This Is America’s Smallest National Park

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 23, 9:20AM EDT

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This Is America’s Smallest National Park — © amolson7 / iStock via Getty Images

The headlines have recently been filled with battles about how some national parks can be used for commercial purposes. Among them is whether companies can drill for oil and gas. Arguments about the parks should be used in not new. Woodrow Wilson signed the bill that created the National Park Service on August 25, 1916. Part of the Department of the Interior, today it manages what it calls 423 units, generally known as parks. Across America, they cover 85 million acres.

The National Parks offer something for everyone — from beaches to forest hikes as well as human-made monuments, scenic lakes, towering mountains, spectacular canyons, and more. Some are millions of acres, while others are just a few thousand.

To determine the smallest national park, 24/7 Tempo reviewed the National Park Service Land Resources Division’s Listing of Acreage report for 2020. Only national parks were considered and were ranked on their gross area acres.

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At the other end of the spectrum, many of the largest national parks are found in Alaska, which is by far the largest U.S. state by landmass. Western states like Utah, Washington, and California are also home to several parks that combine to cover millions of acres of land.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many national parks and other recreational areas run by the National Park Service were temporarily closed. National park site visits dropped by more than 90 million to 237 million visits in 2020 — the lowest level since 1980. Still, many parks welcomed millions of visitors.

The smallest national park in America is Gateway Arch. Here are the details:

>Total land area: 193 acres
> Location: Missouri
> Privately owned land: 85 acres — or 44.2% of total park
> Recreation visits in 2020: 486,021 — or 0.7% of all NP visits
> 5-year change in visits: -71.4%

Gateway Arch National Park used to be called the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. Located in St. Louis, the famous arch was built to honor Thomas Jefferson and the role he played in America’s westward expansion. The park also features the Museum of Westward Expansion and St. Louis’ Old Courthouse. The Courthouse is best known for holding the Dred Scott case — an enslaved man who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom.

Click here to read The Largest and Smallest National Parks In America

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.