By state
National parks in Colorado
Every National Park Service unit in Colorado, scored and ranked by our Experience Score.
100ESSENTIAL
NPS image by Matt Johnson
National Recreation Area · CO
Curecanti National Recreation Area
Curecanti is Colorado's most underrated all-seasons playground, built around three reservoirs carved into high desert canyon country.
100ESSENTIAL
NPS Photo / Dan Johnson
National Monument · CO
Dinosaur National Monument
Dinosaur National Monument is one of the most underrated free parks in the American West, and that perfect experience score is earned honestly.
92ESSENTIAL
NPS Photo
National Monument · CO
Colorado National Monument
Colorado National Monument punches well above its designation.
90ESSENTIAL
NPS/Patrick Myers
National Park & Preserve · CO
Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve
Great Sand Dunes is one of the most genuinely strange landscapes in the American West, and that strangeness is the whole point.
90ESSENTIAL
NPS Photo/R.Williams
National Park · CO
Rocky Mountain National Park
Rocky Mountain earns its reputation honestly.
89ESSENTIAL
NPS Photo
National Park · CO
Mesa Verde National Park
Mesa Verde is genuinely unlike any other national park in the American system.
82EXCELLENT
NPS Photo/Lynch
National Park · CO
Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park
Black Canyon earns its reputation through sheer geological drama: the Gunnison River carved walls so steep and narrow that some sections receive only 33 minutes of sunlight per day.
81EXCELLENT
NPS Photo
National Historic Site · CO
Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site
Bent's Old Fort punches well above its size.
67WORTH IT
NPS Photo
National Monument · CO
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
Florissant is a genuine scientific treasure hiding in plain sight at 8,400 feet in central Colorado.
62WORTH IT
NPS Photo
National Historic Trail · CA
California National Historic Trail
This is not a park you visit so much as a history you inhabit across a 5,000-mile corridor.
62WORTH IT
NPS Photo
National Historic Trail · CO
Santa Fe National Historic Trail
The Santa Fe National Historic Trail is less a single destination than a 900-mile argument for slowing down across five states.
61WORTH IT
NPS photo
National Historic Trail · CA
Pony Express National Historic Trail
The Pony Express Trail is less a destination than a framework for a road trip across the American interior.
54NICHE
NPS Photo/Shawn G. Gillette
National Historic Site · CO
Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site preserves the ground where U.S.
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.
51NICHE
NPS Photo / Jacob W. Frank
National Monument · CO
Hovenweep National Monument
Hovenweep is a genuinely undervisited monument where Ancestral Puebloan towers perch on canyon rims and boulders with an almost theatrical drama.
43NICHE
NPS Photo / Stuart West
National Historic Site · CO
Amache National Historic Site
Amache is a sobering, necessary piece of American history on the southeastern Colorado plains, where over 10,000 Japanese Americans, most of them citizens, were unjustly incarcerated during World War II.
33NICHE
NPS Photo
National Monument · CO
Yucca House National Monument
Yucca House is one of the most quietly radical places in the national park system: a large Ancestral Puebloan site that has never been excavated, sitting in open farmland between Mesa Verde and Ute Mountain with zero infrastructure.