National Park Service (NPS) was founded in 1916. A widely circulated myth is that it was started by America’s great outdoorsman president, Theodore Roosevelt. However, the reality is that it was started by the National Park Service Organic Act. The NPS is a part of the U.S. Department of the Interior. There are 63 national parks, and the service has just slightly more than 12,000 employees.
The entire NPS covers over 211,000 square miles. The most well-known national parks are by no means the largest. Death Valley National Park covers 6,700 square miles. Yellowstone National Park covers 3,400. Everglades National Park covers 2,300. Grand Canyon National Park covers cover 1,900.
The largest national park covers 23,000 square miles. That makes it larger than Vermont and Maryland combined. Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve contains parts of four mountain ranges and the 18,008-foot Mount Saint Elias, one of the tallest mountains in the United States. It has nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the country.
The park is east of Anchorage and west of the Yukon province of Canada. The park headquarters, Copper Center, has a population of slightly more than 200 people. The park also includes several glaciers. The Nabesna Glacier, at 53 miles long, is the longest valley glacier in North America.
Compared to most other national parks, the Wrangell-St. Elias gets very few visitors, at about 75,000 a year. That compares to almost 6 million to the Grand Canyon National Park.
Click here to read about the most popular national park in each state.
Credit Card Companies Are Doing Something Nuts
Credit card companies are at war. The biggest issuers are handing out free rewards and benefits to win the best customers.
It’s possible to find cards paying unlimited 1.5%, 2%, and even more today. That’s free money for qualified borrowers, and the type of thing that would be crazy to pass up. Those rewards can add up to thousands of dollars every year in free money, and include other benefits as well.
We’ve assembled some of the best credit cards for users today. Don’t miss these offers because they won’t be this good forever.
Flywheel Publishing has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Flywheel Publishing and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.
Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.
Latest from 24/7
Our expert who first called NVIDIA in 2009 is predicting 2025 will see a historic AI breakthrough.
You can follow him investing $500,000 of his own money on our top AI stocks for free.