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National parks word search

Sixteen US national parks, from Acadia in Maine to Denali in Alaska, with Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Everglades, Shenandoah, Joshua Tree and Grand Teton among them.

Words run in all eight directions on a 12 by 12 grid in big capitals, and the letters left over spell the hiker’s rule for every trail.

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Prints on US letter paper: the puzzle page, then the answer key on its own page (2 pages in all). In the print window, choose your printer, or Save as PDF to keep a copy.

Solving tips

Look for the rare letters first: a Z, Q, J, X or K is easy to spot in big print. Then circle the long words, which cross more of the grid. Every letter belongs to a word or to the hidden saying, so the uncircled letters left at the end are the saying, in order.

In this grid, 5 words read across, 5 words down and 6 words diagonally, and 8 of them read backward (right to left or bottom to top), so check both ends of a likely letter. The longest is Bryce Canyon and the shortest is Denali, which hides best: look for it last.

About the words

Congress created the National Park Service in 1916 to care for the nation’s parks and monuments. Today there are more than 60 national parks, among hundreds of sites that the Service protects, and each one is described in more detail on the Service’s own Find a Park page.

Acadia: Acadia, in Maine, covers much of Mount Desert Island, with rocky coast and Cadillac Mountain. Established in 1919, it was the first national park east of the Mississippi River.
Arches: Arches, in Utah, has more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches, including the well-known Delicate Arch. It became a national park in 1971.
Badlands: Badlands National Park in South Dakota has dramatic eroded buttes and pinnacles beside a large prairie. Fossils of ancient mammals are found there, and bison and prairie dogs roam the grasslands.
Bryce Canyon: Bryce Canyon in Utah is full of hoodoos, tall spires of rock shaped by frost and rain. It became a national park in 1928, and its amphitheaters glow orange and pink at sunrise.
Denali: Denali in Alaska is home to the mountain of the same name, at 20,310 feet the tallest peak in North America. Visitors come to see caribou, grizzly bears and wolves.
Everglades: The Everglades in Florida is a vast, slow-moving wetland nicknamed the “river of grass.” It shelters alligators, manatees and wading birds, and was established as a national park in 1947.
Glacier: Glacier National Park in Montana, established in 1910, has jagged peaks, lakes and the scenic Going-to-the-Sun Road. It borders Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park, and together they form an international peace park.
Grand Teton: Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming rises abruptly above the Jackson Hole valley. The Teton Range has sharp peaks with no foothills, and the park lies just south of Yellowstone.
Hot Springs: Hot Springs in Arkansas is one of the smallest national parks. Warm mineral water rises from the mountainside, and historic bathhouses line Bathhouse Row in the city of Hot Springs.
Joshua Tree: Joshua Tree National Park in California sits where two deserts, the Mojave and the Colorado, meet. It is named for the spiky Joshua trees that grow there and became a national park in 1994.
Olympic: Olympic National Park in Washington State holds glacier-topped mountains, a wild Pacific coastline and a temperate rain forest, all within one park. It became a national park in 1938.
Redwood: Redwood National and State Parks in California protect coast redwoods, the tallest trees in the world. Many grow along misty, fog-bathed northern California valleys near the Pacific.
Sequoia: Sequoia National Park in California, established in 1890, shelters groves of giant sequoias, the largest trees on Earth by volume. The General Sherman Tree is among its best-known giants.
Shenandoah: Shenandoah National Park in Virginia stretches along the Blue Ridge Mountains. Skyline Drive runs the length of the park, and the Appalachian Trail passes through it. It was established in 1935.
Yellowstone: Wyoming, Montana and Idaho share Yellowstone, which in 1872 became the first national park in the United States. It is famous for geysers such as Old Faithful, hot springs, bison and wolves.
Yosemite: Yosemite, in California’s Sierra Nevada, is known for granite cliffs such as El Capitan and Half Dome and for waterfalls. It became a national park in 1890.

The hidden saying (no peeking until you have found every word): This is a motto of outdoor ethics, usually seen in the longer form “Take only pictures, leave only footprints.” It reflects the Leave No Trace movement, but the exact origin of the phrase is unclear.

All sixteen are among the parks listed on the National Park Service’s Find a Park page.

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National parks word search