Explaining Every National Park Unit In Wyoming
Wyoming is home to seven National Park Service units. That’s a pretty modest number when compared to states like Colorado (14), Arizona (21), Alaska (23), or California (28), but it is home to several of the most iconic sites in the country. National Park Diaries took a deep dive into 6 of these sites, leaving out Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area as most of it is located in Montana and will thus be explored in a Montana specific episode.
National Monuments:
Devil’s Tower National Monument: Devil’s Tower National Monument was the first national monument ever designated in the United States. When the Antiquities Act passed in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt used it immediately to protect this geological formation in northeastern Wyoming. The tower is an igneous intrusion standing less than 1,000 feet from base to summit, but its complete isolation on the surrounding plains gives it an outsized presence on the landscape.
Fossil Butte National Monument: Situated in southwestern Wyoming, Fossil Butte National Monument preserves what the National Park Service considers some of the best preserved fossils in the world. Approximately 52 million years ago the area was covered by a freshwater lake with conditions that prevented scavenging, limited decomposition, and locked skeletal remains in place. The result is an extraordinary fossil record including fish, crocodilians, birds, bats, and small horses.
National Historic Sites
Fort Laramie National Historic Site: Fort Laramie National Historic Site protects the remnants of one of the most strategically important outposts of the American frontier era. Founded in 1834 as a fur trading post and later purchased by the U.S. Army in 1849, it sat along the routes of the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Pioneer Trail, the California Trail, and the Pony Express Trail. It served as a central hub for the movement of people, goods, and communication during westward expansion until its decommissioning in 1890.
National Parkways
John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway: The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway is a 24,000-acre corridor physically connecting Grand Teton National Park to Yellowstone. Designated by Congress in 1972, it recognizes Rockefeller’s financial contributions to the protection of American landscapes and is one of only four national parkways in the NPS system.
National Parks
Grand Teton National Park: Drawing nearly 4 million visitors per year, Grand Teton National Park features stunning glacially sculpted peaks rising high above the Wyoming sagebrush. The effort to protect the lowland ecosystems surrounding the mountains was so bitterly contested that it resulted in Wyoming becoming the only state where national monuments cannot be proclaimed without explicit Congressional approval, a restriction that remains in place today.
Yellowstone National Park: Yellowstone National Park was the first national park established anywhere in the world, containing the largest collection of geysers on Earth and supporting populations of bison, grizzly bears, wolves, and elk across millions of acres of contiguous habitat. It served as a refuge for bison when they were pushed to near extinction in the 19th century, and its establishment set the precedent for protected public lands globally.
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