By state · NC

National Parks in North Carolina.

By Nicholas Major · Last updated

North Carolina shares Great Smoky Mountains National Park with Tennessee, the most-visited National Park in the country, plus the Blue Ridge Parkway (469 miles, consistently among the most-visited NPS units by total volume), Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, Carl Sandburg Home, Fort Raleigh, Guilford Courthouse, Moores Creek, Wright Brothers National Memorial, and Trail of Tears National Historic Trail segments. Asheville (AVL), Raleigh-Durham (RDU), and Charlotte (CLT) anchor different parts of the network. The Blue Ridge Parkway runs the spine of the state's mountains and is technically open year-round, but it has frequent winter closures at elevation. October peak foliage drives the year's busiest weeks on the Parkway and in Great Smoky Mountains. The state is unusual within the NPS network for spanning both the southern Blue Ridge spine and a long Atlantic barrier-island coast. A single trip can cover both within a few days.

Use this pageShare or cite this guide
Add as a preferred source on Google

National Sites Guide

Share this page

Cite this page

Copy a citation

NPS source records in North Carolina.

North Carolina has 12 records in our combined NPS metadata and visitor-statistics registry: 2 National Seashores · 2 National Historic Sites · 2 National Historic Trails · 1 National Scenic Trail · 1 Parkway · 1 National Park · 1 National Military Park · 1 National Battlefield · 1 National Memorial. This is a source-record count, not the Park Service's official system-unit census. Combined 5-year-average annual visits: 40,018,135 (multi-state units count their full visits in every state they touch, see methodology). The most-visited record is Blue Ridge Parkway at about 16.34M annual visits.

Every National Park Service site in North Carolina, mapped. Each glowing marker is one site, placed at its real coordinates and colored by type. Select a marker for its yearly visits and a link, or use the filters to show or hide a group. 10 of 12 units are mapped here; long-distance trails and units centered in another state are in the table below.
National Park Service sites in North Carolina, mapped Interactive map of North Carolina showing the location of 10 National Park Service sites, colored by type: national parks, monuments and memorials, historic sites, recreation areas and seashores, rivers, trails and parkways, and other sites. It includes the National Park Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Each site is also listed with its yearly visits in the table below the map. 2

Marker positions are each unit's official NPS coordinates. State outline: U.S. Census cartographic boundary (public domain). Independent site, not affiliated with the National Park Service.

UnitDesignation5-yr avg visitsBusiest month
Blue Ridge Parkway ParkwayBLRI 16,336,836 July
Great Smoky Mountains National Park National ParkGRSM 12,823,320 October
Appalachian National Scenic Trail National Scenic TrailAPPA 6,215,118 July
Cape Hatteras National Seashore National SeashoreCAHA 2,868,406 July
Cape Lookout National Seashore National SeashoreCALO 539,902 July
Wright Brothers National Memorial National MemorialWRBR 418,248 July
Guilford Courthouse National Military Park National Military ParkGUCO 383,290 July
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site National Historic SiteFORA 277,245 June
Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site National Historic SiteCARL 96,834 July
Moores Creek National Battlefield National BattlefieldMOCR 58,936 February
Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail National Historic TrailOVVI — —
Trail Of Tears National Historic Trail National Historic TrailTRTE — —

Methodology

Rows come from our combined NPS metadata and Visitor Use Statistics registry, not the Park Service's official census of 433 managed system units. Per-record visit counts come from the official NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025; the "5-year average visits" column is the mean of 2021-2025 Recreation Visits. Multi-state records are listed under every state they touch, and their full visit total appears in each state. Official National Park counts use the central 63-park classification rather than the source designation label alone. Independent site, not affiliated with the National Park Service.

Adjacent reading

Independence

Independent site. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the National Park Service. Data comes from the official NPS Visitor Use Statistics Data Package, 2025; editorial analysis is ours. The NPS Arrowhead and other NPS marks are not used.

Last updated · 2026-08-28