Hey, welcome to my passion project! My name is Matt and I’ve been working on this site off-and-on as time allows since 2013. At the time I was a national park ranger in Yosemite, and I was out-of-work during the government shutdown that October. With some sudden unexpected free time on my hands, I started NPMaps.
Why NPMaps?
I know not everyone is a weirdo who loves staring at maps, but I am indeed one of those weirdos. When planning visits to national parks, the first thing I always want to do is look at maps. Unfortunately, each park’s official NPS.gov site has maps scattered across dozens of pages, and often in interactive formats that can’t be saved or viewed locally. It’s kind of a pain. Why can’t there be a place to just get to the maps as quickly as possible?
So I made it, and you’re on it now. You can learn a bit more about me and this site from many articles that have featured it.
Contact Me
Find any errors? Have a question or suggestion? Use this form. Or keep scrolling and read the Frequently Asked Questions below—your question has maybe been answered.
You don’t have to enter your email address in the form below, but if you don’t, I won’t be able to respond to your question or comment. Have no fear—I don’t have any mailing list so you won’t get any spam from me.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you please add maps for National Park x?
Man, I would love to. My eventual goal is to have pages for all 400+ national park units. But I’m not exactly a web expert and it takes me awhile to find all the maps, convert the files into an appropriate format, create each page, and write the text. I’m sure this process could be automated somehow, but I’m not smart enough for that—and besides, I like the personal touch of that comes with doing everything manually.
But when I started this site, I was a single guy temporarily out of work. Now I’m married with a family and free time isn’t exactly growing on trees these days. So, will I ever get to 400 pages? Check back in 10 years and let’s see where we’re at.
Can you send me maps for National Park x?
I really can’t. This web site is not affiliated with the National Park Service, so I have no hard copies to send. For that, you’ll need to contact the national parks directly. Don’t know how to do that? I made this handy Contact A Park page that provides links to each park’s inbox where you can request free maps sent to your home address.
How much does this site cost you to run?
I actually don’t lose money running this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, and I also receive a commission from Expedia from any travel booked through my links. The scattered affiliate links to these two sites cover my hosting costs and bandwidth, and during the busy summer months I might even make enough to have a nice dinner out! Certainly I’m not quitting my day job, though.