Big Bend is the fifth most dangerous national park, according to new study

Since 2013, some 28 visitors, including 12 hikers, have died at Big Bend National Park, a study says.

Big Bend is one of the largest, quietest and least-visited national parks in the United States. It’s also one of the most dangerous, according to a recent study.

The Southwest Texas destination is ranked as the country’s fifth most dangerous national park in a list created by California-based personal injury litigators Triumph Law P.C., which analyzed official fatality rates occurring in 153 popular parks across America.

The study advised travelers to be particularly careful this summer when visiting Big Bend, which receives 431,241 visits on average.

“Sadly, over the past 11 years, 28 of its visitors lost their lives on its premises,” the study says. “This means the Big Bend National Park reports nearly six deaths for every one million visits.”

The most dangerous national park in the country, according to the study, is Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument located at Arizona’s southern border with Mexico, where 60 people have died since 2013, contributing to a rate of 25.3 deaths per million visits.

Virgin Islands National Park in Virginia is the second most dangerous, with 10 deaths per million visits or an average of three fatalities per year, followed by the Upper Delaware Scenic & Recreational River in New York and Pennsylvania, with six deaths per million visits.

Colorado National Monument is ranked fourth with 29 deaths since 2013 and 441,356 average yearly visits.

According to the study, someone dies in an American national park every 29 hours, with most of the fatalities being due to human factors. Every 11 days, a hiker dies.

Since 2013, some 365 people have died while hiking in national parks.

Big Bend is the eighth-highest national park for hiking-related deaths, Triumph Law found, with 12 deaths over the past 11 years. The Yosemite National Park in California has had the most, with 31 hikers perishing, followed by the Grand Canyon in Arizona with 29; Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks with 26; Mount Rainer National Park in Washington with 21; Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado with 20; Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee with 15 and Zion National Park in Utah with 12.

“Further analysis suggests the older the hikers, the more unlikely they are to survive,” the study says. “Those aged over 55 constitute almost half the victims whose death occurred while hiking.”

Nearly 40% of the victims died from a medical condition resulting from the activity, while 28% fell to their death and 14% suffered from hyperthermia or hypothermia.

Still, falling and medical reasons are not the top reasons 3,273 people have died in national parks since 2013. Instead, suicide is the leading cause of death, with 561 cases, followed by motor vehicle crashes and drowning.

Other causes of death include homicide (43 cases), aircraft incidents (40), drugs (34), falling rocks (18), falling tree or branch (16), bicycle crash (15), avalanche (11), flash flood (11), lightning (7), electrocution (4), alcohol poisoning (4) and horseback riding (2).

“Nature rarely kills,” said Robert Carichoff, personal injury lawyer at Triumph Law. “In fact, we discovered that, on a yearly basis, nature is to blame only in one of every 1.6 million visits to a national park of any size.”

He added that drowning and fatal flaws are often avoidable and can be prevented through better signage and supervision from the parks' administration.

To create the study, Triumph Law examined recreational visitor and mortality data from the US National Park’s Service from January 2013 to December 2023. The final ranking was based on the number of fatalities compared to the total number of visitors to each park during the same time period to obtain a rate of fatalities per one million visits. Parks with fewer than one million visits during the period were excluded from the study.