America's 5 States With The Most State Parks To Visit Ranked

While America's mesmerizing national parks often take center stage in the minds of would-be travelers, it's worth noting that there are just 63 in the United States as a whole. Granted, some are world-famous, like the broiling geysers of Yellowstone National Park and the colossal Grand Canyon. But it's also worth knowing that there's a whole hidden world of natural wonder beyond the big-name draws, much of which is protected under America's state park network.

In fact, according to StateParks.org, there are currently 9,000-plus designated state park units in operation across the country, accounting for over 20 million acres of protected land. Peer a little deeper, and it's plain to see that they're not short on showstopping wonders — everything from the roaring waters of Niagara Falls to the shimmering surface of Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay falls under the jurisdiction of state parks!

Ready for a visit? This guide is a great place to start planning your state park odyssey. We've crunched the numbers to offer a list of the five states with the most state parks, and the findings make for pretty tempting reading for the budding outdoors adventurer. Yep, get ready to lose yourself amid the forest-clad Cascade Mountains, the star-spangled skies of the Colorado Desert, within the humid Everglades — the list goes on.

According to numbers from Travel Oregon, the official tourism portal for the Beaver State run by the Oregon Tourism Commission, this corner of the West Coast has a whopping 361 individual state parks to its name. That's more than any other territory in the United States by quite some margin. However, big old Oregon is just the place you'd expect it to happen — the state covers nearly 100,000 square miles, and, according to Discover North America, has some of the country's most varied environments, rolling from glacier-topped volcanoes to wave-bashed coastline.

Indeed, diversity is very much the keyword when it comes to Oregon's array of state parks. One day, you might be scaling one of nigh-on 2,000 climbing routes in the tuff stone gorges of Smith Rock State Park. The next, you could be facing the wrath of the Pacific Ocean on the clifftop miradors of Cape Lookout State Park, where whale watching and forest hikes are the order of the day.

The OPB, a nonprofit news organization focused on Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, says that the Beaver State's park network now consistently draws in over 50 million day-use visitors each year. It also added that, according to figures from Oregon State Parks, the most-visited reserve of all was Harris Beach State Park, a paradise boasting rugged beauty, on-site camping, and potential sightings of sea lions just a few miles north of the California state line. Good place to start, perhaps?

Seemingly not content with just being the state with the most national parks, California also shoulders its way into second place when it comes to state parks. Yep, according to Visit California, a nonprofit dedicated to the promotion of travel around the Golden State, there's a whopping total of 280 state parks here, showcasing everything from abandoned mining towns to world-class stargazing in the desert.

The latest available State Park System Statistical Report from California State Parks, a document that counts up everything from the income generated by each park to the number of day-use visitors, reveals a few of the most popular spots of all. First, there's Santa Monica State Beach, which saw 5.6 million people step onto its Pacific-side running tracks and sandy volleyball courts between 2021 and 2022. Second, there's the Sonoma Coast, which drew upwards of 3.5 million people with its salt-sprayed coast bluffs, rock arches, and sandy beaches.

There are also some gems here that sit far away from the coast. Take California's largest state park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which sprawls over 60,000 acres of arid land where there are epic nighttime star shows and hikes to palm oases. Or there's Calaveras Big Trees State Park, which lives up to its name by hosting not one, but two separate groves of colossal giant sequoia trees on the western flanks of the Sierra Nevada.

Sliding into California's slipstream in third place with a grand total of 180 state parks and reserves is the Empire State of New York. The numbers are confirmed by the Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation section of the Ny.gov website, which says there's a real hodgepodge of different escapes to nature in this corner of the country, all lying between the coastline of Long Island and the roaring waterfalls of Niagara on the Canadian border.

Yep, in a state that's probably most famed for the sprawling steel and concrete jungle that is New York City, there are actually loads of places to get your fix of Mother Nature. According to one poster on the r/AskNYC subreddit, "the closest large area to NYC is Harriman State Park. There are a number of trails and some can seem very remote with not too many hikers on them." Indeed, Harriman is but 50 minutes' drive from Lower Manhattan, offering to swap the meagre 843 acres of Central Park for 31 lakes, 200 miles of marked hiking paths, multiple lake beaches, and numerous campsites and cabins in the woods.

New York also happens to play host to the single most popular state park in the country. Cue the ethereal waterfall-filled canyon of Watkins Glen, which hosts 19 individual cataracts amid the cliffs and gorges of the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York.

Florida has some pretty striking accolades: vacation mecca, retiree haven, and ground zero for theme park lovers the world over. Well, you can now add a whole plethora of state parks to that already-tempting list, since the balmy lands of the Sunshine State count an adventure-inducing 175 in total. At least that's according to the official website of the Florida State Parks organization, the branch of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection responsible for managing state parks across the territory.

There's a lot to get through. Visit Florida waxes lyrical about the sheer diversity that's on offer, what with the country's first-ever underwater state park beckoning at John Pennekamp State Park, and glorious botanical architecture at Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park on the northern outskirts of Tallahassee. And that's just naming two.

Short on time and don't know where to begin? Live Wildly has you covered. It's a conservation organization with a mission to "connect people to wild Florida," and it asked one of its leads, Sara Sheehy, for the lowdown on the best state parks of all. Her top picks include Silver Springs State Park, where you can take glass-bottomed boat tours on ultra-clear spring rivers, and Torreya State Park, a place of untouched riparian forest that's home to over 100 species of birds.

Massachusetts trails Florida by about 20 state parks, giving it a total of 150 reserves in all, and crowning it the fifth most state-park-heavy territory in the United States. Those figures come from the Mass.gov website, which says its Department of Conservation and Recreation currently manages state parks in the mountains, on the ocean, and everywhere in between.

Indeed, trusty travel guide publisher since 1973, Lonely Planet, offers a bucket-list run through of the best state parks in MA, and it's loaded with 14 rather varied suggestions. It begins with the wave-washed archipelago of the Boston Harbor Islands, a shared state and national park made up of 34 rocks just off the shore of the big city of Boston itself. Go there for Civil War fortresses and salty sea pools. Also on the list is Moore State Park, a rural cut-out of central Massachusetts that preserves an old grist mill from the 1700s.

Reddit users offer up other suggestions. According to one poster in the r/Boston subreddit, Maudslay State Park in Newburyport is a doozy. The poster goes on to list its virtues: "Lots of ruins of an old estate. Beautiful location right on the Merrimack River." What they don't say is that the spot also touts one of the biggest swathes of natural mountain laurel in the state, along with meadows, biking paths, and summertime historical tours.

Instead of relying on secondary sources to put together our list (which often contradict one another), we decided to do the legwork ourselves. We proceeded by searching for the number of parks in each individual state, taking data from only official tourism, state government, or state park management websites to ensure accuracy. We collated that whole list and then sorted it by the highest number. The five states that came out on top are the ones you see listed above. Depending on how you count and who you ask, the exact number of state parks may vary slightly — but no doubt these five will always be near the top.