National Park Finder
Set your location to see the nearest US National Parks ranked by straight-line distance, with a map, CSV export and per-park map links.
Quick answer: Rank all 63 US National Parks by distance from any location. Coverage: US focused. No account is required.
Worked examples
- GPS near a boundary — A small location error can change the returned city, county or postal area when the point is close to a boundary. Verify the pin before using the answer for official paperwork.
- Postal vs administrative — Mailing cities, municipalities, counties and ZIP/postal areas are different geographic layers and can legitimately return different names.
- Indoor location — Browser geolocation may be less accurate indoors. If the result looks wrong, move the pin or search the address directly.
Limits & appropriate use
Every location stack has a competence boundary, and naming it is part of being trustworthy. OpenStreetMap's administrative coverage is excellent where mappers are active and thinner in rapidly changing or sparsely mapped regions; brand-new developments can lag, and disputed zones follow the community's de-facto consensus rather than arbitrating sovereignty. Postal layers add a second boundary: ZIPs and postcodes are delivery-routing systems, not geography, so PO boxes and carrier routes can legitimately disagree with the map. Indoor positioning adds a third: a browser fix can be a block off, which matters precisely at the borders where people ask these questions.
None of this makes the tools unsafe to use; it makes them safe to use *knowingly*. The design response is transparency: fields stay separate so layers never blur, empty answers are shown as empty rather than guessed, accuracy context travels with GPS results, and every page names its sources. For questions where the cost of being wrong is high — a property line, a legal filing, a medical dispatch — the escalation is always the same: licensed surveys, official registers and emergency services own those answers, and a good free tool points at the door instead of pretending to be it.
- Legal boundaries and property lines → licensed surveyor / county recorder.
- Mailing validity → the postal service's own address tools.
- Life-safety dispatch → official emergency services, never a map lookup.
Data & methodology
Positions are resolved with OpenStreetMap Nominatim/Photon (ODbL) and, for US districts, the Census Bureau geocoder. Nothing is stored server-side; the only outgoing request per lookup carries the coordinate pair itself.
For source details, licences and model limitations, see Data Sources and Methodology.
Related tools
Category: Location. Results are intended for everyday analysis and planning unless a page explicitly states otherwise.
How to use
- 1Search a place, click the map, or use GPS.
- 2Read the ranked list of the 20 nearest parks.
- 3Click a park to fly the map there, or export CSV.
Frequently asked questions
How is the distance measured?
Straight-line (haversine) distance between your point and each park's published coordinates. Driving distance will be longer.
Are all 63 parks included?
Yes — every current US National Park, from Acadia to Zion, including Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands.
How accurate are the park coordinates?
They mark the published visitor-center areas and are approximate — good for trip planning, not for navigation.
Can I export the ranking?
Yes — download the top-20 list as CSV with park name, state, distance and coordinates.
Does it use my GPS?
Only if you tap the GPS button — your position never leaves your browser.