What You Need to Know About National Park Deaths

Every year, more than 318 million people visit America’s 419 National Park System sites, including designated National Parks, National Lakeshores, National Monuments, National Historic Sites and National Seashores. 

Most adventure-seekers don’t dwell on safety issues before going on their big trip. And why should they? Only a few incidents reach the public eye each year, and the overall fatality rate is miniscule compared to the total number of visitors.

But fatalities happen more often than people may think. Indeed, the very ruggedness that makes nature so appealing also makes it unpredictable and sometimes dangerous; this year alone, there have been multiple reports of people falling to their death, drowning, getting attacked by wildlife and even being crushed by falling rocks.

Is it likely that something will happen when visiting a park? Definitely not. Still, it’s important to know what can and has gone wrong, so you can make your visit to a national park a safe one.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Just how common are national park fatalities today? Relatively speaking, they’re very rare. According to Kathy Kupper, public affairs specialist for the NPS, “More than 70 percent of the national parks did not have any unintentional fatalities between 2005-2013.” 

Still, the number of incidents is far from nothing — throughout the National Park System, six people die each week, amounting to about 312 deaths per year. In 2017, the last year for which stats are available, search-and-rescue (SAR) teams were deployed for a total of 3,453 incidents.

In some places, the number of incidents is on the rise. Between March and April 2019, for example, four people died at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, a weirdly high number for such a short period of time. Grand Canyon is, in fact, one of the deadliest parks in the country. 

Many of the deaths that do occur happen in a few parks that are particularly precarious. (Not coincidentally, they also happen to be among the most visited.)

According to a 2017 investigation conducted by “Outside,” 10 national parks pose an especially high risk, earning them the distinction of being the deadliest in America. Those parks are, in order of deaths:

1. Lake Mead National Recreation Area, where most people die from drownings.
2. Yosemite National Park, where falling is the most common cause of injury and death.
3. Grand Canyon National Park, also the site of many falls.
4. Yellowstone National Park, where burns and thermal injuries from hot springs are the main issue.
5. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, home to beaches where many have drowned.
6. Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, where Lake Powell is the site of drownings.
7. Denali National Park, where mountaineering accidents in unpredictable weather have led to fatalities.
8. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where steep forests and foothills pose falling risks.
9. Grand Teton National Park, where people fall from sheer cliffs.
10. Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile road where motor-vehicle accidents are the leading cause of death. 

At this point, you may be thinking that accidents mostly happen because of human folly. And to an extent, you’d be right.

When Lee H. Whittelsey examined deaths at the nation’s oldest park in “Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park (2014),” he came to the conclusion that it is “impossible to ‘safety proof’ a national park since stupidity and negligence have been big elements.” Add in people dying while trying to take selfies (yes, this is happening more often), and you can definitely chalk up many fatalities to poor judgment. 

But parks are also, in some ways, inherently unsafe, and not all injuries and deaths are the result of bad decision-making. 

So what are the most common types of national-park accidents, and how can they be avoided? Let us break it down…

On average, one person dies in a motor-vehicle crash on National Park Service roadways every week. According to NPS, crashes are most common during the daytime in summer months, when parks welcome the most visitors. 

Of course, car accidents happen everywhere, but there are some specific risks distinct to parks. For one thing, wildlife can prance onto the roadways without any warning, especially at dawn and dusk. Moreover, throughout the day, visitors often park their vehicles to admire and take pictures of bears, moose and other large animals adjacent to the road — and these stopped vehicles can unintentionally cause accidents and gridlock. 

In July 2019, a vehicle driving in Glacier National Park swerved to avoid a stopped car, then descended down a 40-foot steep hill. Two people were transported by ambulance and a third was airlifted by ALERT helicopter. Traffic along the Going-to-the-Sun Road was delayed for hours. 

Another issue? Road systems in the older parks were constructed for a different generation of vehicles, so the lanes are considerably narrower than today’s streets. In rugged terrains, there may be multiple switchbacks, requiring extra caution for people who are accustomed to driving at sea level.

It seems likely that a steep and winding road was a contributing factor, for example, in a July 2019 fatal accident near Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

How to stay safe: