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# Twelve thousand acres of standing stone are now America's newest national park
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/chiricahua/
- Published: 2026-10-27T06:05:05.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-27T06:09:26.000Z
- Description: In the far southeast corner of Arizona a volcano went off about 27 million years ago, and what it left behind is a forest of stone. On 20 October that forest became the United States' 64th national park.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Explore, Global Good News, All stories

Chiricahua sits near the town of Willcox in Arizona's southeast corner, where desert, grassland and mountain forest run into each other, and its heart is a field of rhyolite spires and balanced rocks left by a huge eruption about 27 million years ago. Early settlers called it the wonderland of rocks. It has been looked after as a national monument since 1924, and on 20 October 2026 the Chiricahua National Park Act made it a national park, the first new one in the United States in six years and the fourth in Arizona. Nothing on the ground changes: the boundary is the same roughly 12,000 acres, and the National Park Service says its job remains what it was, caring for the landscape and the thousands of years of human story inside it. This is the homeland of the Chiricahua Apache, and Faraway Ranch, inside the park, keeps the story of the homesteading families who came later.

![A balanced rock on a ridge at Chiricahua, with hundreds of stone spires filling the valley below](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/10/chiricahua-inside.jpg)

Pinnacles and balanced rocks at Chiricahua, with the valley beyond. Photo: National Park Service, public domain.

For a visitor it is a place for walking among the stones, camping under some of the darkest skies in the country, and watching for the birds and animals that cross between the three habitats; the park names hiking, scenic drives, wildlife viewing, birding and stargazing as the things to do. It is about two hours from Tucson by road, and still quiet, which the new title may change a little. Its keepers expect the spotlight to bring more people to one of Arizona's hidden gems, and if you are among them, the spires have been waiting a very long time.

### Sources and links

Our short take: from the National Park Service's news release (20 October 2026, updated 21 October) and reporting by Deseret News and KOLD.

- [National Park Service, Chiricahua becomes America's newest national park](https://www.nps.gov/chir/learn/news/chiricahua-national-monument-becomes-america-s-newest-national-park.htm) Size, history, what to do.
- [Chiricahua National Park](https://www.nps.gov/chir/) Plan a visit.