Grand Canyon National Park ranked the deadliest since 2018

Grand Canyon National Park is the deadliest in the country, with the highest number of missing person reports and deaths among the hundreds of US National Park sites nationwide, records show.

Grand Canyon topped the charts in its number of missing person reports, deaths and even suicides from 2018 through the first two months of this year, according to records obtained by The Post via a Freedom of Information Act request.

The sprawling 1,900-square mile Arizona national park is far smaller than its counterparts, and sees millions fewer visitors than many of the other 424 national park sites.

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.

But the Department of Interior records were not only redacted, but also inconsistent in the level of detail included, and incomplete as part of privacy regulations that prevented the agency from releasing more than the 60 pages provided to The Post.

The records, despite outlining roughly 1,100 missing persons reports dating back to 2018, are likely only a glimpse at the recent history within the massive national parks network.

The data provided show at least five people died within Lake Mead’s national grounds, which span Arizona and Nevada.

At least four people died in both Yosemite and Death Valley national parks over the same time period, records further show. And at least four more were found to have died within the Golden Gate National Park site.

Meanwhile, records provided showed Olympic National Park, in Washington, saw the second-highest number of missing persons reports since 2018, followed by Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park.

Ken Phillips boasts more than 27 years as a search and rescue agent with the National Park Service. The now-retired former chief of emergency services spent decades overseeing searches and rescues within the Grand Canyon National Park.

He said the Grand Canyon’s death toll is likely actually much higher than the records show.

“On average, there are 12 fatalities within the canyon every year,” he told The Post.

“Those can be from everything relating to heat stroke, lightning, drownings on the river, air crashes, suicides, accidental falls – all types of things,” he went on.

The US National Park Service consists of 424 national park sites and, within that, 63 national parks.

Grand Canyon National Park saw about 4.7 million visitors in 2022 – far fewer than 10 of the 424 National Park sites.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, a national park site, saw the highest number of visitors, with roughly 15.7 million last year.

But Grand Canyon National Park saw the second-highest number of visitors out of all national parks, surpassed only by Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which saw approximately 12.9 million visitors in 2022.

Despite seeing nearly three-times as many visitors in a single year alone, data show Great Smoky National Park reported an estimated 34 missing persons and three deaths from January 2018 to February 2023.

And while the park is smaller than its counterparts, such as Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Denali or Death Valley, it is bigger than the state of Rhode Island by hundreds of square miles.

Phillips he was not surprised by the Grand Canyon’s grim figures.

“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 pointed to altitude sickness as another issue people have, with portions of the Grand Canyon being elevated 7,000 or 8,000 feet.

And people also don’t realize the hardest part of their Grand Canyon hike likely won’t come until midway through, he said.

“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.”

But finding and rescuing those in need comes with its own challenges in the Grand Canyon – which boasts terrain so tricky it’s the only US National Park with a year-round helicopter on-site, he said.

“You have to realize 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”

He added: “It is extremely difficult to find a subject.”

Rescuers in at least one of the cases described in records how they discovered a deceased missing person on Feb. 2, 2021, after spotting the victims’ remains while flying over an area near the Yavapai Geology Museum.

The victim’s remains were ultimately recovered the next day, from roughly 450 feet below the canyon’s rim.

Week later and miles away, the body of a suicide victim was discovered Feb. 22 in the area of the First Trail View overlook, records show. The unidentified person was reported missing on Feb. 7, and was found to have rented a car from Feb. 8 to Feb. 10.

And a person reported missing around the beginning of August 2021 was also discovered in the Yavapai Area, just roughly two-tenths of a mile from the geology museum, records show. The victim’s final purchase at the park’s south entrance station.

Investigators determined they died from suicide.