National Parks

National Parks is an MCP server that connects AI assistants to the official U.S. National Park Service (NPS) API to retrieve real-time park data. Developers, travelers, trip planners, and outdoor researchers use it to pull accurate geographic, logistical, and recreational details directly into conversations with LLM clients like Claude Desktop. The server enables users to discover parks across individual states, review operational hours, inspect fee schedules, and verify visitor center locations. In addition to basic park profiles, it surfaces critical live safety information such as weather warnings, trail hazards, and road closures. Users can also look up campground amenities, check reservation details, and monitor upcoming ranger-led programs and scheduled events. By exposing structured tools for searching, querying specific park codes, and filtering by recreational activities like hiking or camping, the server provides an interface to organize comprehensive itineraries, explore public lands, and remain informed about local conditions across the United States national park network.

Category: Maps, Weather & Local Data

Tags: national parks, nps, public data, tourism, travel

Visit National Parks

How to install and configure National Parks

1. Obtain an API key from the National Park Service Developer Portal. 2. Open your claude_desktop_config.json file. 3. Add the server entry under the mcpServers object: json { "mcpServers": { "nationalparks": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "mcp-server-nationalparks"], "env": { "NPS_API_KEY": "YOUR_NPS_API_KEY" } } } } 4. Alternatively, install via Smithery by running npx -y @smithery/cli install @KyrieTangSheng/mcp-server-nationalparks --client claude. 5. Save the configuration and restart Claude Desktop.

What you can do with National Parks

• Search for national parks across specific states and filter results by available outdoor activities such as hiking or camping. - Check real-time alerts, trail closures, and active hazard warnings for parks like Yosemite or Grand Canyon before traveling. - Retrieve operating hours, physical locations, and contact details for visitor centers across multiple federal park units. - Query campground details to evaluate reservation requirements, amenity availability, and hookups across selected national parks. - Look up upcoming calendar events, ranger talks, and educational activities within specified date ranges across any park.

Key facts

• Free
• https://github.com/KyrieTangSheng/mcp-server-nationalparks
• Maps, Weather & Local Data, Web Search & Research
• national parks, nps, public data, tourism, travel

Part of MCP Servers

How do I install National Parks?

You can install the server in Claude Desktop by adding an entry to your claude_desktop_config.json specifying the npx command with mcp-server-nationalparks and setting your NPS_API_KEY environment variable. You can also run the automated installer command using Smithery CLI.

What can National Parks do?

The server provides tools to search parks by state or keyword, retrieve park profiles and fees, inspect active closures and alerts, find visitor centers and operating hours, view campground amenities, and track upcoming calendar events.

Which MCP clients work with National Parks?

National Parks works with Claude Desktop and any client supporting the Model Context Protocol that can launch local stdio processes via Node.js and pass custom environment variables.

Do I need an API key to use National Parks?

Yes, you need a free API key from the National Park Service Developer Portal. This key must be configured in your MCP client settings under the NPS_API_KEY environment variable.

Is National Parks open source?

Yes, National Parks is open source and released under the MIT License on GitHub.