America's national parks get the crowds — and the entry fees. But scattered across the country are state parks offering equally dramatic scenery for nothing at all. The Independent has rounded up 12 of the best, and the list reads like a greatest-hits of US landscapes: waterfalls, gorges, natural arches and one genuine ruined castle.
In Ohio, Hocking Hills State Park packs 2,356 acres of cliffs, gorges and waterfalls into a landscape threaded with around 25 miles of trails. Old Man's Cave, the 700-foot-wide Ash Cave and Cedar Falls are the headliners, and camping starts around $25 a night. Pennsylvania contributes twice: Ricketts Glen, where a 7.2-mile Falls Trail links 21 of the park's 22 waterfalls including the 94-foot Ganoga Falls, and Ohiopyle, the white-water capital of the list thanks to the churning Lower Youghiogheny River.
The South is well represented. Tennessee's Fall Creek Falls drops 256 feet in the tallest free-fall waterfall in the eastern US, while Kentucky's Natural Bridge features a 78-foot sandstone arch high above Red River Gorge — reachable on foot or via a retro chairlift. Arkansas claims two entries: Mount Magazine, spread across the state's highest summit at 2,753 feet, where you can drive to the top and watch hang gliders launch; and Petit Jean, home to the 95-foot Cedar Falls and Native American rock art near Rock House Cave.
West Virginia's Blackwater Falls earns its name from tannin-stained water plunging 60 feet into a gorge, with a winter sledding hill thrown in. Missouri also has two picks: Johnson's Shut-Ins, a natural water park of chutes and plunge pools carved through volcanic rock, and Ha Ha Tonka, where the shell of an early-20th-century stone castle sits above the turquoise Lake of the Ozarks — though this one is day-use only.
Rounding out the dozen: Starved Rock in Illinois, with 18 glacially carved sandstone canyons that feel oddly Southwestern, and Iowa's Pikes Peak State Park, whose 500-foot bluff overlooks the meeting of the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers — best at sunrise, sunset or in autumn colour.
Why it matters: all 12 parks are free to enter, with camping from roughly $15–35 a night and cabins often under $150. For travellers priced out of — or simply tired of queuing at — America's marquee national parks, these are a cheaper, quieter route to the same wow factor, provided you're happy to pay for overnight stays even when entry costs nothing.