A Salute to America's National Parks

By Travel + Leisure and Travel + Leisure Staff
Updated: March 06, 2017

To celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service, we commissioned this extraordinary portfolio by the German photographer Harf Zimmermann, who is internationally renowned for landscape and architectural images that often capture light in breathtaking ways. What better person, we thought, to show readers what it feels like to be inside America’s natural cathedrals? Zimmermann traveled from the swampy woods of Congaree, in South Carolina, to the ocher ravines of the Grand Canyon in his quest to document these sanctified places as a collective entity, also heading to northwestern Wyoming, to visit Yellowstone; eastern Utah, to see Arches; and eastern Arizona, to wander Petrified Forest National Park. “I have seen great landscapes before,” he said, “but to see places of so many different kinds in one trip—that was something new. It readjusted my view of the relationship between man (meaning me, personally) and nature.”

Zimmermann still shoots film, on a large-format camera, an approach that requires meticulous planning, lengthy contemplation, and often return visits. Each of these photos is the end result of a complex process. At Yellowstone, the photographer’s approach resulted in a brush with the authorities, who mistook his large-format camera for a camcorder, for which he didn’t have a permit. (Ironically, only a month later, the Park Service created a full-time staff position for a large-format photographer to work in the tradition of Ansel Adams.) Soon enough, Zimmermann cleared everything up and continued on his journey. “I was happy as a child in every park I visited,” he said, “and as far as I was concerned, the trip could have gone on forever.” The pictures he took along the way will remind you why our national parks are the envy of the world.

For more stories celebrating the centennial of the national parks, head here.»

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Arches National Park

Harf Zimmermann

Visitors contemplate the North Window, one of the best known of the red-rock formations in Arches National Park, in eastern Utah. Lying beyond it along the Windows Trail is Turret Arch.

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Congaree National Park

Harf Zimmermann

Congaree National Park, in the floodplain of South Carolina, contains the largest remaining tract of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the United States.

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Grand Canyon National Park

Harf Zimmermann

Many visitors get their first glimpse of the Grand Canyon from this vantage at Mather Point, on the more heavily traveled South Rim.

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Petrified Forest National Park

Harf Zimmermann

In Petrified Forest National Park, in eastern Arizona, the Blue Mesa Trail winds its way past hills of bentonite clay and petrified-wood deposits that are millions of years old.

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Yellowstone National Park

Harf Zimmermann

As superheated water rises through limestone, it dissolves the soft rock, leaving white, chalky deposits behind. As a result, Mammoth’s terraces are constantly evolving in shape and color. 

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Arches National Park

Harf Zimmermann

One of Arches' most famous features is the Fiery Furnace, a natural labyrinth of narrow passages running between high sandstone walls.

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Congaree National Park

Harf Zimmermann

About 10 times a year, rising waters from the Congaree River spread through the forest, carrying nutrients that nourish this ecosystem.

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Grand Canyon National Park

Harf Zimmermann

This view, atop the Desert View Watchtower, is from the highest observation pointon the South Rim. Designed by Mary Colter, one of America's first prominent female architects, it lets visitors take in the Big Bend of the Colorado River, the North Rim, and the Painted Desert in the distance.

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Petrified Forest National Park

Harf Zimmermann

Petrified Forest National Park lies entirely within the multihued badlands known as the Painted Desert, which gets its signature colors from the dense mineral deposits in its strata of mudstone and sandstone.

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Yellowstone National Park

Harf Zimmermann

The travertine terraces of Yellowstone’s Mammoth Hot Springs are one of the many surface manifestations of the volcanic forces at work deep below the park. 

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Arches National Park

Harf Zimmermann

The unofficial state symbol of Utah, Delicate Arch is probably the most recognizable of all the park’s many natural bridges. In 2002, the Olympic torch passed through it on its way to the Games in Salt Lake City.

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Harf Zimmermann

Blue Mesa Trail, Petrified Forest, National Park, Arizona

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