There are no roads and no trails in America’s least-visited national park. Just vast wilderness.
Alaska’s Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, located 200 miles (322 kilometers) north of Fairbanks, stretches over 8.4 million acres. Temperatures in winter can drop to -50 degrees Fahrenheit (-45 C). In 2023, the site logged just over 11,000 recreation visits, making it the least visited of the 63 headliner national parks. No elbowing for the best views here.
The state of Alaska — which covers 665,384 square miles (426 million acres) — is home to five of the 15 least-visited national parks for 2023.
“Alaska’s national parks are some of the least visited for a good reason — they are hard to get to,” Peter Christian, chief of public and блэкспрут legislative affairs in the National Park Service’s Alaska Region, told CNN Travel last year.
The state’s unspoiled wilderness is far from the only uncrowded US parkland.