National parks in Arizona

Woman raises her arms while standing in front of a sandstone butte

100ESSENTIAL NPS Photo / T Sigmon

National Recreation Area · AZ

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

Glen Canyon is essentially a 1.25-million-acre outdoor resort anchored by Lake Powell, one of the largest reservoirs in the country.

100ESSENTIAL NPS Photo/Andrew Cattoir

National Recreation Area · AZ

Lake Mead National Recreation Area

Lake Mead is the rare federal land that functions less like a wilderness retreat and more like a full-service outdoor resort.

Many rock pinnacles with a valley and mountain range in background

90ESSENTIAL NPS Photo

National Monument · AZ

Chiricahua National Monument

Chiricahua punches well above its weight for a free monument.

Organ pipe cactus and mountains at sunset

90ESSENTIAL NPS Photo/ Craig Stocks

National Monument · AZ

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Organ Pipe is the Sonoran Desert at its most concentrated and least diluted.

Sunlit Painted Desert hills of the Petrified Forest National Wilderness Area

90ESSENTIAL NPS Photo

National Park · AZ

Petrified Forest National Park

Petrified Forest earns its high experience score by delivering something genuinely rare: 225-million-year-old logs turned to crystal, scattered across painted badlands you can drive through or hike off-trail at will.

A glittering sky of stars glows above a historic covered wagon.

90ESSENTIAL NPS Photo/Kait Thomas

National Monument · AZ

Pipe Spring National Monument

Pipe Spring punches well above its size.

panorama of mission church with green grass and clouds

88ESSENTIAL NPS Photo

National Historical Park · AZ

Tumacácori National Historical Park

Tumacácori punches well above its size.

The canyon glows orange as people visit Mather Point, a rock outcropping that juts into Grand Canyon

84EXCELLENT NPS/M.Quinn

National Park · AZ

Grand Canyon National Park

The Grand Canyon is one of those rare places where the hype is justified, but most visitors only scratch the surface.

a large stone pueblo in a desert beneath mostly sunny skies with mountains in background

79EXCELLENT NPS

National Monument · AZ

Wupatki National Monument

Wupatki delivers something rare: free access to genuinely significant Ancestral Puebloan ruins set against a stark, cinnabar-toned desert that looks almost Martian.

A 5-story masonry dwelling sits in a cliff alcove.

76EXCELLENT NPS Photo/Sharlot Hart

National Monument · AZ

Montezuma Castle National Monument

Montezuma Castle is a genuinely stunning piece of Sinagua architecture, a 20-room cliff dwelling tucked into a limestone alcove that stops you mid-step.

76EXCELLENT NPS Photo

National Park · AZ

Saguaro National Park

Saguaro splits into two separate districts flanking Tucson, and that urban adjacency is both its greatest asset and its honest limitation.

Two people and a dog walk down a dirt trail that cuts into a grassy hill with large trees

74EXCELLENT

National Historic Trail · AZ

Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail

This is not a park you visit in a weekend.

Near a cliff edge the sun sets in the distance.

71EXCELLENT NPS/T. Miller

National Monument · AZ

Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument

Parashant is not a park you stumble into.

Agave stalks and wildflowers with mountains in the distance

68WORTH IT NPS Photo / D. Bly

National Memorial · AZ

Coronado National Memorial

Coronado National Memorial sits at the Arizona-Mexico border and commemorates one of the most consequential and contested expeditions in North American history.

eathern building under modern roof structure

66WORTH IT NPS Photo

National Monument · AZ

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument

Casa Grande Ruins is a compact, free monument built around one genuinely remarkable thing: a four-story Ancestral Sonoran Desert People structure that nobody has fully decoded.

view from inside the Betatakin Cliff Dwelling looking out.

61WORTH IT NPS Photo

National Monument · AZ

Navajo National Monument

Navajo National Monument protects three Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings, most famously Betatakin and Keet Seel, set into massive sandstone alcoves in the Navajo Nation of northern Arizona.

cliff dwelling in the spring with desert plants and wildflowers.

61WORTH IT NPS Photo

National Monument · AZ

Tonto National Monument

Tonto National Monument punches above its size by putting you face-to-face with 700-year-old Salado cliff dwellings above Roosevelt Lake with zero admission cost.

Ruins of the fort with mountains and valley in the background.

60WORTH IT NPS Photo/ Ron Stewart

National Historic Site · AZ

Fort Bowie National Historic Site

Fort Bowie earns its keep as one of the few American historic sites that forces you to earn the history on foot.

59WORTH IT Ravis Henry

National Monument · AZ

Canyon de Chelly National Monument

Canyon de Chelly is genuinely unlike any other monument in the Southwest because it is not a relic, it is a living community.

52NICHE NPS

National Historic Trail · AZ

Old Spanish National Historic Trail

The Old Spanish National Historic Trail is less a destination than a framework, a 2,700-mile spine connecting museums, scenic roads, and trailheads across six states that trace the old mule-pack trading routes between Santa Fe and Los Angeles.

A marsh with open water, cattails, and a masonry dwelling beyond.

52NICHE NPS Photo

National Monument · AZ

Tuzigoot National Monument

Tuzigoot is a compact but genuinely compelling ancestral Sinagua pueblo perched on a ridgeline above the Verde Valley.

a cinder cone volcano and ponderosa pine trees

51NICHE NPS Photo / Elliot Schultz

National Monument · AZ

Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument

Sunset Crater is a free, compact stop that delivers a genuine encounter with Arizona's most recent volcanic eruption, a landscape still raw and strange even a thousand years on.

Walnut Canyon's cliff dwellings are illuminated by the afternoon sun.

51NICHE NPS Photo

National Monument · AZ

Walnut Canyon National Monument

Walnut Canyon punches above its size.

Spring lambs with their Navajo-Churro ewe.

41NICHE NPS Photo/LHenio

National Historic Site · AZ

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site

Hubbell Trading Post is a living piece of Navajo Nation commerce history, still selling rugs, jewelry, and goods from the same building it has occupied since 1878.

A cross and bell on the roof alcove of a white stucco church.

24NICHE NPS Photo

National Historic Trail · MO

Butterfield Overland National Historic Trail

This is not a park you visit so much as a history you trace.