Falls top accidental deaths across US national parks

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Visitors take a dip in Merced River in the heart of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park, California on June 12, 2026. newsweek.com

Falls killed more visitors to America's national parks than any other accidental cause between 2014 and 2022, according to an analysis of National Park Service data covering 63 parks, published by Newsweek. Falls accounted for roughly 36 percent of accidental deaths, ahead of motor vehicle crashes at around 21 percent and drownings at 16 percent.

The tally was assembled by Outforia, an outdoor lifestyle website, from Park Service records. Environmental deaths — heat, cold, avalanches, rockfalls and flash floods — made up about 15 percent, aircraft incidents 4.7 percent, and other transport modes including boats, bikes, skiing and horses another 3 percent. Wildlife encounters, the hazard visitors arm themselves against with bear spray and rigid food-storage rules, accounted for less than one percent.

The park-by-park breakdown reads as a map of what each landscape does to the unprepared. Falls led in Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Grand Teton, Mount Rainier, Zion, Rocky Mountain, Glacier, Denali and a string of others — the vertical parks. Motor vehicle crashes led in Great Smoky Mountains, Death Valley, Yellowstone, Redwood, Acadia, Hawaii Volcanoes and six more — the parks with long roads through them. Drowning led in Olympic, Wrangell-St. Elias, the Everglades, Glacier Bay and the water parks generally, while environmental exposure led in Joshua Tree, Death Valley's desert neighbours and the sand-dominated parks of the Southwest.

Yosemite recorded the most accidental deaths of any park, 61, followed by Great Smoky Mountains with 58 and the Grand Canyon with 53. Per visit, the risk concentrated elsewhere: Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias logged roughly one accidental death for every 65,000 visits, nearly twenty times the rate across all national parks combined. Twelve parks — among them Bryce Canyon, Mesa Verde, Isle Royale and Gateway Arch — recorded no accidental deaths at all during the eight years. Chiricahua, which became the 64th national park in October, is not yet in the rankings.