The 20 Best Places to Stargaze in the United States

A Cosmic Cure

Amateur astronomy might be the ultimate antidote to the cabin fever so many of us have felt this year. Heading outside for a glimpse of the night sky is a timely reminder of nature's beauty and the incredible universe we occupy.

Maps to the Stars

America’s national parks are ideal destinations for stargazers, since they lack the light pollution that obscures celestial bodies in heavily populated areas. The star-mapping company Under Lucky Stars set out to determine which of the 62 parks are the very best places to pick out constellations (based on annual visitors, how accessible they are by car and the visibility of their skies), and the guide they created with that data will help you chart your way to an unforgettable night. The exclusive top 20 countdown list they shared with HGTV, in turn, starts right now.

20: Katmai National Park & Preserve, Alaska

People have lived and gathered at this spectacular spot in southern Alaska for nearly 9,000 years, but it’s easy to feel like you have it to yourself, as fewer than 85,000 visitors head to Katmai National Park & Preserve every year. There’s no artificial light there whatsoever — and if you visit in the winter and conditions are just right, you might even see the aurora borealis undulating above the mountains from the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

19: Pinnacles National Park, California

Before the sun goes down, hikers at Pinnacles National Park (east of the Salinas Valley, a 90-minute drive south of San Jose) are often treated to the sight of the California condor and its mind-boggling, nine-and-a-half-foot wingspan. After dark, campers enjoy dazzling views (and can take excellent photos) of the Milky Way in the darkness above the mountains — a rarity in California, where urban illumination can feel ubiquitous.

18: Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida

Stargazing campers on remote Garden Key at Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park can be supremely confident that inconsiderate passersby won’t blaze through the area and ruin their night vision, since the park’s seven small islands (in the Gulf of Mexico, about 70 miles west of Key West) are only accessible by boat or seaplane. The nighttime waters surrounding Dry Tortugas are dramatic as well, since they teem with bioluminescent life.

17: Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, Alaska

America’s biggest national park is in dramatic and rugged country: a third of its 13 million acres are covered with glaciers, its topography rises from sea level to more than 18,000 feet above it and its visitor centers are at least an hour away from one another. Adventurous travelers are well-rewarded for their efforts when they head out to Wrangell-St. Elias: the velvety northern skies above its four mountain ranges are crystal clear.

16: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Western Colorado’s Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is aptly named: the deepest portions of that canyon receive just 33 minutes of visible light each day. Because the park never closes for the night (and because its unpolluted skies, astronomy programs and responsible-lighting policies have earned it certification as an International Dark Sky Place), those in the know consider it paradise for summer stargazing, when the center of the Milky Way appears directly overhead late in the evening.

15: Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

Though Petrified Forest National Park welcomes nearly 650,000 visitors each year, most of those visitors are long gone by the time it closes each evening. The backpackers who hike out to pitch their tents in the park’s wilderness areas then have near-exclusive access to clear, dark skies (with little or no humidity in the air to affect visibility). While the park is 200 miles from any city, the light from small towns does creep over the horizon in some places; for photographers, that means that shots of its exotic topography against the stars are especially crisp.

14: Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, Alaska

As is common for many areas in Alaska, Lake Clark National Park & Preserve isn’t on the road system — which means that getting there requires chartering a small plane or a boat (and the advance planning that goes with it). That said, those who take the time to plan a visit can enjoy luxuriously light-pollution-free access to stars and auroral activity each (long) night.

13: Capitol Reef National Park, Utah

As a poster created to celebrate Capitol Reef National Park’s designation as an International Dark Sky Park back in 2015 puts it, Half the Park Is After Dark. Recognized for having some of the best night-sky viewing opportunities of any park in the western United States, Capitol Reef’s caretakers go to great lengths to preserve the region’s pristine skies for its nocturnal wildlife (and the human visitors who join them in coming alive in the evening); an astronomy festival held each fall celebrates those skies in partnership with a local planetarium.

12: Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska

Fewer than 16,000 visitors make their way up to northwestern Alaska’s sublime Kobuk Valley National Park each year — likely because it offers no developed facilities, so enjoying its nearly 1.8 million acres of wilderness requires outfitting your own adventures (and having expertise and special equipment in the harsher winter months). Is venturing 25 miles into the Arctic Circle worth it? Kobuk Valley veterans who have experienced its unforgettable landscapes, wildlife and utterly unspoiled night skies consider it a life-changing destination.

