We have now published blog posts on more than half of the 155 National Forests and 20 National Grasslands in America, so it seemed like a good time to do another Top 10 list.  Visitor centers are much rarer in National Forests than sites managed by the National Park Service (plus they seem to mostly be open only on weekdays), but there are still some good ones.  Some are small and tourist-focused like the one at historic Lolo Pass on the Idaho-Montana border, while others are large but mostly serve as the headquarters for employees, like Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota.  Presented here are the best from our travels, plus check out some of our favorite National Forests in our many other Top 10 lists.  Still struggling to figure out the difference between a National Park and a National Forest?  Read this blog post for help. 10. Wayne National Forest (Ohio) Always seem to drive past this Welcome Center on Highway 33 when it is closed, but it looks nice from the outside.

The Rio Grande forms the international border between the U.S. and Mexico for 1,248 miles, but in El Paso the river changed course suddenly in 1864 creating Cordova Island and leading to a 630-acre land dispute that lasted a century.  An 1884 treaty agreed in principle that if the river changed course slowly by erosion, then the boundary moved with the deepest channel, but a commission investigating it a decade later found that Americans were settling land owned by Mexico.  The issue remained contentious, with a 1909 meeting between Presidents Taft and Diaz almost resulted in the assassination of them both.  Finally, a 1963 settlement involved displacing 5,600 Americans, as well as moving a railroad, school, bridge, and the river channel itself.  Chamizal National Memorial was authorized by Congress three years later to celebrate the goodwill inherent to this treaty with a history museum, as well as three art galleries and a 500-seat indoor theater. 

In the 1970s, the more northerly Clark National Forest in Missouri was administratively combined with Mark Twain National Forest, encompassing 11% of the state’s forests across 29 counties.  Much of the forest was planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), with their work still visible at the Rolla Ranger Station and Winona Ranger Station Historic Districts.  Spread across nine separate units throughout southern Missouri’s Ozark Mountains, Mark Twain National Forest’s Karst topography is full of caves, sinkholes, streams, and springs.  Greer Spring is the second largest in Missouri with a daily flow of 222-million gallons as it drains 1.25 miles into the Eleven Point National Scenic River.  Greer Spring is accessible by a one-mile trail downhill from Highway 19, but no fishing or wading is allowed.

The Gilded Age is the term referring to the period from the Civil War to the end of the century, a time of growth in industry and immigration.  Gilding is the process of putting a thin layer of gold on an object to improve its appearance, and was used as a slight to the nouveau riche families that built lavish mansions and threw extravagant parties.  Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandson Frederick purchased this 600-acre Hyde Park estate in 1895.  He and his wife Louise had the mansion there torn down and it took nearly four years to complete their 54-room mansion ornamented in beaux arts style.  It was the first in the area to have electricity supplied by its own hydroelectric plant.  It was inhabited by the family only in the spring and fall with as many as 60 staff needed to run the place.  When Louise’s niece could not sell the property during the Great Depression, her neighbor President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggested she donate it to the National Park Service. 

Manti Forest Reserve dates back to 1903, becoming a National Forest four years later and expanded in 1915 with the addition of Nebo National Forest. Despite being separated by more than 100 miles, Manti and La Sal National Forests were combined in 1949, an early example of improved bureaucratic efficiency by the Forest Service. Due to this longstanding association, it can be difficult to find information for the more northerly Manti National Forest alone. Manti National Forest covers much of the Wasatch Plateau and also manages the busy Maple Canyon Trail system (technically in Uinta National Forest).

It is gift buying season again, so here are the best ideas for the person on your list who loves National Monuments.  This year we published Monumental America, our travel guidebook to the 138 National Monuments, so we have had those often-overlooked public lands on our minds.  Click here to see all of our Top 10 Lists, including some book lists that may help you find a special gift for your favorite reader.  As always, products we have created are available under the Shop tab above. We also have a Pinterest board for National Monuments, as well as one for National Park gifts and those harder-to-find National Forest gifts. 10. Postcards For someone who loves one of the 138 National Monuments, pick up a postcard from Anderson Design Group

Even though they are on opposite sides of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, Manistee and Huron National Forests have been co-managed since 1945.  Only seven years earlier, Manistee National Forest was created from tax-forfeited lands and purchases of logged forests unsuitable for farming, so it is remains a mosaic of private and public lands.  Much of this area was replanted by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and many of those trees are now very large.  It contains the highest point on Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, 1,706-foot Briar Hill, which has no marked trails to the summit and obstructed views from the top.  It is also home to Caberfae Peaks Ski Resort, which receives high accumulations of lake-effect snow and is one of the oldest ski resorts in the U.S. opened in 1938. 

