America’s Forever Beautiful Heritage Attraction Sites: The U.S.’s Most Popular National Parks

Abstract

This chapter addresses the juxtaposition of national parks with social and environmental justice movement by studying the 18 most-visited U.S. national parks. Using 33 metrics across 46 counties hosting these parks, this chapter compares the counties to their host states and to the U.S. as a whole. The environmental metrics show that national parks are in host counties with much less exposure to air contaminants than their host states. However, regarding social justice demographics, health outcomes, and built environment, some national park site-regions have concentrations of low socioeconomic status and linguistically isolated people with poor health outcomes and limited built environment assets. The chapter considers the challenge of not only protecting these national treasures for future generations, which has been the role of the National Park Service for over a century, but also responding to justice challenges in the host regions. Glacier National Park and the Indiana Dunes appear to understand the challenges they face from Native and poor minority populations and are trying to be proactive.