Inside the deadliest national park in US with highest number of missing people

06 August 2023 , 15:16

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The Grand Canyon National Park has been named the deadliest in the US (Image: Getty Images)

The United States is home to numerous beautiful national parks with some diverse and stunning scenery - but one park is the deadliest of them all with the most deaths and missing people since 2018.

The Grand Canyon may not be the biggest of America's national parks, at 1,900 square miles, but the Arizona natural wonder has seen more missing person reports, deaths and suicides, than any others from 2018 through to the first two months of 2023.

At least 56 people have been reported missing from Grand Canyon National Park since the beginning of 2018 and at least six people have been found dead. This is despite the park not only being smaller but seeing millions fewer visitors than many of the other 424 national park sites.

Records from the Department of Interior obtained by the New York Post were not only redacted, but inconsistent when it came to the level of detail included and incomplete as part of privacy regulations which meant only 60 pages could be released.

Tourists flock from all over the world to see the natural wonder (Getty Images/National Geographic Magazines)

For more than 27 years, Ken Phillips has worked as a search and rescue agent with the National Park Service. Now retired, the former chief of emergency services spent decades overseeing search and rescue missions within the Grand Canyon National Park.

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He warned the Grand Canyon's death toll is likely much higher than records show. He said: "On average, there are 12 fatalities within the anyone every year.

"Those can be anything from heat stroke, lightning, drownings on the river, air crashes, suicides, accidental fall - all types of things."

While the Grand Canyon National Park may be smaller than its counterparts, such as Death Valley, it's still bigger than the state of Rhode Island by hundreds of square miles. Mr Phillips said he wasn't surprised at the grim figures from the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon sees most of its visitors in the summer months (Getty Images)

"Peak visitation at Grand Canyon occurs in the summer months and it's in the desert," he said. "So, the highest number of visitors are coming to the park at the hottest time of year."

He also pointed out that many people suffer from altitude sickness, as parts of the Grand Canyon lie at 7,000 or 8,000 feet. For hikers, many don't release the hardest part of their hike likely won't happen until halfway through.

"When people hike down into the canyon, it's easier to use gravity to your advantage... but then eventually you got to turn around and go uphill," he explained.

And rescues in the park are also among the most difficult. The terrain is so tricky in the Grand Canyon National Park it's the only US National Park with a year-round helicopter on-site, according to Mr Phillips.

The wild and tricky terrain makes rescues difficult (Getty Images)

"You have to realise just how difficult it can be to find a single human being in such a large area," he said. "When you're looking for a person, you truly are looking for a needle in a haystack."

In one case, rescuers described how they discovered the body of a missing person in February 2, 2021, after spotting the victim's remains while flying over an area near the Yavapai Geology Museum. The remains were recovered the next day from around 450 feet below the canyon's rim.

Weeks later, and miles away in another area of the park, another body was found. On February 22, the body of a suicide victim was found in the area of the First Trail View overlook. The unidentified person had been reported missing on February 7 and was found to have rented a car from February 8 to February 10.

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Another person reported missing around the beginning of August 2021 was also found in the Yavapai Area. They were found just two-tenths of a mile from the geology museum according to records, having made their final purchase at the park's south entrance station. Authorities determined this was also a suicide.

Fiona Leishman