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When it was named a national park in 1994, Death Valley became the largest national park in the contiguous United States. Yellowstone, now in second place, is so big that it sprawls over three different states (which leads to some weird legal loopholes for aspiring criminals). But most people would never guess that there's a park in the lower 48 that's bigger than Death Valley and Yellowstone put together—with room left over for the Great Smoky Mountains. And it's found, of all places, in upstate New York.
This state park has its own article of the constitution.
In the 1870s, a New York lawyer and surveyor and Verplanck Colvin began to lobby the state of New York to create a massive preserve to protect the Adirondack Mountains, warning that its pristine forests would otherwise be lost to the timber industry. In 1892, the state legislature agreed, creating Adirondack Park, and a few years later, even modified the state constitution to ensure that the region would "be forever kept as wild forest lands." It was the first forest preserve of its kind in America.
The "forest primeval," just three hours north of Manhattan.
Adirondack Park is a little different from other national or state parks you've visited. Nearly half of the land is "forever wild" forest preserve belonging to the people of New York. That includes hundreds of thousands of acres of never-logged virgin forest, which looks just as it did when James Fenimore Cooper was setting his frontier adventures there. Thanks to its far-sighted constitution, New York has more old-growth forest than any other state east of the Mississippi.
Half of the park kind of isn't a park.
But 52 percent of Adirondack Park belongs to private landowners. Forestry, agriculture, and "open space recreation" are allowed on the park's private land, but all regulated heavily by state agencies. There's no entry fee to the park, and its gates don't close at night—which is good news for the 132,000 people who live in the park's 102 towns and villages year-round.
There are fifty world nations smaller than this state park.
Adirondack Park is the largest state park, and the largest publicly protected area of any kind in the lower 48 states. At six million acres, it's bigger than two Central American countries, and bigger than two nations of former Yugoslavia. Ten million visitors come yearly to check out the park's striking fall foliage, canoe in its three thousand lakes and ponds, and hike the trails of New York's highest peaks. Verplanck Colvin may have died in 1920, but his legacy will stay "forever wild."
Explore the world's oddities every week with Ken Jennings, and check out his book Maphead for more geography trivia.