Since my last update, I’ve added another five parks to this site. But before I introduce those pages as I traditionally do in these updates, I wanted to instead share with you a couple non-map pages I’ve created. The first is Operation: Thank A Ranger.

OK, maybe that’s a silly name. Whatever. I created this new page after receiving an email last week from a site visitor that included the following:

My fellow co-workers and I are concerned about the future of our national parks — specifically regarding their funding and land protection. We are finding ways/places to donate both our time and money to help preserve and support — do you have any favorites or suggestions?

I pondered on this for a while, trying to avoid responding with the traditional “volunteer for x, support organization y.” Eventually I came up with what I thought was a nice idea, replied to the email, and went on about my life.

But I soon realized my idea would work much better if a critical mass was reached. I wanted to share my idea with others, so I got to work, spent hours organizing and compiling links, and put together my new Thank A Ranger page. Check it out! I won’t repeat that whole page here, but the gist is that I’d love it if we could show our support to park employees by writing them letters of support and appreciation — helpful reminders for those dealing with record crowds and questions about the future of their agency.

On the Thank a Ranger page you’ll find links to the contact information of every national park, sorted by state. In case you’d rather see a full list of parks alphabetically, I also created the Contact A Park page. This page should be super-helpful for those of you want to have official brochures and maps sent to your home, as parks will generally send those upon request. Keep these two pages handy and you’ll be able to get your trips planned faster.

OK, enough blabbing — what new pages have I created?

Flight 93 Maps. Did you even know Flight 93 National Memorial existed? As you can imagine, it’s one of our newer national park units, and the only one related to the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Natural Bridges Maps. If you’re looking for dark night skies, Natural Bridges National Monument may be your best bet as the first International Dark Sky Park.

San Antonio Missions Maps. I’ve finally got so many large natural park pages uploaded that I get to spend time working on historical parks! Stay tuned for a much larger percentage of them from here on out.

C&O Canal Maps. Like this one. Although many visitors go to the C&O Canal for running, biking, and outdoor activities, the park actually protects the historic canal and towpath, so important in the 1800s.

Rock Creek Park Maps. And I always have a soft spot in my heart for urban parks such as Rock Creek. Not everyone can afford to travel to large western parks; here, the rangers can come to them.

That’s it for this update! As a reminder, you can keep abreast with the latest updates here by following me on Facebook or on Twitter.

Hey, look at that! Just a week since my last update. I know web traffic will be picking up as we get close to summer, so I’m trying to make a number of behind-the-scenes tweaks and fixes to make sure things are working smoothly. I’ve added a few pages since the last update:

Here’s a completely brand new type of page: National Trails maps. The National Park Service manages a bunch of National Scenic and National Historic trails, many of which extend through several states. Instead of creating each trail on a separate page (which I will likely get to later), for now I put them all on a single page together. I quite like it – these are some very large maps that are fun to scroll through and study.

I created another new page that didn’t result in me adding new maps… but I had fun anyway picking out a selection for the My Favorite Maps page. To be honest, I don’t really have any strong reason for creating this page; no one’s been asking me, “Hey, what are your favorite maps?” Really, it just came down to the fact that I really love maps and wanted to call special attention to those I thought were really well done. What more reason can you need?

I’m making more progress on Arizona parks, with Canyon de Chelly maps finally going live. This is a unique park managed in cooperation with Navajo Parks and Recreation, as it is on tribal land.

And yes, I did complete the last of the three Flagstaff-area parks with Walnut Canyon maps. Did you know that Walnut Canyon is managed with Sunset Crater and Wupatki as effectively one park? (Now you know.)

Finally, I put up an In The News page. I’m not really a big fan of talking about myself and rather enjoy semi-anonymity, but I know from emails I’ve received that people are curious. So you can browse through some articles that featured this site if you want to learn more.

In case you thought I’ve been sitting around twiddling my thumbs… here are eleven new pages I’ve created over the last few weeks! That brings me up to 126 national park map pages created. I realize it’s been a couple months since I’ve written an update here, but I find that when I have some available time to work on this site, I’d rather upload new maps and create new pages rather than just telling you what I’ve done. So now I’ve finally found the time to tell you. Here are the new pages:

You’ll find 31 maps on the Golden Gate maps page. I’d been putting this one off for a while, as I knew it’d be a heavy lift. Previous I had created pages for Alcatraz and Muir Woods — both parts of Golden Gate — but decided it was high time I got the rest of the park finished too.