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was incorporated as a nonprofit charity in 1979 to build a monument listing all the names of those killed or missing during the Vietnam War.  It was originally the idea of Jan Scruggs, an infantry corporal, and it was important to the veterans that it not make a political statement about the controversial war in Southeast Asia.  Selected from 1,421 design entries, Maya Ying Lin intended her memorial to be a quiet, protected place for reflection.  The polished black marble she chose to inscribe the half-inch-tall names also reflects the surrounding trees and grass in Constitution Gardens adjacent to the National Mall.  The $7-million cost of the memorial was entirely funded by corporate and private donations, including those from 275,000 individual Americans.

In central Oregon, Malheur National Forest encompasses the Strawberry Range and Aldrich Mountains that run into the Blue Mountains.  Much of its area is high desert, with grasslands, sagebrush, and juniper the predominant vegetation.  Malheur National Forest contains the “Humongous Fungus,” a honey fungus (Armillaria solidipes) that spans 2,200 acres and is considered the largest known organism by area in the world.  It is located mostly underground, high on a ridgeline immediately west of Clear Creek (44.4731°N 118.4816°W). Highlights Journey Through Time Scenic Byway, Cedar Grove Botanical Area, Yellowjacket Reservoir, Indian Rock-Vinegar Hill Scenic Area, Swick Old Growth Interpretive Site, Rosebud Creek, Arch Rock, Magone Lake, Tamarack Creek Trail, McClellan Mountain Trail

We recently published our guidebook 50 States of Great: Road Trip Guide to America, so we decided to start a new type of blog post where we create a travel itinerary for all 50 states, in addition to our usual National Forest and National Park entries.  After starting with Kansas, Georgia, Idaho, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Hawai’i, Arizona, Louisiana, South Dakota, Indiana, and Montana, we decided to do another state in the deep south.  We made an ambitious seven-day plan starting in the south on the Gulf Coast and then zigzagging across the state with plenty of options to extend the trip. Day 1 Gulf Islands National Seashore (click here for our blog post) You will have to take a ferry to enjoy the white sand beaches of West Ship Island, which are considered some of the best in the U.S.  If you are stuck on the mainland, at least check out the visitor center and hiking trails just off Interstate 10.  Biloxi Biloxi has beaches, a lighthouse, casinos, and the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum.  I still want to see the Patriarch Oak, estimated to be more than 2,000 years old and located at Mary Mahoney’s Old French House seafood restaurant.

The Natonal Park Service (NPS) administers the Natchez Trace Parkway, a two-lane All-American Road that extends 444 miles from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee.  The trace started as a game trail that was utilized as an American Indian footpath.  Some of the mound builder sites protected here were inhabited when Hernando de Soto led the first Europeans into this area in 1540.  The Natchez Trace was heavily used in the 1800s by “Kaintuck” flatboatmen returning from New Orleans who left the Mississippi River from Natchez, Mississippi and continued on foot north to Kentucky and beyond.  Today you can still follow portions of the sunken trail worn down by travelers for centuries.  The parkway began as a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) project during the Great Depression and the final two segments were completed in 2005.

The Coolidge Corner neighborhood of Brookline (a suburb of Boston) contains the birthplace of John F. Kennedy (JFK), the 35th U.S. President and one of four born in Norfolk County.  The house was purchased by Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. in 1914 before his marriage to Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald.  Rose gave birth to John and his two sisters in the house’s upstairs bedroom before the expanding Irish Catholic family moved a few blocks away in 1920.  Following JFK’s assassination, the family repurchased the home and Rose restored it to its 1917 appearance then donated it to the National Park Service (NPS).

Los Padres National Forest stretches more than 200 miles from Monterrey south beyond Santa Barbara.  It contains most of Big Sur, a name that conjures images of craggy cliffs dropping precipitously into white-capped ocean waves.  This sparsely inhabited stretch of coastline is known as much for its historic bohemians as its coast redwood trees.  It is home to multiple rare tree species with limited native ranges, especially those that can tolerate serpentine soils.  As the only National Forest in California that touches the Pacific Ocean, a road trip down scenic Highway 1 should be on everyone’s bucket list, including stops at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, Bixby Creek Bridge, Hearst Castle State Park, and the elephant seal rookery at Piedras Blancas.  We have hiked many trails here since Scott taught for three years at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo.

