How Trailmark works
A short, honest guide to building your national-parks map — what it is, how to use it, and the questions people ask most.
What Trailmark is
Trailmark is a free national-parks passport. It plots all 63 U.S. National Parks on a hand-drawn topographic map and lets you tap the ones you have actually stood in. Each park you add stitches on an enamel trail patch, fills your progress ring a little further, and nudges your percentile among other visitors. There is no account, nothing to install, and no cost — it is a keepsake you build in your browser and come back to grow, trip after trip. Your collection is yours to keep and to share.
How to build your map
Start on the map. Tap any park you have visited and it lights up on the survey sheet with its own patch; tap it again to remove it. If markers overlap in a busy region, use the searchable park list beneath the map to toggle parks by name — it is fully keyboard-operable. As your count climbs from 0 toward 63, the progress ring and your “top X%” percentile update live. When you are happy with it, press Make my patch-map to open a shareable card showing your lit map, your number out of 63, and the patches you have earned. Copy growing-link packs your whole collection into a single URL you can save or send.
Trail series — smaller sets inside the 63
Sixty-three is a long climb, so Trailmark also groups the parks into fifteen named trail series: small, factual sets that share something real. Some are simply a whole state — The Utah Five, The California Nine, The Alaska Eight, The Colorado Four, The Florida Three. Others cut across the map: No Road In collects the five parks you can only reach by boat or plane, The Underground Three the parks named for the cave beneath them, The Volcano Line the ones built by fire, The Four Deserts the eight that sit in the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, Mojave or Great Basin desert, and The First Fifteen the parks already designated before 1920.
The series panel sits under your progress ring. Each card shows how far along that set you are, a notch for every park in it, and — once you are within three parks — exactly which ones are missing. Finish one and it stamps complete. Nothing is locked behind them and there is no score attached; they are there because “one park from finishing the Utah Five” is a far more useful thing to know when you are planning a trip than “thirty-seven of sixty-three”. Adding parks works exactly as it always did: tap them on the map or in the list.
Seven honest tips
- Your map saves automatically on the device you are using. Clearing your browser data, or switching devices without your growing-link, starts you fresh — so copy the link if you want a backup.
- The growing-link is the real save file. Paste it into a note and you can restore your exact collection on a phone, a laptop, or a friend’s screen.
- You do not have to finish in one sitting. Add the parks you remember now, then come back after your next trip and add the new one — the map is built to grow.
- The percentile is an honest estimate from how many parks each visitor logs, not an official record. Treat “top 6%” as a fun brag, not a certificate.
- Every park has its own page, linked from the map, with a short factual blurb — handy when you are deciding where to head next.
- The patch-map card is designed to read clearly to someone who has never used Trailmark, so a plain screenshot shares well anywhere.
- If you are choosing between two trips, check the trail series first — one of them may close out a whole set, and the panel names the exact parks you are missing.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an account?
No. Trailmark works entirely in your browser — no sign-up, no email, no password. Your collection lives in local storage and in your growing-link.
How many parks does it track?
All 63 designated U.S. National Parks. It does not include the 400-plus other National Park Service units — monuments, seashores, historic sites — just the parks themselves.
Will I lose my map if I switch phones?
Your device save does not travel, but your growing-link does. Copy it, open it on the new device, and your exact collection restores.
Where do the trail series come from?
They are ours, and they are built from plain public facts about the parks — which state a park is in, the year it was designated, whether a road reaches it, whether it sits in a desert or on a volcano. The state and year sets are worked out from the park data itself, so they cannot drift; the rest are hand-picked and deliberately small. They are a way of reading the list, not an official grouping.
Is the percentile real?
It is an honest estimate based on the size of every collection people build, not an official government statistic. It is meant as a fun way to see roughly where you rank.
Does Trailmark cost anything?
No — it is free and supported by ads. There is no paid tier and nothing is locked behind a purchase.