Let’s face it– as beautiful as they are, some of our national parks feel overcrowded just about all the time.
Fortunately, there are plenty of national parks that, due to various factors, are quiet by comparison. If you’re looking for the scenery of national parks without the crowds, you’ll love the parks we’re covering here.
Kobuk Valley, Alaska
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Kobuk Valley, best known for its sand dunes and massive caribou migration, is truly a place for those who want to get away from everyone and everything. You can only get to this park north of the Arctic Circle by charter plane.
Gates of the Arctic, Alaska
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The other U.S. national park in the Arctic, Gates of the Arctic, also has no roads leading to it. Towering granite peaks, frigid lakes, and endless expanses of tundra await the relative few who make the journey here.
North Cascades, Washington
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No roads penetrate the interior of this national park, and most people only see these mountains from highways and spur roads to trailheads. Truly a hiker’s park, North Cascades offers ruggedness and solitude and endless adventure.
Kings Canyon, California
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/Shutterstock.
Although the west side of the park, where paved roads lead to sequoia groves and scenic valleys, can get very crowded, the eastern side is a different story. The trailheads serving as launching points do attract a lot of visitors, but the crowds are nothing like those you find on the other side. Plus, once you’re over the passes on the crest of the High Sierra and entering the park proper, you’ll see fewer and fewer people.
Death Valley, California
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If you only visit the popular roadside stops in this national park, you’ll scratch your head over including Death Valley among quiet parks that don’t get enough attention. However, Death Valley is the largest national park in the Lower 48, and it has hundreds of miles of unpaved roads that give access to spectacular desert scenery that only a few, relatively speaking, ever see.
Channel Islands, California
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Because these islands are off the coast near Los Angeles, the logistics of getting back and forth help control the crowds. Once out there, you’ll have little trouble getting away and exploring the majesty of these islands without feeling as though you’re in some tourist trap.
Great Basin, Nevada
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Close to the eastern edge of the state, Great Basin is an alpine island in the desert. It also has surreal caverns and ancient, twisted bristlecone pines, the oldest organisms on the planet. This national park is a drive of several hours from the closest large cities, which helps keep it from feeling overrun.
Capitol Reef, Utah
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Capitol Reef is no secret, and a lot of people whizz through it on their way between the Arches/Canyonlands and Zion/Bryce Canyon areas of the state, but far fewer stop and spend much time there. Even better, there are lengthy unpaved roads that take you into remote and spectacular destinations in the northern and southern reaches of the park.
Saguaro, Arizona
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This national park is on the outskirts of Tucson, but it never seems to get too crowded except on some holiday weekends. Maybe that’s partially because there are saguaro cactuses across much of southern Arizona and you thus don;t have to visit a national park to see them. Also, it’s easy to get off the road and trail and just roam out there, making your own journey.
White Sands, New Mexico
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On holidays and during school vacations, the one road and handful of trails here can get pretty busy. Most of the rest of the time, though, they aren’t, and even when they are, there’s a simple solution: wander off among the dunes and see what no one else is seeing. Just don’t get lost!
Guadalupe Mountains, Texas
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Like North Cascades National Park, this national park that has Texas’s highest mountains is really for hikers. There’s a visitor center, and a paved highway parallels the crest of the mountains, but no roads lead into the interior, so there just aren’t that many people out there.
Theodore Roosevelt, North Dakota
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This park is pretty remote and thus lightly visited compared to our better-known national parks and those closer to large population centers. Although the roads in the main units can sometimes get busy, the trails rarely are, and you can also do cross-country wanderings. Make sure to give the bison you’ll almost certainly see plenty of space!
Wind Cave, South Dakota
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The namesake cavern of this national park sometimes gets busy, mainly on holidays and summer weekends. Above ground, however, the park feels virtually empty most of the time, as most travelers are headed through the meadows and rolling hills here to other destinations.
Voyageurs, Minnesota
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Unless you’ll be satisfied with going to a visitor center on the mainland, you have to have your own boat or arrange for a boat shuttle to experience the islands and lakes that make up the vast majority of this park. For that reason, visitation is modest at best here, and the wilderness awaits.
Biscayne, Florida
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Almost all of what makes this place special is underwater. Glass-bottom boat tours can get packed, but if you’re into snorkeling or scuba diving, you can have the amazing underwater reefs here practically to yourself.
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