National Parks are inherently dangerous. They push into the wilderness, allowing tourists to explore and experience nature with little protections beyond the rangers within the parks. The risk of fatal accidents in National Parks is still low compared to, say, driving, but there are plenty of natural hazards that can lead to injuries or worse within these protected areas.
When thinking about the deadliest National Park in the country, your mind probably turns toward Grand Canyon National Park, Yellowstone National Park, or one of the other more popular national parks. Those parks do tend to record more fatal accidents than any others as millions of people visit every year, but the deadliest national park, ranked by deaths by 10 million recreational visits, is much less popular.
North Cascades National Park is less than 3 hours from Seattle, protecting stunning mountain peaks and more than 300 glaciers. Despite this, it’s one of the least visited National Parks in the country. Only around 16,000 people visited the park in 2024. 2023 saw more than 40,000 people, but that’s still significantly less than many other parks.
It sees so few visitors primarily because it’s so difficult to access and so remote. Ross Lake Recreation Area, which is a much easier area to access than the park and isn’t technically a part of North Cascades, sees hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, but those visitors don’t usually venture into the proper National Park boundaries.
