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All National Parks Are Offering Free Admission on Veterans Day

Veterans Day is one of six annual free admission days at more than 400 national parks across America.
ByJennifer M Wood|
This Veterans Day is your chance to visit Glacier National Park for free.
This Veterans Day is your chance to visit Glacier National Park for free. | Dean Fikar/Moment/Getty Images

Looking for something to do that’s both outdoorsy and free? In honor of Veterans Day, you can visit any one of the National Park Service’s 431 sites on Monday, November 11, 2024, for free.

While many of the NPS’s parks are free year-round, the organization will be waiving entrance fees to the more than 100 parks that normally come with an admission price for the final time this year. Which means that you can pay a visit to the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Yosemite, or Yellowstone National Parks without actually paying for the visit.

It’s the final opportunity to enjoy free park admission in 2024, which makes it the perfect time to get out and explore the national parks in your area—or to plan a road trip to one you’ve never visited before.

Bison graze in the meadows of Grand Teton National Park.
Bison graze in the meadows of Grand Teton National Park. | Danny Lehman/The Images Bank/Getty Images

West Virginia’s New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, which spans 70,000 acres, is the park service’s most recently designated national park. (The most recently established national park site is the Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument in Illinois, which highlights an attack on Black residents that led to the founding of the NAACP.) In addition to being home to one of the oldest rivers on Earth, the land surrounding the New River Gorge features a forest and sheer cliffs surrounding a 53-mile river perfect for water sports like kayaking and whitewater rafting. The park, which officially became a part of the National Park Service in 2020, is a popular destination for rock climbers, mountain bikers, campers, and hunters.

The National Park Service maintains 431 designated NPS areas—including parks, battlefields, historic sites, seashores, and more—that span more than 85 million acres across every state, plus Washington, D.C., American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Read More Amazing Facts About National Parks:

A version of this story ran in 2021; it has been updated for 2024.

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