11: Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, Alaska

If mingling with the "crowds" at Kobuk Valley National Park isn’t to your liking, consider being one of the even rarer stargazers at Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve, the northernmost national park in the country. With no roads or trails of any kind, the park is otherworldly both in the summer (when sun fills the sky for a full 24 hours) and in its six-plus months of snow-blanketed winter (when the Northern Lights blaze above the darkened mountains like another planet’s sun).

10: Canyonlands National Park, Utah

The velvety skies of southeastern Utah are a perennially powerful draw for visitors to Canyonlands National Park, where it’s sometimes dark enough to see the rings of Saturn through a pair of simple binoculars. The park’s night sky ranger programs are some of its most popular ranger-led activities, and the "lightscape" photos you can take above its mesmerizing rock formations might be even cooler than the versions you’d capture before the sun goes down.

9: Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

From a stargazer’s perspective, the isolated Crater Lake area is nearly perfect: from 7,100 feet above sea level at Rim Village (Crater Lake National Park’s main tourist area), the air is dry, cloud cover is rare and the horizon is visible in all directions. Sky connoisseurs recommend planning a night visit as close to a new moon as possible; while artificial light in the area is virtually nonexistent, full moons are so bright that both Venus and the Milky Way can appear to cast shadows on the Earth’s surface.

8: Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, Colorado

Since the tallest dunes in North America are available for exploration all day and all night long year-round, there’s no such thing as a bad night at Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve. When the moon is out of sight, thousands of stars are visible (and hooting owls in the foothills are audible); when the area is bathed in (natural) night light, it’s the perfect time to go for a dune walk.

7: Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas

Guadalupe Mountains National Park boasts the four highest peaks in Texas as well as some of its deepest, darkest skies, and more than 11,000 stars (and planets and galaxies) are visible to stargazers who camp there. For a pro-level preview of what you might see when you visit the park, check the weekly online stargazing calendar from the McDonald Observatory.

6: Lassen Volcanic National Park, California

Northern California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park's gates are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Because many of its campsites are forested and all of its campsites are popular, park administrators suggest planning ahead — and they also note that lakeshores, meadows and even parking lots are some of the best places to enjoy wide views of the stars. On nights when the stars aren’t quite as bright, the park’s Lassen Peak and Cinder Cone trails are popular routes for moonlight hikers (with head lamps, of course).

5: Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota

Comprising a vast latticework of forests, waterways and islands scattered across northern Minnesota near the Canadian border, Voyageurs National Park is one of the best places in the “lower 48” to catch both a sky-spanning array of stars in addition to a glimpse of the Northern Lights. Open horizons abound at the park, but some of the very best places to settle in for a late-night show include the Voyageurs Forest Outlook, Beaver Pond Outlook and the Kettle Falls dam area.

4: North Cascades National Park, Washington

Pacific Northwesterners in the know skip the crowds at Olympic National Park and take their binoculars and cameras to North Cascades National Park (about three hours northeast of Seattle), where fewer than 40,000 visitors per year enjoy a vast wilderness with minimal light pollution. Drive-in and hike-in night sky photo tours are available during the summer, and veteran shutterbugs recommend getting a backcountry permit for following and camping near the spectacular Cascade Pass trail (which climbs to a star-scraping 5,392 feet above sea level).

3: Redwood National and State Parks, California

Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP) are a collective 139,000 acres of old-growth temperate rainforests (including the ancient, massive trees that lend the national park its name). They earn a third-place berth from Under Lucky Stars for hitting the sweet spot among their ranking variables: accessibility(via a deliriously scenic five-hour road trip from San Francisco), just over 500,000 yearly visitors (versus Yosemite’s four to five million), and views with little light pollution (which park administrators are working to whittle down even more).

2: Big Bend National Park, Texas

Situated in southern Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border and sometimes called "Texas’s Gift to the Nation," Big Bend National Park is the largest protected area of Chihuahuan Desert in America; its borders enclose all of the Chisos Mountains. The park has less light pollution than any other park in the contiguous United States, and its glow-wand-bearing rangers delight in welcoming visitors for “star parties,” moonlight walks and special events of all kinds. Park entrances are always open, and Big Bend’s 800,000-plus acres offer a private patch of nocturnal paradise for anyone and everyone.

1: Great Basin National Park, Nevada

What makes Great Basin National Park the ultimate destination for stargazers? Spanning six states and hosting just 131,802 visitors per year, it’s the perfect place to have an intimate experience with the night sky (with a score of 1, or “excellent, truly dark skies,” on the Bortle Scale used to measure light pollution). If you’re not interested in company, it’s easy to feel like the only visitor in the park; if you want company, Great Basin offers free astronomy programs each week from May through October, excursions on a diesel-powered Star Train, full moon hikes and an Astronomy Festival.