The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries Seen on Screen in North America
5 places in 2 countries ยท updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful nature sanctuaries seen on screen in North America are Banff National Park (Canada), Zion National Park (United States) and Yosemite National Park (United States). The list covers 5 nature sanctuaries seen on screen in 2 countries. The United States has the most, with 4. Last updated 6 October 2026.
A protected landscape is a gift to a film crew: no power lines, no new buildings, the same view a western or a science fiction epic needs. North America's sanctuaries offer that variety within a single continent, from Rocky Mountain lakes and granite domes to desert sandstone and eroded prairie.
Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, founded in 1885, frames Lake Louise and Moraine Lake with peaks and glaciers, where Marilyn Monroe filmed River of No Return in the 1950s. Zion National Park in Utah has narrow sandstone canyons cut by the Virgin River, with cliffs rising hundreds of metres from the valley floor. Yosemite, with El Capitan, Half Dome and its waterfalls, became the setting of the climbing documentary Free Solo. Badlands National Park in South Dakota, an eroded landscape of buttes and pinnacles, was used for Dances with Wolves. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado has the Painted Wall, the tallest cliff in the state, streaked with pale bands of pegmatite.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Banff National Park | Protected area | Canada | |
| 2 | Zion National Park | National park | United States | |
| 3 | Yosemite National Park | National park | United States | โ |
| 4 | Badlands National Park | National park | United States | |
| 5 | Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park | Canyon | United States |
01 Banff National Park
Canada ยท 2 km from Banff51.167ยฐ N 115.550ยฐ W
Image by NUNZG from Pixabay Banff was Canada's first national park, created in 1885 when the government set aside a small reserve around hot springs that railway workers had stumbled on at Cave and Basin; it has since grown to about 6,641 square kilometres of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta. The peaks are slabs of sedimentary rock pushed eastward 80 to 55 million years ago and then sculpted by glaciers into horns, cirques and U-shaped valleys.
Did you know? A scene of Lake Louise appeared on the back of the Canadian 20-dollar banknote in the 1969 to 1979 series.
02 Zion National Park
United States37.203ยฐ N 112.988ยฐ W
- Dark Sky Place
Image by Pexels from Pixabay The cliffs that make Zion look otherworldly are, geologically speaking, fossilised weather. The dominant rock, Navajo Sandstone, started out around 180 million years ago as an enormous field of wind-blown sand dunes โ think Sahara-scale โ and the diagonal cross-bedding cutting through the rock faces is literally the shape of those ancient dune slopes, frozen in stone.
Did you know? When President Taft protected the canyon in 1909, he gave it the Southern Paiute-derived name Mukuntuweap National Monument; it became Zion only later.
03 Yosemite National Park
United States37.742ยฐ N 119.537ยฐ W
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by 12019 from Pixabay Few landscapes explain their own making as plainly as Yosemite. The park's 1,187 square miles sit on the granite of the Sierra Nevada batholith, rock that cooled deep underground, was lifted and tilted with the range some ten million years ago, and was then worked over by ice.
Did you know? On rare clear evenings in mid to late February, the setting sun backlights Horsetail Fall on the eastern edge of El Capitan so that it glows orange.
04 Badlands National Park
United States43.750ยฐ N 102.500ยฐ W
Image by victortran0107 from Pixabay The Lakota called this country makศรณลกiฤa, "bad land", and the name stuck in every language that followed. From the rim of the prairie the ground simply falls away into a maze of pinnacles, saw-toothed ridges and fluted buttes, banded in cream, rust, pink and grey. The colours are a timetable.
Did you know? Scenes of Dances with Wolves (1990) and Thunderheart (1992) were filmed among its formations.
05 Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
United States ยท 16.6 km from Montrose38.580ยฐ N 107.728ยฐ W
- Dark Sky Place
Image by misterfarmer from Pixabay Few canyons in North America combine such depth with such narrowness. In western Colorado the Gunnison River has sawn straight down through some of the oldest rock on the continent, leaving a gorge that reaches 2,722 feet (829 m) deep at Warner Point but narrows to only about 40 feet (12 m) at river level in the Narrows.
Did you know? In the deepest, narrowest stretches of the canyon, direct sunlight reaches the river for only about 33 minutes a day.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented โ the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful nature sanctuaries seen on screen in North America?
- On our list, Banff National Park (Canada) ranks first, followed by Zion National Park (United States) and Yosemite National Park (United States).
- Which country has the most nature sanctuaries seen on screen in North America?
- In our collection, the most come from the United States (4) and Canada (1).
- What was filmed in Badlands National Park?
- Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves (1990) used the Badlands and other South Dakota locations for its prairie and buffalo scenes. Its buttes and grasslands are also home to bison, bighorn sheep and prairie dogs.
- Why does the Painted Wall have stripes?
- The pale bands are pegmatite, molten rock that was forced into cracks in the dark gneiss and cooled there. Erosion by the Gunnison River later exposed them on the canyon wall.
- How many nature sanctuaries seen on screen are on this list in North America?
- The list covers 5 nature sanctuaries seen on screen in 2 countries. The United States has the most, with 4.