Central Maine is an ecological transition zone between boreal and broadleaf deciduous forests that provides habitat for Canada lynx, black bear, moose, and beaver.  The waters are home to brook trout and Atlantic salmon, which are being reestablished with cooperation between government agencies and the Penobscot and other Wabanaki Nations.  The official northern terminus of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, Katahdin means “greatest mountain” in the Penobscot language and is the name of the 5,269-foot peak outside National Monument boundaries in neighboring Baxter State Park.  This undeveloped landscape was purchased by the businesswoman Roxanne Quimby beginning in 2001 with the plan to turn it into a National Park.  It was donated to the National Park Service to mark the centennial of its creation and, despite some controversy, was established by President Barack Obama. Opened in 2025 near the south entrance, the Tekαkαpimək Contact Station is seasonally open Friday through Sunday in a building inspired by Wabanaki culture.  The National Park Service no longer works out of the Patten Lumbermen’s Museum (but it is still worth a visit).  The 17-mile-long Katahdin Loop Road in the southern section of the National Monument is the most developed with picnic areas, vault toilets, and overlooks.  The unpaved loop road is accessed from the east by miles of unpaved road and has no access to Baxter State Park.  About 30 miles of the International Appalachian Trail runs through Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument with lean-tos dispersed along the route.  Other than hiking, visitors enjoy stargazing, birding, leaf peeping in the fall, canoeing the East Branch of the Penobscot River with portages around its many waterfalls.  In the winter, there are opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling. 

Only 16 of the 138 U.S. National Monuments are found in National Forests, and many of those are jointly administered with the Bureau of Land Management (the BLM ones will be covered in a future Top 10 List). Moreover, ten of them are located in only two states (California and Colorado). However, that does not mean they are not worth checking out. We have visited 15 with the exception of Admiralty Island in Alaska (but did read Alone in the Fortress of the Bears by Bruce L. Nelson), so we have an educated opinion in our ranking. Click here to see all our Top 10 Lists, including our Top 10 National Monuments Managed by the National Park Service.

In central Montana, 149 miles of the Upper Missouri River were designated as a National Wild and Scenic River in 1976, upstream from the reservoir in Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.  This stretch of the river still looks much the way it did when the Lewis and Clark expedition first explored it in 1805 and their former campsites are marked by posts.  The breaks are a topographic area where the Missouri River eroded sedimentary rock that formed as horizontal layers laid down at the bottom of an ancient sea.  The National Monument comprises public land in a matrix with private ranches, with cattle making the water unfit for filtering.  There are a couple places to drive to along the river, but the best way to experience it is by floating a canoe or kayak down the non-motorized sections. Highlights Ft. Benton, Decision Point, Neat Coulee, Citadel Rock, Hole-in-the-Wall, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail

We are excited to announce the publication of our newest guidebook Monumental America: Your Guide to All 138 National Monuments.  It is now available for sale on Amazon. In our previous post, we promised to share the Introduction to the book, which is included in the post below. Check out our Amazon.com Author Page and Shop tab for all four of our U.S. travel guidebooks, plus our coloring book and other products!

We are excited to announce the publication of our newest guidebook Monumental America: Your Guide to All 138 National Monuments. It is now available for sale on Amazon. The mission of our guidebook is to introduce readers to the diversity of National Monuments by providing information on what makes each of them worthy of protection and how to go about experiencing what they have to offer. National Monuments cover a broad range of sites of historic and geologic interest from as small as 0.07 of an acre up to 2.2-million acres in size. While numerous guidebooks exist for the United States of America’s National Parks, this is the first ever volume dedicated to recreation in all 138 National Monuments. Altogether, they cover 18.4-million acres of public land across 33 states and territories, plus 759-million acres of ocean in the five expansive Marine National Monuments created since 2006. Only 40 National Monuments have an entry fee, while the others provide free opportunities to learn about history or enjoy the outdoors. National Monuments feature internationally recognized icons like the Statue of Liberty, as well as overlooked places that even locals rarely visit. They protect fossil quarries, historic homes of important Americans, caves open for exploration, sites significant to the Civil Rights Movement, volcanic wonders, relics of indigenous cultures, old military forts, and whitewater rafting spots. A select few National Monuments have visitor centers and guided tours, while others are undeveloped wildlands encompassing everything from deserts to glaciers, including wetlands, sand dunes, and coastlines that provide habitat for countless species of wildlife. Whatever you are interested in, there is a new adventure out there waiting.

Kiowa National Grassland encompasses two discrete units in northeast New Mexico, the eastern one bordering Texas and Oklahoma’s Rita Blanca National Grassland.  This patchwork of public and private lands is administered together with the larger Cibola National Forest and Black Kettle National Grassland.  Elevations range from 4,500 up to 6,300 feet in the western unit where La Frontera del Llano Scenic Byway (NM 39) runs north to south.  Shortgrass prairie is the dominant cover type, with sand sagebrush and pinyon-juniper woodland mostly found in the west.  Ponderosa pines are dispersed on wetter hill faces and riparian areas support Fremont cottonwoods and willows.  Highlights Mills Canyon, Santa Fe National Historic Trail

Jimmy Carter was the 39th U.S. President (1977-1981) and the first to reach the age of 100 before he passed away on December 29, 2024.  Following his presidency, he and his wife (Rosalynn) returned to their hometown of Plains and cemented their legacy as diplomats and humanitarians, mostly through their work with the Carter Center in Atlanta.  Up until the end, Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church, which is open to the public.  The National Historical Park encompasses Jimmy’s boyhood farm, high school, and the old Plains railroad depot.  It also includes his residence since 1961, which continues to be closed but will eventually be turned into a museum by the National Park Service (NPS).  In July 2025, the Carter Gardens and Burial Site of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter opened to the public.

