National Park Passport Stamps facts for kids
Have you ever visited a National Park? At almost all of the 417 in the United States, you can get special National Park Passport Stamps! These stamps are like the ones you get in your real passport when you travel to different countries. They are free and you can find them at park visitor centers and ranger stations. They help you remember all the amazing parks you've explored!
The "Passport to Your National Parks" program is run by Eastern National, which is a non-profit group. This fun program started in 1986. People who love collecting these stamps have even created a club called the National Park Travelers Club. They meet every year to share their collections and stories.
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Passport Books for Your Adventures
You can buy special Passport books at Eastern National park stores or online. These books are perfect for collecting your National Park cancellation stamps. More than 1.3 million of these books have been sold!
The regular passport book is small, about 3.25 by 5.5 inches. It has five pages for each of the nine park regions. You can put your ink stamps there. You can also add a special "featured stamp" on each page. If you collect all the featured stamps each year, your book would be full after five years.
In 2006, for the program's 20th birthday, a new book called the "Passport Explorer" was released. This one is a binder with bigger pages. It's great because you can easily add more pages if you need extra space for your stamps!
National Park Passport Regions
The National Park Service divides its parks into different regions. These regions help manage and guide the parks in their area. Even though the National Park Service now uses seven regions, the passport program still uses the original nine regions that were in place when it started.
Collecting Annual Stamps
Besides the regular cancellation stamps, the National Parks Passport Program also releases a new set of ten colorful collector stamps every year. Each stamp shows a photo and description of a different park from one of the nine regions.
You can stick these special stamps into your Passport book in a dedicated spot. Below that, you can add the matching cancellation stamp from that park. The parks featured on these stamp sets change every year, so there's always something new to collect!
These annual stamp sets, going all the way back to 1986, are usually available at most park gift shops for less than $10. You can also find them online through Eastern National.
Originally, these special stamps were only sold in the region they represented. The only exception was Colonial National Historical Park, where Eastern National's main office was located. In 1986, the stamps were printed on thick cardboard, which made the passport books bulky. Each stamp had to be put onto its page using a thin, black, sticky plastic sleeve. But since 1987, the annual stamps have been printed on a single sheet of glossy, sticky paper, much like regular postage stamps.
Images for kids
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A sheet of National Park Passport Stamps from 2001.
