Beginning with the founding of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the National Parks system and subsequent National Park Service (founded 1916) now encompasses 62 national parks with millions of visitors each year. Below, you will find visualizations that explore the current parks system in great detail, explore the history of their growth, and help you plan a visit to a National Park!
The National Parks of the United States are sprinkled throughout our vast nation from sea to shining sea. Perhaps not surprisingly, in the large open areas in the Western half of the country, there is a denser cluster of parks with incredible landscapes. Hover your cursor over each star to unearth a couple more tidbits of information.
Each National Park has its own unique splendor and geography,
as well as its own unique boundaries and size. Some parks are
easy stops off the highway, others are colossal areas that
require veritable odysseys just to find a trailhead which can
have a significant effect on how many people are inclined to visit.
Of course, each park is also subject to the wiles of nature and
natural events or disasters can render even the largest parks
unsafe for visitation for a time.
Use the interactive graph below to pick a park and see its unique
history of visits through the years.
Beginning in 1903, when there were only six national parks (Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sequoia, Mt. Rainier, Crater Lake, Wind Cave), the map below travels over 116 years through 2019 showing the growth of the National Parks system. Each year, if a new park is established, a marker will appear in its location and for every park, circles will display and change size depending on the number of visits the park had in that year. Press play and check it out for yourself!
Hopefully after exploring some of the wonders and history of
our nation's National parks you can't wait to visit one! To visualize
the visitations of the parks on a more focused level and help you pick a
time to visit yourself, checkout the heatmap below. It includes a list of
of National Parks and their average number of visits over the past
four years for each month.
Bully for you!
Heatmap showing employee data per weekday. Heatmaps are commonly used to visualize hot spots within data sets, and to show patterns or correlations. Due to their compact nature, they are often used with large sets of data.