Largest National Park in the United States: The Undisputed Champion
There are many beautiful national parks in the United States, and the largest one of them all is probably not what you think.
Many people think Yellowstone National Park is the largest national park in the U.S., but there’s one park that’s nearly six times the size of Yellowstone.
The largest national park in the United States is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve in Alaska. This National Park spans 13.2 million acres (20,000 square miles), making it the undisputed, largest national park in the United States.
For those looking for a travel adventure, you should definitely add this national park to your list.
Wrangell-St Elias Size Comparison
The park is so big that it’s actually larger than the country of Switzerland (which is at 10,201,600 acres).
Below are some of the states in the United States that are smaller (size in acres according to Wikipedia) than Wrangell-St. Elias:
| State | Acres |
|---|---|
| Maryland | 7,940,480 |
| Hawaii | 6,995,840 |
| Massachusetts | 6,761,600 |
| Vermont | 6,154,240 |
| New Hampshire | 5,983,360 |
| New Jersey | 5,582,720 |
| Connecticut | 3,562,880 |
| Delaware | 1,268,480 |
| Rhode Island | 776,960 |
If you can’t seem to wrap your head around the magnitude of Wrangell-St. Elias from this chart, here’s another mind-blowing comparison:
A standard American football field is about 1.32 acres. You would need 10 million football fields to cover the same amount of acres as Wrangell-St Elias.
About Wrangell-St Elias
At the south-central edge of Alaska lives the remote and massive homes of some of America’s tallest mountains. Three major mountain ranges form the backbone of this national park.
The park was established in 1980 and is home to a wide variety of wildlife, including grizzly bears, moose, and caribou that has never seen humans.
It is so large and remote that most of the land is reachable only by bush planes. Aside from glaciers, it’s also home to the Copper River, renowned for its abundance of salmon.
Copper ore had been mined by the Alaskan Athabaskan Indians for centuries from this river.
