In recognition of the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service (NPS), I decided to put together a web map displaying the location of all of the National Parks.
While their maps have improved dramatically this year, they still lack a certain usability, and I have yet to find anything on the web that fits my needs. I want to be able to see all of the parks, where they are in relation to my route, when out on the road.
The result of this effort is the web map/app below, which displays the location of all of the Visitor Centers (when there is one) of all of the public lands under the supervision of the National Park Service, as well as a few sites under the direction of other organizations. It seems there are several National Monuments and National Historic sites managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), among others.
Zoom in, pan around, and click on a point and get more info. You can also open in full screen, share it along, embed it on your web site, or save it for use on your own device! Routing is only available at the device level though, but it works fantastically.
A somewhat monumental task in itself, it certainly did not start that way. Downloading the data for all of the park boundaries, I extracted points to appear at the centroid of each of the parks using ArcMap, then exported to KML and imported into Google My Maps for revision.
However, after some discussion with a Park Ranger, I realized that was going to be relatively worthless. I forgot my own purpose. Folks needed a means of navigating to a park, more often than not, to a Visitor Center. There is no data set for that, and only one way to do it.
Researching each individual park through the National Park Service web site proved a task. While each park contains a section for Visitor Centers, it tends to be blank, and very few have an address.
Shocked by the lack of information, I was even more determined. Using satellite imagery in combination with NPS Park Maps, I was able to locate all of them.
In the meantime, there have been a few additional designations, which I have added. Keeping things updated will be a challenge, but an easy enough task. Additionally, I want to add layers for other countries too. National Parks are not just a US thing.
Anyone can access this map and include it on their available device maps. More to come on that…
