National parks are one of America’s greatest and environmentally worthwhile achievements. As many know, the first national park to be established—likely one of the first in the world—was Yellowstone National Park in 1872. This amazing park lies mostly in Wyoming and covers over 2.2 million acres. After its creation, President Theodore Roosevelt would build on this and establish five more national parks and 18 national monuments.

Today, the U.S. is home to 63 national parks for visitors to enjoy. However, there are many other sites and natural wonders that are deserving of federal park status but, for one reason or another, have not been protected under the National Park System. Since there are so many amazing natural wonders in the U.S. and not enough space to list them all, we’ll focus on states that currently do not have a national park but definitely have a contender.

Related: 10 Weirdest Life Cycles In Nature

10 Mobile-Tensaw Delta, Alabama

One of the least talked about but most biologically diverse places in the U.S. is the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. It has been called America’s Amazon. The area is the second-largest delta in the U.S.—after the Mississippi. It contains one of the highest densities of different turtle species in the world, and scientists suspect that there is still flora and fauna in the area waiting to be discovered.

Apart from its natural wonders, the area also contains many historical sites that have been lost to time and swallowed up by the vast swampland. For example, it was the site of the last major battle of the Civil War, fought at Fort Blakely after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. It also contains one of the largest discovered Native American mounds on the Gulf Coast. Unfortunately, the area is unlikely to become a national park anytime soon, as a 2016 push to fold the area into the National Park System stalled.^[1]

9 Smoky Hills, Kansas

Many might think of flat prairies when thinking of Kansas, but the state is also home to canyons, rivers, and streams. The Smoky Hills region in the north-central part of the state was formed during the Cretaceous Period and includes craggy canyons and streams made up of sandstone, limestone, and chalk.

With so much geological history, the area also sports some strange rock formations, such as mushroom rock near Kanopolis State Park. The area’s rolling hills, canyons, and wetlands are definitely usually overlooked when one thinks about Kansas. Still, if the state was to be approved for a national park, this area would definitely be in contention.^[2]

8 Natchez Trace, Mississippi and Tennessee

Though administered by the National Park Service, the 444-mile Natchez Trace Trail that meanders through Mississippi and north into Tennessee is technically considered a “parkway.” Visitors can drive, bike, or hike along the road and the surrounding forests, which follow a trail used for centuries by Native Americans and then early settlers.

Former President Thomas Jefferson widened the corridor in order to link Natchez, Mississippi, to Nashville and encourage expansion. The original trail even contains a marker for the grave of Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark Expedition fame). If it so wanted, the state of Mississippi would probably have no problem convincing the National Park Service to create a national park around the historic parkway and surrounding forests.^[3]

7 The Adirondacks, New York

Located in upstate New York, the Adirondacks is a region containing over 30,000 square miles of rivers and streams. The park itself is administered by the state of New York, and while you might have heard of the area, did you know that the park is larger than Yellowstone, Glacier, the Everglades, and the Grand Canyon National Parks combined?

Almost half of the land in the park is owned by the state, while just over 55% is privately owned. However, all of the land within, including private land, must adhere to a strict set of development rules that are meant to protect the park. With rivers and forests, you can enjoy nearly 2,000 miles of hiking trails and other outdoor adventures. Paired with small towns and farmland, the area also boasts numerous historic sites, including forts, museums, and even the Olympic Center in Lake Placid.^[4]

6 The Apostle Islands, Wisconsin

There are 22 islands near Bayfield Peninsula in Lake Superior. Twenty-one of those islands belong to a national lakeshore in Wisconsin. These islands encompass an area of 720 square miles (Link 11), offering adventurers caves to explore, miles of coastline to kayak, and 108 square miles of land and forest to hike.

The shores of these jewel-like islands also mark the northwestern limits of hardwood-white pine. The area hosts bald eagles, black bears, the endangered American marten, and numerous aquatic life and migratory birds. But no matter the season, the islands always offer spectacular views of one of the most pristine Great Lakes.^[5]

5 Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands

What is essentially a collection of two national forests and three national grasslands starting in Nebraska and spanning into South Dakota make up the Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands.

One area of forest inside this vast expanse makes up some 90,000 acres and is actually the largest hand-planted forest in the world. Yeah, that’s right, much of this forest was planted by humans. In 1890, a member of the University of Nebraska suggested that the federal government plant trees in order to stem erosion and provide sanctuary for wildlife and a source of lumber for locals.

