National Park Service
Recreation visits and land acreage for units of the National Park System.
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NPS land acreage by park unit
The National Park Service's own quarterly land status report, giving federal, non-federal and total gross acreage for every unit of the National Park System, by state.
- Organization
- National Park Service
- Dataset
- National Park Service Land Resources Division Acreage Report
- Geography
- Idaho
- Time coverage
- 2026
- Update frequency
- Quarterly
- Published
- Original file
- https://www.nps.gov/subjects/lwcf/upload/NPS-Acreage-06-30-2026.xlsx
- Methodology
- https://www.nps.gov/subjects/lwcf/acreagereports.htm
- License
- Public domain. U.S. federal government work.
- Our copy
- National Park Service Land Resources Division Acreage Report
Caveats
- Covers the three National Park Service units the report places entirely within Idaho: City of Rocks National Reserve, Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, and Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument. Minidoka National Historic Site, Nez Perce National Historical Park and Yellowstone National Park also hold Idaho land, but the report gives each one combined figure across every state it spans and attributes no share to Idaho.
- Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is reported as two units, the original monument and the 2000 preserve expansion; this dataset sums them under the park's current combined name.
- Craters of the Moon is administered jointly by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. The federal acreage here is limited to what the report itself labels as the Park Service's own fee and less-than-fee acreage; the report separately lists 273,488 acres of "other federal" fee land inside the preserve's boundary, which this dataset excludes because the report does not name the agency that holds it.
- Gross acres is the unit's total authorized area, including land other than the Park Service's own holdings, such as the other-federal acreage inside Craters of the Moon National Preserve's boundary and any state, local or private inholdings; it is larger than the federal acres figure for that reason.
Where sources disagree
- National Park Service federal acres, Idaho, 2026-06-30: Congressional Research Service, Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data, report R42346 publishes 511,963 acres. CRS reports 511,963 acres of National Park Service land in Idaho as of September 30, 2018, sourced from the Park Service's own submission for the whole state. Summing this dataset's federal acres across its three Idaho units for the quarter ending June 30, 2026 gives 479,123.22 acres. The two figures are eight years apart, and this dataset's total excludes any Idaho share of Minidoka National Historic Site, Nez Perce National Historical Park and Yellowstone National Park, which the state-level CRS figure includes; both are kept.
Measures
- National Park Service federal acres (acres): Land the National Park Service holds by fee title or a lesser interest, by park unit.
- National Park Service unit gross acres (acres): Total authorized area of the park unit, including land the Park Service does not itself hold.
National Park Service visitation
Annual recreation visits to the National Park Service units administered wholly or partly in Idaho, from the Visitor Use Statistics program's monthly visitation API.
- Organization
- National Park Service
- Dataset
- NPS Visitor Use Statistics
- Geography
- Idaho park units
- Time coverage
- 1979-2025, by unit's own start of record
- Update frequency
- Monthly, summed here to annual
- Published
- Original file
- https://irmaservices.nps.gov/v3/rest/stats/visitation
- Methodology
- https://www.nps.gov/subjects/socialscience/visitor-use-statistics.htm
- License
- Public domain. U.S. federal government work.
- Our copy
- NPS Visitor Use Statistics
Caveats
- A year is counted only when the park reported every one of its twelve months; a year still in progress is left out rather than partially added up.
- Yellowstone National Park has a strip of land in Idaho and is not included: the park is entered overwhelmingly through its Wyoming and Montana gates. The National Historic Trails that cross Idaho (California, Oregon, Lewis and Clark, Nez Perce) have no visitation figures of this kind published for them.
- Nez Perce National Historical Park is 38 sites across Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington administered as one park, so its visitation total covers the whole park, not only its Idaho sites.
- City of Rocks National Reserve is managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.
Measures
- National Park Service recreation visits (count): Recreation visits counted by the National Park Service in the calendar year.
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