National Parks

There are 63 national parks in the United States. The first — Yellowstone — was established in 1872, when most of the American West was still unmapped. The most recent — New River Gorge in West Virginia — was designated in 2020. The river it's named for may be one of the oldest in North America — geologists put its age anywhere from 65 million to over 300 million years, which tells you how hard it is to date a river.