The federal government apparently thought it was a good idea and a year later established an experimental plot of land that has grown into the forest that exists today. While not technically “natural,” it makes one wonder what kind of positive precedent for the future it would set to elevate this area into national park status.^[6]

4 Hammersley Wild Area, Pennsylvania

Spanning an area of almost 30,000 acres, this wild area is some of the most pristine forested regions in the state of Pennsylvania, if not the most. The brochure even warns those looking to hike the area to carry topographic maps as getting lost here could “have serious consequences.”

The region contains old-growth and hardwood forests, but it is perhaps more notable for what is absent. There are no roads inside Hammersley, meaning the only thing you are likely to hear while camping or hiking is the sweet, sweet sound of the wilderness.^[7]

3 Kisatchie National Forest, Louisiana

Located in north-central Louisiana, Kisatchie National Forest is over 600,000 acres and contains old-growth pine—the type that used to cover most of the southeast U.S. It was even featured on the America the Beautiful quarter series that highlighted various national parks and other natural resources in the U.S.

The forest contains over 100 bird species year-round, Louisiana black bears, and escaped wild horses. Almost logged completely in the early twentieth century, the area is named after a local tribe of Kichai Native Americans, who called themselves “Kitsatchie.” The park offer camping (both in camps and more primitive), fishing, hunting, hiking, and numerous other outdoor adventures to keep everyone busy.^[8]

2 The Green Mountains, Vermont

Green Mountains National Forest is another forest on this list that could easily be elevated to National Park status. The forest spans some 400,000 acres and 550 square miles, with the park established in 1932.

The area the forest gets its name from—the Green Mountains—is part of the Appalachian Mountain chain. They run north-south through the center of Vermont and include peaks rising over 3,000 feet in height. The national forest was established to protect many of these verdant peaks and their hardwoods. With its diverse vegetation and focus on forest stewardship, the park—along with its sister park, the Finger Lakes National Park in New York—functions as a research and educational center. It also has various recreational activities along its many trails.^[9]

1 Atchafalaya, Louisiana

The last area on our list, the Atchafalaya Basin, is the country’s largest swamp. It spans an area of almost one million acres and stretches 140 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Located in Louisiana, the basin is larger than the Florida Everglades and is home to the largest nesting population of bald eagles in the southern U.S.

The basin contains the largest contiguous hardwood forest in the U.S. and an abundance of wildlife. Situated west of New Orleans, the basin would probably be covered by the ever-changing Mississippi River by now if it weren’t for controls put in place along the northern edge of the basin. However, the basin takes in about 30% of the water from the Mississippi Rivers as it flows into the Gulf. The waters provide essential habitat for more than 300 species of wildlife and 100 different aquatic species, as well as a rich diversity of native plants.

You can enjoy various activities while visiting this bayou, including paddling, biking, golfing, birding, and camping. Oh, and don’t forget a swamp tour!^[10]

Status symbols are some of the hardest to understand aspects of any culture or society. What makes any given thing a symbol of importance? Is a rare NFT of a cartoon monkey really indicative of anything? What about a Ferrari? Truth is, status symbols have always been pretty mysterious and weird. Just look at these…

10. Pineapples

Our ancestors were harvesting pineapple in South America thousands of years ago, and why not? It’s delicious, refreshing, and it looks pretty cool as far as fruit goes as well. Columbus was so impressed with the fruit that after pillaging the New World, he brought it back to Europe with him and soon it became the “it” thing for anyone who was anyone.

In the 16th and 17th Century, Europeans fell in love with the pineapple. It was exotic and hard to come by, so getting a hold of one indicated you had money or influence. Charles II commissioned a painting of himself with a pineapple. The cost of building a greenhouse to grow pineapples in England was upwards of £28,000. Many of them failed, and it took years to grow the fruit, all of which added to the cache of having one. So how much did a pineapple cost back then? About £60. Adjusted for inflation, that’s around £11,000 today. So in a lot of ways, a pineapple was legitimately like owning a 75-inch TV, or some other needless luxury. 

Ironically, or maybe not depending on your perspective, people would not actually do much with those pricey pineapples. If you’re spending that much, you’re not just making a fruit salad, right? So, often, the fruit would just sit on a table like a decoration to show off for anyone who came by. 

9. Ornamental Hermits

If a pineapple seems like an obscure sort of decoration, a hermit has to be next level. In the 18th century, part of tending a garden meant making it as lush and luxurious as possible if you wanted to show off your station in life. After all, only the most high society types would be able to afford majestic topiaries and exotic flowers from abroad. But at some point, this evolved beyond normal garden fixtures to include the ornamental hermit.

