This page lists the US national parks in the order in which they were designated national parks. That date can be different from the date when the land was first designated and protected, and from the date when the National Park was established. More specically:

• About half of current national parks gained protection (usually within the NPS system) as different entities, generally national monument (NM), before being designated national park. For those cases, the initial designation and date is in parenthesis. Example: Death Valley was a national monument from 1933 to 1994, when it became a national park.
• Some national parks were authorized by Congress before being established, generally because land acquisition wasn't completed at the time of designation. For those cases, the date of establishement is in parenthesis, with the word "established". Example: The National Park of American Samoa was designated on October 31, 1988 but the NPS could not buy the land because of traditional communal land system. This was resolved on September 9, 1993, when the National Park Service entered into a 50-year lease for the park land from the Samoan village councils.

1872 Yellowstone 
1890 Yosemite (Yosemite Grant 1864)
     Sequoia 
1899 Mount Rainier 
1902 Crater Lake
1903 Wind Cave 
1906 Mesa Verde
1910 Glacier 
1915 Rocky Mountain
1916 Lassen Volcanic (Cinder Cone NM & Lassen Peak NM 1907)
     Hawaii Volcanoes (originally Hawaii NP, split in 1961)
1917 Denali (originally Mt McKinley NP, renamed in 1980)
1919 Grand Canyon (NM 1908)
     Zion (Mukuntuweap NM 1909)
     Acadia (Sieur de Monts NM 1916, originally Lafayette NP, renamed in 1929)
1921 Hot Springs (Reservation 1832)
1926 Shenandoah (established 1935)
     Great Smoky Mountains (established 1934, completed/dedicated 1940)
1924 Bryce Canyon (NM 1923, established 1928)
1929 Grand Teton
1930 Carlsbad Caverns (1923)
1934 Everglades (established 1947)
1938 Olympic (Mt Olympus NM 1909)
1940 Kings Canyon (Expanded from General Grant NP 1890)
     Isle Royale
1941 Mammoth Cave
1944 Big Bend
1956 Virgin Islands
1961 Haleakala (originally part of Hawaii NP 1916)
1962 Petrified Forest (NM 1906)
1964 Canyonlands
1966 Guadalupe Mountains (established 1972)
1968 North Cascades
     Redwood 
1971 Capitol Reef (NM 1937)
     Voyageurs (established 1975)
     Arches (NM 1929)
1978 Theodore Roosevelt (National Memorial Park 1947)
     Badlands (NM 1929)
1980 Channel Islands (NM 1938)
     Biscayne (NM 1968)
     Katmai (NM 1918)
     Glacier Bay (NM 1925)
     Gates of the Artic (NM 1978)
     Kenai Fjords (NM 1978)
     Kobuk Valley (NM 1978)
     Lake Clark (NM 1978)
     Wrangell St. Elias (NM 1978)
1986 Great Basin (Lehman Caves NM 1922)
1988 National Park of American Samoa (established 1993)
1992 Dry Tortugas (Fort Jefferson NM 1935)
1994 Death Valley (NM 1933)
     Saguaro (NM 1933)
     Joshua Tree (NM 1936)
1999 Black Canyon of the Gunnison (NM 1933)
2000 Cuyahoga Valley (National Recreation Area 1974)
2003 Congaree (Congaree Swamp NM 1976)
2004 Great Sand Dunes (NM 1932)
2013 Pinnacles (NM 1908)
2018 Gateway Arch (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial 1935)
2019 Indiana Dunes (National Lakeshore 1966)
     White Sands (NM 1933)
2020 New River Gorge (National River 1978)