Passport FAQ

In Passport® lingo, a cancellation is a rubber ink stamp that records the name of the national park and date of your visit, similar to how you get your US passport stamped when traveling internationally. Cancellations are free to collect at every national park in America.

The primary goal of the Passport To Your National Parks® program is to encourage visitation at official units of the National Park Service. Keeping the program focused on these sites helps us highlight the smaller hidden gems of the NPS.

Only designated National Park Service units are listed in the Passport® books. NPS Related Areas, which are managed by the National Park Service but not counted in the official roster of national park units, aren’t included in the official Passport® program.

Sometimes national forests, state and county parks, and sites managed by the Bureau of Land Management or other public agencies have an ink cancellation available at their site for visitors, even though it’s not officially part of the Passport To Your National Parks® program.

Cancellations are usually located in visitor centers or park stores, but are occasionally moved to seasonal locations or pop-up events. Once we send out a Passport cancellation stamper, it’s up to park staff to decide the best location for it. The only sure-fire way to track down a stamper’s exact location is to contact the park directly. Good luck!

Left your Passport® at home? Arrived after the visitor center closed? Totally forgot to get stamped because you were having a blast at a ranger-led program? Don’t worry, it’s happened to all Passport® fans. We recommend that you contact the park that you’d like a stamp from. Usually all you need to do is send your request and a self-addressed stamped envelope to the park’s visitor center, but you’ll want to confirm directly with the park.

While we don’t maintain a central archive of cancellation stamps, we do offer Passport® Stampable Stickers. Keep a sheet with your travel essentials in case you ever find yourself without your trusty Passport®!

Junior Ranger cancellations are available at national parks that have a Junior Ranger program. Please note that the Junior Ranger cancellations may only be available to visitors upon completion of the park’s Junior Ranger program. This decision is at each park’s discretion, so check with individual national park locations to find out more.

The Passport® program is meant to be a companion to enhance your national park travels. While Passports® are updated every year, and we strive to ensure that park information is up to date at the time of printing, parks sometimes shift operations and hours during the year to accommodate trends in visitation. The National Park Service website will always be your best resource for up-to-the-minute park information.

Yes! Expander packs are available for both the Explorer and Classic editions of the Passport®. These easy-to-attach pages offer even more flexibility in how you collect national park cancellations and log your adventures.

There are so many cancellations to collect it would be impossible to fit them all into one Passport book!  

The National Park Service regularly undergoes changes and updates – in fact, we add new cancellations to the program every month. If you find that you’re running out of space in your Passport® book, you might want to consider upgrading to one of our bigger Passports®, like the Explorer or Collector’s Edition. There are also extra pages available for the Classic and Explorer Edition if you want to hang onto your original book for even longer. Many avid users simply get additional copies of the Classic Passport® book.

Sorry to hear that! If you wrote your name and contact info in the front cover of your Passport,® your chances of having it returned are much better. If you didn’t have a chance to write your contact info, or if you want to take a proactive approach, here are some things you can do:  

• Organize a social media search party. Post or tweet with the #NPSPassport hashtag so others know to keep their eyes peeled. 
• Call the national park where you got your last stamp. You’d be surprised at how many Passports® are found at cancellation stations – maybe they found yours! 

Eastern National, a non-profit education partner of the national parks, owns and operates the Passport® program. Eastern National owns the copyright and trademark for the books, stamps, and other components of the program.

We’ve discontinued the app at this time, due to recurring functionality issues. It is no longer available to download from the app store. Thanks for your patience and understanding as we work to develop a better digital experience for Passport users in the future.

And remember that you don’t need the app to enjoy the full Passport experience today! Our series of Passport® books, stickers, and collectibles are all you need to preserve the memories of your adventures through America’s national parks.