Just as the name suggests, an ornamental hermit was a man, a literal person, who lived in a little shack or hovel on the grounds of another person’s home. Think of a garden gnome only in real life. These men would dress as druids, grow long beards, and essentially look like your own personal Gandalf. They also didn’t bathe, just to complete the illusion. 

The hermit was not to speak with anyone for a period of seven years. They’d just live there, not bathing, and looking the part. The trend evolved from the idea of Roman Emperor Hadrian having a single person retreat at his villa, something that was later adapted by Pope Pius IV. And by the 18th century people just decided that having a lone hermit was in keeping with more of an emotional ideal of the melancholy. That is to say, they exemplified introspection and somberness, feelings which were valued at the time and apparently best appreciated in living, breathing form. Only the most wealthy of people could afford to hire a person to live like this and thus, one of the most bizarre status symbols was born.

Luckily for the would-be hermits, the trend did not last long.

8. Men’s High Heels

These days, high heel shoes are almost exclusively sold to women. People would arguably look at a man strangely if they saw him wearing heels because of cultural biases we still hold relating to what qualifies as menswear and womenswear. What’s odd about this is that high heels were originally made for men and not women. 

Heels date back to somewhere between the 10th and 15th century in Persia. And they weren’t considered effeminate or odd in any way, just the opposite. Heels were worn by warriors as they allowed them greater control and security in stirrups on horseback. 

At the time, the Persian military was not accessible to just any man. If you planned to ride on a horse, then you needed to be wealthy enough to buy your own. Thus, those who could wear heels were part of the elite class. The heels were introduced to Europe at the end of the 1500s when the Persians made a grand tour of Europe looking for allies in war.

European nobility couldn’t resist the allure of something new and unique. To them, heels were manly and cool, so they all wanted a pair of their own. When people of lower station began wearing heels, the aristocrats made higher heels. They became impractically high and that cemented them as the shoes of the elite because normal people couldn’t actually perform real jobs in high heels, so only the upper crust could get away with wearing them. 

7. Low Number License Plates

Cars as a status symbol is by no means a new idea. As long as cars have existed, there have been the more expensive and luxurious versions that people have sought as a way to show off their wealth. The Rolls Royce Boat Tail will set you back $28 million if you’re looking to show off your fancy car chops today, but it’s not the only car-related status symbol out there by any means. 

In Rhode Island and several other states, you don’t need a multimillion dollar automobile to show off your street cred. You just need the right license plate. Low numbers have long been desired by license plate enthusiasts.

When license plates were first issued, they did them in the most logical way you could imagine – numerically. So the first plate ever issued was just number 1. And so it went. As plates go out of circulation, those numbers can be reissued. Or, if they still exist, owners can will them to relatives or even sell them. And people pay a lot of money for them. 

The governor got that number one plate back in 1903. You can imagine the imagined cache of having a car emblazoned with a government-sanctioned “1” on it. It created the idea that a low number was somehow good. This is a trend you can see every day in almost anything with a numerical ordering system. People want to be number one. Oftentimes it makes no sense at all, but we still like the sound of it. That’s essentially how it works with these plates. It’s meaningless, but people still want them. 

What’s a low plate worth? Delaware’s “9” sold for nearly $200,000 in 1994. A 14 went for $325,000. Despite not meaning much objectively, they have that subjective value which allows someone to say they’re the top. Or at least top 14. And that means a lot to some folks. 

6. Dueling Scars

Have you ever heard the saying “chicks dig scars?” Juvenile though it may be, there’s something to the idea of scars being cool. Maybe not literally, but you can’t deny that there is a cultural sort of appreciation for someone who has battle scars or evidence of trauma. Why? Who knows? But you can see it in books and movies all the time, those scenes where the hero takes their shirt off and dramatically reveals the cuts and holes and tears of a hard life that shows just how tough and admirable they must truly be. 

The idea that scars are desirable wasn’t born in a vacuum of fiction. In real life, people have pursued scars as a way to show off their own badassery for longer than you might think. A 2008 study shows that women were more attracted to men who had facial scars. But the practice of scarring to be cool goes back further.

Germans used to engage in duels ostensibly to get cuts on their faces. This was done by college men in fraternities to show off their manliness. The Nazi party actually reintroduced the practice of dueling in 1936. The duels were never meant to be malicious or to settle real disputes; they were just sort of like a Fight Club-style battle to prove one’s toughness.

