Capitol Reef Field Station is one of only eleven university-operated field stations located inside a U.S. National Park System unit. University-operated field stations can be found in:

1. Point Reyes National Seashore
2. Channel Islands National Park
3. Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
4. Lassen Volcanic National Park
5. Yosemite National Park
6. Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks
7. Mojave National Preserve
8. Capitol Reef National Park
9. Grand Teton National Park
10. Buffalo National River
11. Virgin Islands National Park.

To find out more about field stations in national parks, you can read Stevens and Gilson (2016). This paper, written by the CRFS Director and a former CRFS Site Manager, highlights that the number of field stations in national parks has increased substantially since 2000. CRFS, which opened in 2008, is part of this increase. Stevens and Gilson (2016) also explores opportunities of university-national park field-station partnerships and ways to maximize them, challenges of these types of partnerships and how to minimize them, and how these field stations help both universities and the National Park Service to fulfill their missions. To learn about the perspectives of National Park Service employees on these field stations, you can read another paper, Stevens (2019).