After we published our guidebook 50 States of Great: Road Trip Guide to America in 2023, we decided to start a new type of blog post where we create a travel itinerary for all 50 states, in addition to our usual public land entries.  After starting with Kansas, Georgia, Idaho, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Hawai‘i , Arizona, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Indiana, we decided to head back west to Montana.  There are so many great trails in the state’s National Forests that we had a difficult time narrowing it down.  We made an ambitious seven-day plan starting in southeast Montana on Interstate 90, with enough options to easily extend the trip into three weeks or more. Day 1 Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (click here for our blog post) The best time to visit the National Monument is around June 25, the anniversary of Custer’s Last Stand when a reenactment of the battle is held on private land bordering the National Park Service site. Makoshika State Park

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th U.S. President (1953 to 1961).  His presidential library is located in his hometown of Abilene, Kansas and his post-presidency home on a Pennsylvania farm is run by the National Park Service adjacent to Gettysburg National Military Park.  The U.S. Congress created a Memorial Commission in 1999, but the groundbreaking did not occur until 18 years later.  The dedication ceremony was scheduled for the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, but postponed to September 17 because of the pandemic.  Highlights Sculptures, steel tapestry, audio tour, gift shop Dwight D. Eisenhower National Memorial is located one block off the National Mall in a plaza on Independence Avenue SW across from the National Air and Space Museum.  It was designed by architect Frank Gehry and went through several iterations before settling on three bronze sculptures by Sergey Eylanbekov representing “Ike” as a boy, general, and president.  The site is always open with a downloadable audio tour and a small gift shop open daily where you can pick up a “unigrid” pamphlet.

We have hiked in all 155 National Forests, and we used those experiences to write our guidebook Out in the Woods.  Most National Forests have hundreds of miles of trails, which are a great way to explore the landscape.  Sometimes it can be overwhelming because there are so many options.  Compared to our Top 10 Day Hiking Trails in National Forests, this list is focused on places where there are many good trails to choose from (and we made sure not to overlap).  We hope you are inspired to throw on your daypack and hit the trail.  Click here to see all our Top 10 lists, including our Top 10 National Forests for Backpacking and Top 10 Summit Trails in National Forests. 10. Tonto (Arizona) Due to its proximity to Phoenix, many areas like Peralta and First Water Trailheads are often packed with hikers (as is Siphon Draw Trail, another favorite hike that gains 2,781 feet of elevation to the Flatiron, usually starting from Lost Dutchman State Park). 9. Hoosier (Indiana) Pioneer Mothers Memorial Forest features a 0.8-mile trail that runs through the old-growth forest.  Hemlock Cliffs Trail is a 1.2-mile loop through a sandstone canyon that passes behind two unique waterfalls.  Longer hiking options include the 36.3-mile Terrill Ridge Trail that enters the Charles C. Deam Wilderness (Indiana’s one and only) and the 24.1 miles of trails around German Ridge Lake.  8. Chequamegon (Wisconsin)

In northwest Alaska, an area roughly the size of Delaware is set aside to protect an 85-mile stretch of the Kobuk River.  Kobuk Valley National Park also includes the Waring Mountains to the south and the Baird Mountains that border Noatak National Preserve.  Hunters have been coming for at least 12,500 years to Onion Portage where caribou gather to cross the river.  In the 1960s, archeologist J. Louis Giddings built a cabin and cache so he could excavate a two-acre plot.  He and his assistants dug through 30 artifact-bearing layers that provided evidence of nine cultural periods from the Akmak Complex to the Arctic Woodland Eskimo. The Northwest Arctic Heritage Center in Kotzebue is located 75 river miles from the western edge of the park.  Riverside ranger stations operate in the summer at Kallarichuk in the west and Onion Portage in the east.  A flightseeing tour of the park typically lands on the Great Kobuk Sand Dunes, which are the remnant of a dune field that once covered as much as 200,000 acres after the Pleistocene glaciation.  Float trips take at least a week on the wide Kobuk River or the rougher Salmon River, which is designated a Wild and Scenic River.  The Kobuk River starts within a narrow canyon with Class V rapids inside Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, but soon flattens out and becomes a braided channel, like many rivers in Alaska.