Arizona has 2 of America’s 25 most beautiful national parks. There’s 1 surprising snub

A new survey has found that Arizona is home to two of the most beautiful national parks in the U.S.

The ranking contains a surprising omission.

The survey from travel website Travel Lens, which based its research on Google reviews of America's 63 national parks, recognized two of Arizona's three national parks for their aesthetics.

Arizona tied with Colorado and Washington state for the second-most parks on the list, trailed only by Utah, which had four. Crater Lake National Park in Oregon was ranked the most beautiful park in the nation.

The list, however, had a handful of surprising snubs — including one in Arizona.

Here's where each of Arizona's national parks landed on the list, as well as how the list was put together.

Fossils in Arizona: Latest discoveries and where to look for dinosaur tracks

How Travel Lens selected the most beautiful U.S. national parks

Travel Lens compiled the list based on Google reviews of each of the 63 national parks posted since January 2023.

It assigned a percentage to each park based on the total number of reviews and the number of reviews containing the words "beautiful," "stunning," "breathtaking" and "gorgeous."

Most beautiful national parks in Arizona

Saguaro National Park came in at No. 13 on the ranking with 36.5% of its Google reviews, or 143 out of 392, focusing on the park's aesthetics. "Beautiful" was the most common word used to describe Saguaro, appearing in 130 reviews. Nine described it as "stunning."

A user named Casey M wrote: "Breathtaking park full of interesting plants and wildlife. Easy to drive paths and pull offs and lots of great views. The cacti throughout the park are magnificent and lots of plaques throughout to teach about them. I really enjoyed our visit here. Also includes a great visitor center and gift shop. A must-see visit!"

Petrified Forest National Park rounded out the survey at No. 25. About 30.5% of the park's reviews mention beauty, accounting for 198 of its 648 reviews. "Beautiful" was mentioned in 175 reviews, while "stunning", "breathtaking" and "gorgeous" each appeared in 14-16 reviews.

A user named Bill Doering wrote: "The national park was very interesting to see the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest with the petrified wood just laying around on the ground, the scenery was beyond beautiful, and a place that everyone needs to see when traveling out towards Flagstaff, AZ."

Why isn't Grand Canyon on the list of most beautiful national parks?

The Travel Lens list is as notable for the parks that missed out as it is for the parks that made it in.

Yellowstone, the vast wilderness area known for its diverse ecosystems and abundant wildlife, and Yosemite, known for its towering sequoia trees and rock formations like El Capitan, missed the top 25.

So did Grand Canyon, a place this reporter described as “a spectacular sight to behold any time of year” after visiting it for the first time in winter.

Surprised by the exclusion, we looked at Grand Canyon’s Google reviews. The exclusion might be because Grand Canyon is too beautiful for the list.

It holds a 4.8-star average and all 10 of the most recent reviewers gave 5 stars. “Beautiful,” “stunning” and “breathtaking” appeared in most of those reviews, but so did other words and phrases highlighting the beauty that were not tracked in the survey, such as “awe-inspiring” (440 reviews contain the word “awe”) and “majestic.”

The Travel Lens survey did find that Grand Canyon ranked among the most Instagrammed national parks. It ranked No. 12 with 453,127 Instagram posts in 2023.

The No. 1 most Instagrammed was another park snubbed from the most beautiful parks survey: Yosemite National Park in California, which had more than 1.6 million posts.

State parks are beautiful, too: See one on a First Day Hike to ring in 2024

Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @salerno_phx.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Most beautiful Arizona national parks: Petrified Forest, Saguaro