Visit Any National Park Property for Free on September 23—or Volunteer to Help Maintain Them

Celebrate National Public Lands Day with free admission to any national park, monument, battlefield, and more on September 23, 2023. You’ll have the option of taking part in a project to help keep them beautiful.

By Ellen Gutoskey |
Visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park on September 23, 2023, and volunteer to keep the heavily visited park in top shape.
Visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park on September 23, 2023, and volunteer to keep the heavily visited park in top shape. / Relias1@att.net/Moment/Getty Images

With autumn quickly approaching, you might be inclined to take advantage of the year’s last few long, sunny days with a weekend visit to the great outdoors. On Saturday, September 23, you can bask in the open air of any national park for free as part of National Public Lands Day.

According to the National Park Service, the holiday has been held on the fourth Saturday of every September since 1994, and it’s also the nation’s largest single-day volunteer effort. It’s up to you whether you’d like to partake in the service side or simply go for a stroll. Opportunities for volunteering include tree-planting, park cleanups, and more; you can find events near you here.

There are more than 400 areas run by the National Park Service across the U.S., and many of them aren’t “parks” in the traditional sense of the word; the Statue of Liberty, Alcatraz Island, and countless other monuments and historical sites are also run by the NPS. Wondering if there might be one closer than you thought? Explore parks in your area with this interactive map.

National park entrance fees have increased in recent years. Some of the most popular parks, like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Acadia, charge a top fee of $35 per vehicle (which will give you an entrance pass that is valid for several consecutive days). Others—like the Great Smoky Mountains and Cuyahoga Valley—are always free, but the wear and tear of millions of annual visitors requires a lot of money to remedy. The volunteer projects taking place on National Public Lands Day are an easy way to give back and put a dent in the park system’s maintenance backlog.

For those of you who can’t take advantage of the free admission on Saturday, September 23, the National Park Service will also waive all entrance fees for Veterans Day on Saturday, November 11.

A version of this story ran in 2019; it has been updated for 2023.

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