Where the data comes from

3168 parks across 44 states

Every park fact on this site — coordinates, hours, fees, campsite types, maps, alerts — is read from the managing agency's own website, except the few listed under Other public sources below. Nothing is bought in, crowd-sourced, or copied from another guide.

Agencies

State	Source	Parks
Alabama	Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources	22
Alaska	Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks and Outdoor Recreation	109
Arizona	Arizona State Parks & Trails	32
Arkansas	Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism	54
California	California Department of Parks and Recreation	260
Colorado	Colorado Parks and Wildlife	43
Connecticut	Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection	100
Georgia	Georgia Department of Natural Resources	64
Hawaiʻi	Hawaiʻi DLNR Division of State Parks	52
Idaho	Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation	28
Illinois	Illinois Department of Natural Resources	106
Indiana	Indiana Department of Natural Resources	79
Iowa	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	56
Kansas	Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks	28
Kentucky	Kentucky Department of Parks	47
Louisiana	Louisiana Office of State Parks	38
Maryland	Maryland Department of Natural Resources	68
Massachusetts	Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation	149
Minnesota	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	71
Mississippi	Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks	21
Missouri	Missouri Department of Natural Resources	93
Montana	Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks	54
Nebraska	Nebraska Game and Parks Commission	75
Nevada	Nevada Division of State Parks	27
New Hampshire	New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation	75
New Mexico	New Mexico State Parks Division	35
New York	New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation	230
North Carolina	North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation	46
North Dakota	North Dakota Parks and Recreation Department	18
Oklahoma	Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Department	38
Oregon	Oregon Parks and Recreation Department	188
Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources	126
Rhode Island	Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management	30
South Carolina	South Carolina State Park Service	51
South Dakota	South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks	65
Tennessee	Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation	66
Texas	Texas Parks & Wildlife Department	93
Utah	Utah Division of State Parks	50
Vermont	Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation	56
Virginia	Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation	44
Washington	Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission	141
West Virginia	West Virginia Division of Natural Resources	47
Wisconsin	Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources	59
Wyoming	Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources	34

Other public sources

Where a fact isn't published by the parks agency, it comes from the public agency that does:

Texas county burn bans: Texas A&M Forest Service

What we take, and what we don't

Facts, not prose. We use published facts. Every park description on this site is written by us from those facts — agency copy is never reproduced.
Hours are the one exception, and they're quoted as the agency words them, because “8 a.m. to sunset, whichever comes first” only survives in its own phrasing.
No staff names or email addresses, even where an agency publishes them on every park page.
Links are checked when the data is refreshed, and dead ones dropped — agency sidebars outlive the files they point at.

How current it is

Alerts, closures and events refresh regularly; the slower-moving facts are re-scraped less often. Each park's page shows when its data was last checked, and a closure reading older than two days is flagged as possibly out of date rather than stated as fact.

Agencies rarely retire an alert — several publish notices years old — so a notice whose dates have plainly passed and which makes no claim about the present is dropped. Anything still saying it is in force is kept however old, because hiding a live closure is worse than showing a stale one.

Maps and search

Location search is powered by Nominatim; map tiles and styling by OpenFreeMap and © OpenStreetMap contributors. Weather forecasts come from the US National Weather Service.

Something wrong?

The agency's own page is linked from every park here, and it wins. If this site disagrees with it, believe the agency — and it's worth telling us, because a mismatch usually means a scraper needs fixing.

Park Finder is an independent, unofficial project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any state parks agency. See also our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.