I was very pleased to finally get a Louisiana park on the board: Jean Lafitte National Preserve. You can find 10 Jean Lafitte maps on my page so far, including one I think is one of the best-looking of any park map.

South Florida is pretty much all parkland. Finally, I’ve got 12 Big Cypress maps completed, so Big Cypress National Preserve now gets a place of honor alongside side Everglades, Biscayne, and Dry Tortugas.

There’s a weird little quirk about my new Colorado National Monument maps page that probably only I will ever care about. Can you figure it out? There’s something I had to do here that I haven’t on any other page, due to a funny issue with the park.

I realize I’m still lacking on Civil War sites. Sure, I’ve got Harpers Ferry, Vicksburg, and Kennesaw Mountain, but now I’ve got a page up for the most visited of them all: Gettysburg maps.

Yay, Kansas! I hadn’t forgotten you. Now you can go back in time and imagine what the Great Plains used to look like after getting some Tallgrass Prairie maps for your visit.

I was also happy to get West Virginia another page, especially since Harpers Ferry is barely even in West Virginia. Now here’s a park to be very proud of: New River Gorge maps.

Traveling back out west, we find New Mexico’s embarrassment of riches. Gila Cliff Dwellings maps is already my fourth New Mexico page, with several more still to come!

Then you have Arizona showing up even New Mexico, as Wupatki maps is my seventh park page in the state of Arizona. You could do an entire vacation of visiting only Arizona national parks… but I don’t recommend it because they really work best visiting in different seasons.

Next door to Wupatki you’ve got Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. So I couldn’t do Wupatki without getting a Sunset Crater maps page up. But what about nearby Walnut Canyon? (Coming soon.)

And back east again, Great Falls maps. Here’s a fun bit of trivia: although Great Falls Park is in Virginia, Great Falls is in Maryland. Oddly, the Maryland/Virginia border is not the middle of the Potomac River, as is traditional with boundaries. Instead, the entire Potomac here belongs to Maryland. Therefore, even though all of Great Falls Park is in Virginia, visitors go there to look at something that’s entirely in Maryland.

Since my last update post about six weeks ago, I’ve added a grand total of…… one new park page. That doesn’t seem like much. But that’s because I’ve been busy hard at work adding over 200 new maps to parks I’ve previously created pages for. That’s right – I don’t just put up a page once and consider it finished; I continually add more and more maps to each page as I discover additional maps.

So clearly, there’s way too many updates for me to list here, as the majority of my map pages have been updated with new ones. In particular, you’ll find a ton of new geologic maps, for those like me who geek out on geology. I’m now at 1,454 maps and looking forward to crossing the 1,500 milestone soon.

So, what’s the single new page? One of the most important and relevant park sites for today’s world: Manzanar National Historic Site, an internment camp where Japanese-Americans were sent during Word War II. Check out the eight maps I’ve got on the Manzanar Maps page to plan your visit soon and make sure nothing like this ever happens again in the United States.

Happy 2017, everyone! I started this site just over three years ago now, and am pretty pleased with how things have progressed. Three years ago on this date, I had all of 261 maps on 27 pages. Today I have 1,249 maps on 114 park pages. Sure, you could argue that I should have much more than that considering all the time that’s passed since then, but I’ve moved a few times, changed jobs, and had a relatively busy personal life. Cut me some slack! 🙂 This site will probably never be paying my bills, so it’ll remain just a free-time project for me. OK, new updates:

Rainbow Bridge Maps and Timpanogos Cave Maps are both live – two national monuments that tend to not get too much visitation. They’re pretty much at the opposite ends of the accessibility spectrum as well – Timpanogos Cave is right off the highway just outside the Salt Lake City metro area, while Rainbow Bridge can only be realistically visited by boat from Lake Powell.

I’ve also added new maps from a bunch of park wayside exhibits: you’ll find some battle maps on the Harpers Ferry Maps page, new trail maps on Everglades Maps,  trail maps of Giant Forest on Sequoia Maps, trail and geological maps on Lassen Volcanic Maps, Exit Glacier maps on Kenai Fjords Maps, and aerial photography maps on Cape Lookout Maps. Additionally, you’ll find a couple extra random ones I uncovered on park websites: a map showing ancient Lake Florissant on Florissant Fossil Beds Maps, and Yosemite picnic areas on Yosemite Maps.

Whew. See, I haven’t just been sitting around doing nothing!