monuments and memorials, national cemeteries, plantations, railroads and trains, ranches, routes, roads and parkways, schools, ships and shipwrecks, and trading posts and markets.

Artistic and cultural expressions such as architecture and building, arts in the parks, literature and poetry, murals, music, painting, petroglyphs and rock art, photography, pottery and sculpture, religion and spirituality, and parks in pop culture are also included.

People and government

The site dedicates sections to American military history, the American Revolution, civil rights, colonization and settlement, the conservation movement, courts, Congress and the law, enslavement and abolition, explorers and exploration, human migration, immigration, Japanese American confinement, labor history, African American heritage, Alaska Native heritage, American Indian heritage, Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage, Native Hawaiian heritage, urban America, women's history, presidential inauguration, presidents, prohibition and temperance, the Reconstruction era, segregation and desegregation, and the Underground Railroad.

In the realm of conflict and war, the Civil War, Cold War, French and Indian War, Korean War, US-Mexican War, Revolutionary War, Spanish-American War, Vietnam War, war at sea, War of 1812, World War I, and World War II are covered, along with military leaders, military medicine, monuments and memorials, and presidents at war.

Visit and education resources

The website offers trip planning guides, with recommendations for preparing to visit the parks. It features sections on featured stories, such as the 250th anniversary of the United States, National Public Lands Day, fall foliage, and back to school. For the educational field, lesson plans, in-park and remote virtual learning, and teacher training are offered, presenting the parks as outdoor classrooms. Users can also access photos, videos, webcams, and audio files, and subscribe to a newsletter.

Accessibility and legal notices

The site includes links to accessibility policies, privacy, FOIA, the No Fear Act, disclaimer, vulnerability disclosure policy, the Office of Civil Rights, and USA.gov. It states that this is an official website of the United States government and that pages with a .gov domain belong to an official government organization.