Which U.S. national forest is the largest by area?

The Tongass National Forest is the largest U.S. national forest by area.

Located in southeast Alaska, the Tongass covers about 16.7 million acres (6.8 million hectares). It stretches across the Alexander Archipelago and the mainland fjordlands of the Alaska Panhandle, making it a vast coastal temperate rainforest.

The forest was established in 1907 as the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve and was renamed Tongass National Forest in 1908. Its name comes from the Tongass Tlingit people, whose traditional homeland includes the region.

The Tongass contains old-growth spruce, hemlock, and cedar forests, along with glaciers, wetlands, islands, and salmon-rich rivers. It is sometimes confused with Chugach National Forest, also in Alaska; Chugach is the second-largest U.S. national forest, while Tongass is the larger one.