The 5 Best National Parks Near New York City

New York City is not only America’s largest city, but is also a globally renowned cultural center whose influence extends far beyond the Five Boroughs. Indeed, it's no exaggeration to call this one of the most iconic cities in the world.

This vibrant and diverse city offers plenty to do and far more natural space than many might expect, with Central Park being the most well-known example. Surprisingly, a significant amount of land is also maintained by the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), including sites like the Statue of Liberty, Governors Island and the coastal Gateway National Recreation Area. In addition, several NPS historical sites, such as the African Burial Ground National Monument and Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, as well as Civil War battlefields, can be found within or just outside the city.

Below, we’ll be spotlighting the 5 best national parks near New York City. There aren’t any national parks in New York directly, but some of the most popular and celebrated in the entire NPS system aren’t all that far from Manhattan, with some related NPS recreation areas and preserves also well worth checking out on an NYC getaway.

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Closer to more of the U.S. population than any other national park in the country, Shenandoah presents a sunning display of the Mid-Appalachian Blue Ridge Mountains: rolling, rumpled and naturally blue-hazed crests looming gently above the lowlands of the Piedmont and the Shenandoah Valley, a spectacular bounty of tumbling waterfalls and cascades and deer- and bear-roamed woods and glades.

Topping out at 4.051-foot Hawksbill, this linear, roughly 300-square-mile park—established back in 1935, forming the north end of the celebrated Blue Ridge Parkway and without question one of the top national parks near New York City—boasts some 500 miles of hiking trails, none more iconic than the strenuous footpath up to the panoramic rocky knob of Old Rag Mountain.

Shenandoah National Park includes four developed campgrounds—Big Meadows, Mathews Arm, Lewis Mountain and Loft Mountain—and also offers rich backpacking opportunities.

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Cuyahoga Valley National Park, located near Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, is one of the best national parks within reach of New York City. Though shaped by human activity, the park boasts stunning natural beauty and a remarkable restoration story. As a sister park to England’s Dartmoor National Park—the first such partnership in the U.S. National Park system—it features over 100 miles of hiking trails winding through forests, ravines and rocky outcrops. One of its highlights is Brandywine Falls, a breathtaking 60-foot waterfall and one of the tallest in Ohio.

(Note that Cuyahoga Valley National Park is day-use only, though camping opportunities and other accommodations are abundant in the near vicinity.)

istockphoto.com / Thomas Northcut

The shining centerpiece of Maine’s North Atlantic “rockbound coast,” Acadia National Park ranks among the most-visited in the country—and for good reason. Encompassing Mount Desert Island as well as portions of the Schoodic Peninsula, Isle au Haut and various islets and sea stacks, Acadia (famously) includes Cadillac Mountain, the high point of the U.S. Atlantic Seaboard and hit with the very first rays of sunlight in the country for about half the year.

The autumn foliage show here sees the park achieve arguably its peak beauty in the fall—this is one of the standout leaf-peeping destinations in the world—but Acadia is very much a year-round attraction: from sea kayaking in the summertime to fabulous cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in the wintertime along the venerable broken-stone carriage roads.

Getty Images / Mark C Stevens

The lengthiest and deepest defile in the Appalachians, the New River Gorge marks the heavily forested strike-through of one of the very oldest (geologically speaking) rivers in the world—and one of the crown jewels of the American landscape. The rapids of the New River Gorge, which can roar at Class V status, make for arguably the most celebrated whitewater rafting in the eastern U.S. (and river-running that very much holds its own against the great rafting routes of the American West).

Traversed by a much-photographed steel-arch bridge and dazzingly appreciated from such New River Gorge National Park & Preserve overlooks as Grandview and Diamond Point, the chasm also hosts world-class hiking through exceptionally bio-diverse Appalachian forests that pop with rhododendron blooms in late spring and summer and flare with fiery grandeur come fall.

Getty Images / Haizhan Zheng

Some of the best national parks near New York City aren’t technically national parks at all, but other equally wonderful sites managed by the National Park Service. Among the Big Apple’s most beloved outdoor getaways, for example, is Fire Island National Seashore, protecting much of its namesake Atlantic barrier island as well as offshore marine habitat in the Great South Bay and open Atlantic. Offering premier developed camping and backpacking only about 60 miles from NYC, the national seashore includes the mesmerizing Sunken Forest—a rare maritime forest dominated by ancient gnarled American holly trees—and the one and only federally designated wilderness area in the Empire State: the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness, about 1,400 acres in extent.

Some 90 miles south of Gotham, meanwhile, the remarkable sandy backcountry of the New Jersey Pine Barrens—one of the great wildlands of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, remarkably close to the country’s most populated mosaic—awaits within the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve, established as among the first of its kind in 1978 and later designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.

From paddling and hiking (including along the fabled Appalachian Trail) to cross-country skiing, the Delaware Gap National Recreation Area is a mere 70 or so miles from New York City and showcasing a history-drenched “water gap” carved through the ridge crest of the Appalachian Mountains.

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