These are the deadliest national parks in the U.S.
For every one million people that visit Denali National Park & Preserve, more than nine will die, the most deadly rate of all the National Park Service’s parks or recreation areas over the last 14 years.
Becky Bohrer/Associated PressBelow North America’s tallest peak lies six million acres of wild land in the heart of untamed Alaska. Denali National Park & Preserve entices some of the hardiest and experienced climbers and backpackers.
But for every 1 million people that visit the jewel of Alaska more than nine have died, the most deadly rate of all the National Park Service’s parks or recreation areas over the last 14 years where at least 20 people died.
Almost four out of every 10 deaths there are from falling. Many climbers are seduced by the 20,310-foot snow-covered Denali peak. The park had about 6.5 million visitors from 2007 to 2020, and 61 deaths (4.4 annually). Virgin Islands National Park, with its beautiful beaches and coral reefs, had the next highest death rate. It saw 4.7 deaths per 1 million visitors during that same time span, nearly half from drowning.
It’s been a tragic summer in the outdoors of Northern California. A Mariposa County couple, along with their 1-year-old child and dog all died on a remote hike in the Sierra National Forest. A jogger was found dead after an exhaustive search in the hills above Pleasanton. A San Francisco man died while hiking in Death Valley National Park. And searchers are combing sections of Yosemite National Park looking for a lost Stanislaus County man.
Despite the tragic headlines, the overall death rate at national parks has seen a steep drop in recent years. For a decade since 2007, the death rate climbed, but it peaked in 2017 at 2.1 deaths per 1 million visitors. Since then it gradually dropped, before plummeting in 2020 to a rate of 0.98, likely due to the pandemic when the number of visitors to the deadliest parks decreased more than at others. From 2019 to 2020, visitors to the ten parks with the largest death rates dropped by 29%, compared to a 13% decrease in visitors at the other parks in our analysis.
The Chronicle obtained 14 years of death data from the National Park Service. The blog Summer Camp Hub shared its Freedom of Information Act material, and The Chronicle tabulated visitor data to calculate death rates for the 31 national parks and recreation areas that reported at least 20 deaths during those 14 years. Data for 2017 to 2020 are provisional and subject to change during the National Park Service’s quality check process. A total of 83 national properties recorded at least one death during that time period. Fatalities did not include suicides.
The most common cause of death (28%) across all parks was drowning. Deaths due to falling account for 16% of all deaths that occurred at the locations analyzed. Only 8 people — less than 1% of all deaths — died from wildlife encounters across all parks. About three-quarters (76%) of the visitors who died were men.
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