MENTAL FLOSS • August 30, 2025
National parks are more popular than ever: in 2024, the National Park Service tallied more than 331 million visits, its biggest year on record. But some states have much more of their land dedicated to national parks than others. National Park Service oversees more than 85 million acres of land across all 50 states, roughly 3.5 percent of the country’s total area. More than half of those acres are located inside a single state: Alaska. The state with the least national park land is also the smallest in the country. Rhode Island’s five acres are spread across the national memorial to Roger Williams, the Ocean State’s founder, and three other units. New national parks, historic sites, and monuments are still being established every year. Some of the newest include the Frances Perkins National Monument in Maine.