Voyageurs National Park the Happiest in the US

A recent study says people are happiest when visiting Voyageurs National Park, the only national park in Minnesota, over other national parks across the entire US.

But how did they determine such a thing? It's pretty simple: How many people smiled when they visited.

ALSO READ: No Spend Ideas for Summer Fun

Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota

Voyageurs National Park is a beautiful area of Minnesota, which includes the Boundary Waters. It spans 218,000 acres and "is named after the French-Canadian Voyageurs who once navigated these abundant waters."

It's not the most visited national park we have (I blame it on our long winters) but apparently people really love it when they do visit.

A website called ACE created a Happy National Parks Index for 2026. In order to come up with the rankings, they found publicly available Instagram photos of people at each of of our national parks.

The photos were then analyzed (by AI) for smiles and how big the smiles were. More smiles meant more points and bigger smiles meant even MORE points.

Based on all of the photos, the national park that brought the most and biggest smiles to people's faces was our very own Voyageur National Park!