The United States is home to some of the most unique and stunning natural geographical features in the world. Over the course of nearly 200 years, 62 of these sites have been designated as National Parks. Every year, these parks support as many as 90 million visitors.
2020 has been a challenging year for many people. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has altered daily life, making it difficult to engage in many recreational activities. Throughout this time, outdoor spaces have consistently offered a safer alternative to indoor activities, while promoting physical activity. Fortunately, the United States is home to an incredibly varied and and beautiful landscape. This is made even more accessible by the National Parks System.
Our project begins with an exploration of the effect that the pandemic has had on visitations to the National Parks, followed by an overview of the history and location of the parks, and culminates in an interactive park recommendation based on user preferences.
There has been a marked decline in visitors to the National Parks during the ongoing pandemic. This decline is most visible during April 2020 when many states first enacted precautionary social distancing legislation. Although outdoor activities are recommended as some of the safest recreational options, park utilization remained lower than 2019 for the rest of 2020.
Yellowstone National Park, spanning across three contiguous states—Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, was officially established as the first National Park in 1872. Some thirty years later, President Theodore Roosevelt passed the Antiquities Act of 1906, creating presidential authority to designate historic landmarks on federal lands as national monuments. The act served as a precursor to the designation of many National Parks. Over the next century, around 60 national parks have been founded. The most recent ones are—Indiana Dunes, Indiana and White Sands, New Mexico—founded last year.
Historical events can be classified into two broad categories—Park Related Law Passed and Park Founded. They are shown in different colors in the timeline below the slideshow.
Most National Parks are located in the West, some in Midwest and South. In this visualization of the United States, each hexagon represents a National Park in that region. Some parks are shared among multiple states and hence they are represented by half hexagons in those states. While a native Bostonian is bereft of access to most National Parks, if you want to visit many of them, you might want to take a flight to Denver, Colorado and then drive around the natural beauties.
As you progress through the rest of this webpage:
At the end of the experience, your top 5 parks will be calculated based on your input.
Please select one region to help guide your decision
Hover over or click on the circles in the map to learn more about each park. Zoom in and out the map as you like. Pan different regions. Select a park to see details. Filter the parks by regions.
Let us know what types of activities you are most interested in. This information is used to find great parks for you to explore.
The National Parks offer over 100 different activities. They can be broadly categorized into six categories. In the radar chart below, categories are shown in six axes while each area represents a park. The greater is an area's intersection along a category axis, the greater is the number of activities of that category available at that park. The specific parks displayed are determined by your selected preferences regarding activities and region.
| Category | Activities |
|---|
The large visualization contains an overlaid plot of the top three parks matching your preferences. The smaller plots below this contain the individual data for each of these parks.
The metric displayed corresponds to the percentage of possible activities offered by each park in each category. For example, if 10 total activities are offered in the "Snow" category and a park offers 6 of these, the park will receive a score of 60% on this axis. Joining the scores along all axes gives an area.
Bottom line—if you are picky, visit the park that spans most along your preferred activity category. Otherwise, you might want to visit the park that has the largest combined area to experience multiple categories of activities.
Which season will work best for your trip?
Based on your tolerance for crowd size, it may be helpful to take park popularity into account when planning your trip. Visitation varies drastically among parks, and even among seasons within the same park. Some of the most beautiful and secluded experiences may be found during the “off-season”.
See the best parks, calculated just for you.
