By state

National parks in Pennsylvania

Every national park and public-land unit in Pennsylvania, scored and ranked by our Experience Score.

Pennsylvania's National Park Service units work well for anyone who can't decide between history and the outdoors, mostly because the state doesn't force that choice. The collection tilts heavily toward the American founding era and the Civil War, with Gettysburg National Military Park and Valley Forge National Historical Park anchoring the southeast, where battlefield walks and encampment trails double as real hikes. Go north and the character changes completely: the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River and Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area open into river corridors and forested ridgelines that feel genuinely remote, and the Appalachian and North Country National Scenic Trails cross the state for long-distance walkers who just want quiet miles. Hopewell Furnace adds an industrial-era story that most visitors walk right past. Pennsylvania rewards the planner who wants substance over spectacle, someone willing to earn a view on foot and stay curious about what's underneath it.

A heron at sunset in the waters and marshes of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge

100DOES IT ALL NPS Photo / Middleton Evans

National Historic Trail · VA

Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail

The Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail runs through six states and Washington DC as a water-based network retracing the 1608 voyages of the English explorer across the Chesapeake Bay and its tributary rivers.

100DOES IT ALL NPS Photo

Scenic & Recreational River · NY

Upper Delaware Scenic & Recreational River

The Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River is a genuine rarity in the crowded Northeast: a free, 73-mile stretch of undammed, legitimately clean river running along the New York-Pennsylvania border, with real wilderness character and a full range of water-based activity.

Silhouette of a man with backpack standing on McAfee Knob at sunset with mountains in the distance.

95DOES IT ALL Photo Credit: ATC/Benjamin Hays

National Scenic Trail · CT

Appalachian National Scenic Trail

The Appalachian Trail is less a park you visit than a world you walk into.

95DOES IT ALL NCTA

National Scenic Trail · MI

North Country National Scenic Trail

Stretching more than 4,800 miles across eight states, the North Country National Scenic Trail runs from the plains of North Dakota all the way to the forests and farmland of Vermont.

View of the Delaware River cutting between two low mountain peaks

90DOES IT ALL Courtesy of James Hicks

National Recreation Area · NJ

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area stretches along 40 miles of free-flowing Delaware River on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border, and its Experience Score of 90 is well earned.

A canon sits in front of an equestrian statue.

88DOES IT ALL NPS Photo

National Military Park · PA

Gettysburg National Military Park

Gettysburg National Military Park protects the ground where the Civil War's bloodiest battle played out over three days in July 1863, and it has earned its place as one of the most historically significant sites in the country.

buildings varying in size on either side of a gravel path.

88DOES IT ALL NPS Image

National Historic Site · PA

Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

Hopewell Furnace covers 848 acres of rural Pennsylvania and preserves an iron-making community that ran from 1771 to 1883.

Field of yellow flowers in the foreground with two log huts and a paved trail in the middle distance

88DOES IT ALL NPS Photo / B. Dhunjisha

National Historical Park · PA

Valley Forge National Historical Park

Valley Forge is one of those national park units where history and outdoor recreation actually work together rather than pulling in opposite directions, and the free admission makes it tough to beat among NPS sites on the East Coast.

Red, yellow, and green leaves lay on the grass in front of a colonial building.

76WIDE RANGE NPS Photo

National Historical Park · DE

First State National Historical Park

First State National Historical Park stretches across Delaware and Pennsylvania with no single dramatic landscape pulling everything together.

76WIDE RANGE NPS Photo/Julia Bell

National Wild and Scenic River · PA

Lower Delaware National Wild and Scenic River

Lower Delaware National Wild and Scenic River has no gate, no parking lot with an "entrance" sign, no obvious starting point.

Circular stockade in the middle of a meadow. Dramatic clouds build in the blue sky.

75WIDE RANGE NPS Photo/Tom Markwardt

National Battlefield · PA

Fort Necessity National Battlefield

Fort Necessity National Battlefield occupies the rolling hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, marking the spot where a young George Washington endured his only military surrender, a fight that helped ignite the French and Indian War and, further down the chain, set the conditions for the American Revolution.

Small waterfall with brown rocks and green moss

74WIDE RANGE NPS Photo / Alex Wiles

National Historic Trail · IA

Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail

The Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail is not a single park.

71WIDE RANGE NPS

National Historic Site · PA

Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site

The Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site protects what survives of a genuinely audacious piece of 19th-century engineering: a railroad that carried canal boats over the Allegheny Mountains using a series of inclined planes, opening the first direct route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in 1834.

The Eisenhower home with Ike's putting green in the foreground

61GOOD RANGE NPS Photo

National Historic Site · PA

Eisenhower National Historic Site

Eisenhower National Historic Site sits just outside the Gettysburg battlefield in south-central Pennsylvania, and its scale is deliberately modest.

61GOOD RANGE NPS Photo / Steve Dean

National Scenic Trail · DC

Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail

The Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail covers DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia as a multi-state network, not a single destination park you drive up to.

John Heinz at Tinicum National Wildlife Refuge

60GOOD RANGE USFWS

National Wildlife Refuge · PA

John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum

John Heinz sits about a mile from Philadelphia International Airport and holds Pennsylvania's largest remaining freshwater tidal marsh, which makes it a genuinely unexpected find.

Gallatin House - Stone House and South Wing in snow with blue sky

58GOOD RANGE NPS Photo/Rene Benson

National Historic Site · PA

Friendship Hill National Historic Site

Friendship Hill sits quietly in southwestern Pennsylvania, centered on the life of Albert Gallatin, one of the most consequential and least recognized figures from early American history.

large black train with number 6039 painted in white lettering, sitting on turntable track

57GOOD RANGE NPS Photo

National Historic Site · PA

Steamtown National Historic Site

Steamtown is a serious railroad history museum in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, built around one of the largest surviving collections of steam locomotives and railroad equipment in the country.