As you might expect, not everyone was inclined to let an opponent slash them with a rapier. Word is that some men used razors on their own faces, or even paid doctors to do it for them. 

5. Wigs

If you’ve seen any period piece movies that cover 18th century England, then you know wigs were a prominent part of British high society. All the aristocrats in old movies wear those giant, puffy white wigs. The concept of the powdered wig actually comes from France and King Louis XIII, who wore one to cover his baldness. The wigs were powdered because, made from horse or goat hair as they were, and never actually cleaned, they smelled awful and were full of lice. Powder cut back on the nastiness. 

As we saw with high heels, the elite in society love nothing more than to do what everyone else is doing, and so the wig trend spread rapidly. They became more ornate and complex as the trend grew and, just like a pair of sneakers in modern times, if you wanted to stand out among a certain crowd of people, you had to have the best looking wig you could get. Some high end wigs, when adjusted for inflation, could cost over $10,000. 

Wigs became so popular that a black market arose and wig theft became a serious problem. To appreciate just how serious, you should know that some people apparently trained monkeys to snatch wigs right off people’s heads and run away with them. 

4. Lawns

Some people take their lawn care very seriously. You might even say too seriously. Many neighborhoods have that one lawn that’s just pristine and green all year around because someone is devoting a ton of time to making it look majestic. A lot of other people don’t care. But once upon a time, a lawn was a thing of true status. 

A patch of grass seems like an odd status symbol, but not once you realize what it represents. In a way, it’s actually very crass. A lawn, once upon a time, showed your wealth because it was wasteful. A peasant couldn’t afford a lawn. The land was their livelihood. A farmer couldn’t have a lawn, they needed that land to grow food to make a living. But a rich person? They could waste so much land. So a large lawn indicated you didn’t care about how much space you wasted. 

Over time, homeowners got to have their own property and their own lawns, which, in their way, showed a kind of independence. It showed success. We still kind of think of homeownership in those terms, but not necessarily the needless patch of grass in front of one.

3. Paper Fans

Most people today take paper for granted. You go to Staples and buy a slab of it for your printer and it costs a few bucks. No big deal. But if you get into the world of paper, you’ll learn that paper is never “just” paper. There’s that cheap printer paper you can buy that’s made from processed wood pulp and costs under $10 for 500 sheets. Or you can buy 50 sheets of paper made from processed elephant poop for $32. 

In Korea, hanji was handmade paper produced from mulberry trees. It was used for writing but also numerous decorative and artistic purposes as well. One of those purposes was for folded hand fans. These fans were only allowed to be used by men in public and were shown off as a status symbol. 

The more ornate the fan, the more important the person wielding it arguably was. Different colors, shapes and decorations showed off that status. For instance, the more bamboo ribs the fan had, the higher the status. Royalty would wield fans with 50 ribs. Lesser aristocracy might have 40. 

2. Salt

Of all the seasonings in the world, none is more important to chefs than salt. When a chef says something needs seasoning, they don’t mean saffron. They mean salt. And, historically, salt has been a big deal. Salt used to be one of the most valuable commodities in the world. In Ancient Greece, slaves would be sold for salt. Clearly it had some serious value, and this extended through much of history.

Because of its value, those who could show off salt were also showing off their social status. The true bigwigs of society could afford salt cellars, an ornate container that held salt and at gatherings and parties, the host would show it off like it was a Porsche in the driveway. At a dinner, those of greater status would be seated above the salt. Lesser folks sat further away. 

1. Pillows

Pillows hold an odd position in the world at large. You have one on your bed for sleeping, but some people also have a good half dozen on the bed that are just there for decoration. The same thing happens on sofas as well. The world is full of pillows, many of which are just there to look nice but not be used for anything.

Pillows date back some 9,000 years. The first Mesopotamian pillow was made of stone and served the purpose of keeping your head off the ground so fewer bugs would crawl in your mouth at night. 

The stone pillow became widely popular and only the wealthy could afford them because carved stone isn’t cheap today and it wasn’t cheap back then. Thus, a pillow was something that showed off your status as a big wig. 

Decorative pillows spread to other cultures. Ornately painted ceramic pillows became a status symbol in China. In the Middle Ages, soft pillows were used by the rich and eschewed by the men as being weak. 

To this day, we’ve kept up the idea of the decorative pillow as something opulent, even though it has no real use as a pillow. The next time anyone complains about you have pillows you can’t actually use, just tell them you’re participating in a 9,000 year old tradition of decadence.