The National Park Service's attempt to hire seasonal tour guides hit a snag this week after online observers caught an embarrassing slip-up pertaining to one of the country's most famous parks.
Newsweek documented the snafu in a report published Wednesday, detailing how the agency shared a list of seasonal tour guide job openings in a post to LinkedIn. One of the parks at the top of the list was Denali National Park and Preserve, one of the most notable in the U.S., as it surrounds that country's tallest mountain, Denali, also previously known as Mt. McKinley.
Per the botched post, Denali National Park was described as being located in Little Rock, the capital city of Arkansas, despite the fact that it is actually located in the interior of Alaska, roughly 230 miles north of Anchorage. Little Rock is over 3,000 miles away from Denali, prompting users online to take notice of the gaffe. Though the post has since been deleted, it continued to spread online via screenshot.
"The unusual pairing quickly caught attention on social media, with users joking about the error and questioning how one of the country’s best‑known parks could be misplaced by thousands of miles," Newsweek explained. "The National Park Service is one of the most-recognizable federal agencies in the U.S., and even small mistakes can quickly spread online."
"Geography is not my forte (American and all of that) but the last time I checked Denali National Park was located in Alaska and not Little Rock, Arkansas," one user on Threads wrote. "Screenshot from LinkedIn. Yes this is real and not AI."
This is not the first time the Park Service has come under scrutiny during Donald Trump's second term as president. The administration previously caused a firestorm of controversy after it removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from the list of federal holidays on which Americans can visit national parks for free. This came amid a push from the administration to remove exhibits about civil rights history from certain parks
At the same time, the agency also added Trump's birthday to the list, despite the fact that it is not a federal holiday. In response to these moves, California announced in January that admission to its national parks would remain free on MLK Day.