12 “Dark Sky” Parks That Are Losing the Battle Against Light Pollution
A dark sky park is supposed to feel like stepping back into a quieter century, where the Milky Way is not a rumor but a bright band overhead. Many of these places still deliver that awe, yet the night around them is changing. New subdivisions, brighter LEDs, industrial sites, and busier corridors can push skyglow far beyond city limits. Even a well-managed park cannot fence off light that arrives on the horizon. Rangers, astronomers, and nearby towns keep working on shielded fixtures and curfews, but the glow keeps inching closer.
Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah
Natural Bridges was the first place certified as an International Dark Sky Park, and its canyon rims still frame a sky that can feel startlingly deep on moonless nights. The pressure is rarely inside the monument; it is the slow spread of brighter LEDs, unshielded yard lights, and all-night lots in nearby communities that builds a pale dome near the horizon. Even when park fixtures are warm, shielded, and kept low, stray glow seeps in from miles away, so protection depends on patient coordination with counties and towns, plus habits like dimmers, curfews, and lights that point down and shut off.
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
Bryce Canyon’s high elevation and dry air can make the Milky Way look etched above the hoodoos, which is why even small increases in skyglow matter so much. Gateway growth, brighter signage, and lighting installed for convenience can push glare outward, especially when fixtures are aimed wide instead of down and left on until dawn. The park can control campgrounds and roads, but it cannot fully control the rim outside its borders, where one poorly designed lot or sports field can brighten an entire horizon and dull the faint structure that makes the night feel three-dimensional year after year.
Joshua Tree National Park, California
Joshua Tree is certified as a Dark Sky Park, yet it sits within reach of major metro areas, so the desert night is always negotiating with distant glow along the horizon. As surrounding communities expand, outdoor lighting multiplies by default, and the lowest sky brightens first, reducing contrast even when overhead stars still look plentiful. The park can retrofit its own facilities, but open desert air carries light far, meaning one high-output floodlight, bright gas canopy, or decorative uplighting can broadcast glare for miles and quietly erase the dimmer stars that people travel to see in winter.
Death Valley National Park, California
Death Valley feels remote, but its night is not immune to the brightening of the wider Southwest, where growth along corridors adds a persistent halo that travels across open air. The park can keep its own buildings compliant with warm, shielded lighting, yet background brightness can still rise, washing the horizon and thinning the velvety black that makes faint stars visible. On hazy nights or low cloud, reflected glow becomes more obvious, turning distant towns into a soft, permanent dawn line that the landscape cannot absorb.
Great Basin National Park, Nevada
Great Basin’s isolation still delivers nights that feel almost untouched, but the risk is incremental change that arrives one fixture at a time. Brighter highway lighting, new rural development, and energy activity can add scattered points of glare across an otherwise dark basin, each small on its own but cumulative over years. The park’s retrofits matter, yet the sky behaves like a shared resource that flows in from outside boundaries, so preserving contrast means pushing good lighting habits outward into nearby communities and along the roads that feed the park.
Big Bend National Park, Texas
Big Bend is prized for exceptional darkness, yet west Texas has seen skyglow rise from industrial activity outside the park, where work lighting and flaring can be visible across long distances. The park can stay disciplined within its boundaries and still watch the horizon brighten, because light carries easily over open desert air. Regional efforts show that shielding and smarter design can reduce the glow, but progress depends on steady, boring follow-through, not one-time campaigns, and the difference shows up in the faint dust lanes of the Milky Way.
Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas
Big Bend Ranch State Park holds International Dark Sky status beside the same rugged landscape, which makes it a useful mirror of the region’s vulnerability. Distant light travels far across open terrain, and gradual brightening often starts as a faint halo that most visitors ignore until the Milky Way loses texture. The park can keep its own lights rare and well shielded, but it cannot control new roadside fixtures, larger industrial sites, or brighter town centers beyond the horizon. The practical fix is not dramatic: aim light down, limit output, and turn it off when it is not needed.
Craters Of The Moon National Monument, Idaho
Craters of the Moon is designated as an International Dark Sky Park, and its wide lava fields make distant glow easy to notice once eyes adjust. Growth along the Snake River Plain can bring brighter road lighting and development that slowly lifts background brightness, and low cloud can amplify the effect by reflecting stray light back down. The monument’s standards protect trails and campgrounds, but the horizon is porous, and sky quality can slip year by year without any single obvious source. The first thing to fade is contrast, and that is what stargazers chase.
Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Arizona
Parashant earns its dark-sky reputation through isolation, with few roads, limited structures, and long stretches of quiet plateau after sunset. Even here, a creeping rim of brightness from distant communities and tourism corridors can soften the sharpness of stars, because skyglow travels far across open air. The monument can keep its footprint dark and still lose contrast at the edges, especially near the horizon where faint details live. Protection depends on regional restraint that treats outdoor lighting as a shared footprint to be minimized, not a default upgrade to be made brighter every year.
Cherry Springs State Park, Pennsylvania
Cherry Springs is a Gold Level dark sky destination, which makes nearby light a serious concern, not a minor annoyance. When rural areas add brighter fixtures, dusk-to-dawn bulbs, and larger lots, the park’s 360-degree horizon becomes harder to keep clean, especially in humidity that reflects glow back into the sky. The astronomy field is protected, but the surrounding landscape keeps changing, and each new light adds up. The park’s best defense is neighbor-by-neighbor progress: shielded fixtures, warmer color temperatures, lower intensity, and fewer lights left on out of habit.
Antelope Island State Park, Utah
Antelope Island is an International Dark Sky Park, yet it sits across water from the Wasatch Front, where metropolitan growth can lift background brightness even on clear nights. As LEDs get whiter and development spreads, glow can thicken along the horizon, and water and low cloud can magnify it, making modest increases feel dramatic. The island can keep lighting rare within its borders, but its darkness depends on millions of small decisions across the shoreline. Better shielding, lower output, and sensible curfews in nearby towns protect the stars as effectively as any sign at the park entrance.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California
Anza-Borrego benefits from Borrego Springs, a community known for lighting rules designed to protect the desert night, yet southern California’s growth still pushes skyglow toward the park. As new development adds stronger fixtures and more all-night illumination, the desert’s blackness can thin before anyone notices, especially along the horizon where distant light gathers. The park can keep its own facilities disciplined, but the larger region sets the baseline. The simplest win is also the most overlooked: fewer lights, aimed down, on timers, with brightness set for need rather than display.
