Photos: National Parks Hidden Gems

Gates of the Arctic National Park, Alaska
Photograph by Alaska Stock Images, National Geographic
April 17-25 is National Park Week, with free entrance to 392 sites administered by the National Park Service. But, if you do your research, you can find free national parks year-round: 246 park properties—including national monuments, historic sites, and battlefields—never charge admission.
Waived fees next week may not have much financial impact at, say, Pinnacles National Monument in California, where vehicle admission is $5, but they could well make a difference in a family’s ability to see Grand Canyon National Park, where the normal rate is $25 per vehicle.
Of the 58 sites with national park designation (not monuments, historical sites, and other properties in the national parks system), four, including Gates of the Arctic, lie in remote, roadless Alaska. Gates, which is always free, saw just 11,397 registered visitors in 2008, making it the fifth least-visited national park that year.
—Mel White
Mel White is the author of National Geographic's Complete National Parks of the United States, released in February 2010.
Published April 15, 2010
Katmai National Park, Alaska
Photograph by Kelley Deutmeyer, My Shot
Year after year, tens of millions of visitors spend time in the nation's parks and monuments. Few of those travelers, though, make it to remote Alaska.
Originally a national monument, Katmai was created in 1918 to preserve a 40-square-mile ash flow deposited by Novarupta Volcano. It was made a national park and preserve in 1980, and came in fourth on the least-visited list in 2008, with 7,970 registered visitors. Entrance is always free.
Published April 15, 2010
Lake Clark National Park, Alaska
Photograph courtesy National Park Service
With quiet, watery, volcanic landscapes, Alaska's Lake Clark National Park received 6,802 registered visitors in 2008, making it the third least-visited property on the national park roster.
Because they are remote and difficult to get to, many of Alaska's national parks are free year-round. Parks that are more popular use the somewhat controversial Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act, signed into law in December 2004, to charge fees. National park properties that do collect fees must have a certain level of development and meet other criteria. Fee money is used to enhance visitor services at sites, and not for salaries. Some parks have collected fees since 1908.
Published April 15, 2010
The National Park of American Samoa
Photograph by Randy Olson
The National Park of American Samoa, the second least-visited national park, had just 3,683 registered visitors in 2008. Experiencing the rain forests, volcanic peaks, and reefs here is always free—as long as you can afford your way across the Pacific Ocean. The park is actually closer to Australia than it is to the states.
Some of the reasons Grand Canyon National Park charges $25 and some place are free: The visitation level at the Grand Canyon is so high (well over 4 million a year) that it requires a corresponding budget for rangers, infrastructure, maintenance, and more. Small historic sites or parks in remote locations may have only a few staff members and very low maintenance costs.
Published April 15, 2010
Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska
Photograph by Nick Jans/Alaska Stock LLC
Alaska's Kobuk Valley National Park has fewer visitors than any other national park. Its sand dunes lie 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The park sees great caribou migrations, as well as 100 degree Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) temperatures, but it does not see many people. Only 1,565 registered visitors passed through—for free—in 2008. Indigenous residents have used the park for nearly 9,000 years as a hunting ground.
Kobuk Valley has fewer visitors a year than Grand Canyon National Park has in two hours on a typical July day.
Published April 15, 2010
Great Basin National Park, Nevada
Photograph by Bill Hatcher
Among the other less-visited park properties are some hidden treasures, where you can have amazing scenery, hiking, and wildlife viewing practically to yourself. Great Basin National Park, near the Nevada-Utah border, is a glacier-sculpted landscape noted for Mount Wheeler, a more than 13,000-foot (3,900-meter) peak.
The park has a handful of pristine alpine lakes, as well as groves of bristlecone pine that are as old as the Egyptian pyramids. A marble cave system with bizarre and beautiful formations adds to the park's appeal. Great Basin gets less than three percent of the traffic of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The park never charges an entrance fee and offers backcountry hiking with solitude nearly unmatched in the Lower 48.
Published April 15, 2010
Congaree National Park, South Carolina
Photograph courtesy Getty Images/Panoramic Images
The largest intact tract of old-growth bottomland forest in North America can be found in Congaree National Park, in South Carolina. Covering only 21,800 acres, this watery wonderland includes bald cypresses, oaks, hickories, tupelos, and loblolly pines that tower over visitors—in some cases reaching more than 150 feet.
Canoe tours and boardwalk hikes are the best ways to explore the park, which charges no entrance fee. Just 104,000 people visited in 2008.
Published April 15, 2010
Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas
Photograph courtesy Dustin Nelson
Texas' Guadalupe Mountains National Park is often overlooked. Rising at the heart of this wild landscape is 8,749-foot (2,600-meter) Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in the state. That summit and the surrounding elevations function in some ways like a part of the Rocky Mountains, where elk, black bears, porcupines, mule deer, and mountain lions roam through forests of ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and aspen.
McKittrick Canyon ranks among the most beautiful hikes in Texas, especially in fall when the bigtooth maples turn red and orange. Incredibly, these massive mountains were formed from limestone reefs in an ancient tropical sea—the same limestone erosion that formed nearby Carlsbad Caverns National Park. You won't run into many people here; just 163,700 visited in 2008, at $5 a head. Many of them arrived during October leaf-peeping season.
Published April 15, 2010
Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas
Photograph by Dave Ryan/AP
Another Texas gem, Big Thicket National Preserve, has been at the heart of political controversy for nearly a century. Far-sighted conservationists called for protection of this lushly forested region of eastern Texas in the early 20th century, but powerful oil, gas, and timber interests resisted park status.
In 1974, after extensive logging and drilling, Big Thicket was included in the national park system—but as a national preserve, not a national park. The designation provides less protection (hunting is allowed, for example, as are oil and gas wells); nonetheless, Big Thicket includes some of the most biologically diverse habitats in the central United States and is home to orchids, carnivorous plants, and a broad range of wildflowers, trees, and shrubs. Visitors pay no entrance fee.
Published April 15, 2010
El Malpais National Monument and Conservation Area, New Mexico
Photograph courtesy National Park Service
El Malpais National Monument and Conservation Area in New Mexico is not for everyone, even though it costs nothing to visit. El Malpais, after all, is Spanish for “the badland,” and that’s an accurate description of the thousands of acres of jagged lava that cover the ground here.
The work of 100,000 years of volcanic activity, the forbidding landscape of El Malpais includes extensive lava flows, cinder cones, pressure ridges, and lava tubes, with very few marked trails to guide hikers across terrain that can be dangerous for the unprepared. For experienced cross-country travelers (or for those who take a ranger-guided walk), the harsh—but altogether splendid—terrain of El Malpais is like nothing else in the country. Only 115,000 visits were recorded in 2008.
Published April 15, 2010