Get free entry to Indiana Dunes National Park and all other National Parks on Friday
(CNN) — The US National Park Service offers free entry a handful of times each year to all of its more than 400 sites. We’re at the last one for 2022.
No fees will be charged to enter any site — including national parks, battlefields, military parks, and historic sites — on Friday, November 11.
The NPS chose Veterans Day as the last free-entry day to honor the people who have served in the military.
If you wish to commemorate veterans or learn more about U.S. history in general while saving some money, you have plenty of sites from which to choose, including:
- Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park in Hodgenville, Kentucky
- Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Wilberforce, Ohio
- Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park in Dayton, Ohio
- George Rogers Clark National Historic Park in Vincennes
- Indiana Dunes National Park in Porter
- Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Lincoln City
- Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois
- Mammoth Cave National Park in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky
- William Howard Taft National Historic Site in Cincinnati
Click here for a full listing of every NPS site, which it calls “units.”
Most NPS sites are free all year anyway. Only 108 charge a fee. And as you’d suspect, it’s mostly the big names that ask you to pay to enter: Places such as Arches in Utah, Rocky Mountain in Colorado and Shenandoah in Virginia.
But they’re all free this Friday.
One catch: “The entrance fee waiver for fee-free days does not cover amenity or user fees for activities such as camping, boat launches, transportation or special tours,” the NPS says.
Planning pays off
If you’re not much of a planner, it might be a good idea to develop the habit — particularly if you want to see a popular NPS site on a free day.
Of those 420+ sites in the National Park System, the top 25 got more than half of the system’s total number of visits last year. Some parks set all-time records for visitors in 2021.
If you have a particular site you wish to visit, make sure to check its website first. For instance, popular Yosemite National Park in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains can be open in November, but unpredictable autumn snows can cause short-term closures.