The Safest National Park in the U.S. Is In Missouri

A new study highlighting the safest and most dangerous National Parks in the United States has been conducted by an outdoor adventure clothing company called Kuhl. They found that the safest National Park in the United States is right here in Missouri.

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It might be surprising that the safest National Park is in Missouri. It's even more surprising when you find out that the park is in one of Missouri's biggest cities, and one of our cities that makes a lot of dangerous cities lists.

I'm talking about the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis. The clothing company names this the safest National Park in our National Park system.

The clothing company compiled a comprehensive list of 63 National Parks across the United States and then looked at key safety indicators for each park from two primary resources, the National Park Service website and Google Maps. They then looked at the total deaths and the total number of missing persons over the last 16 years. As well as the number of search and rescue missions from 2013-2020.

Additionally, they looked at visitor statistics over the past 15 years. Not to mention trail closures, alerts, and cautions due to the presence of dangerous wildlife. And how many park rangers were present at each national park.

When you look at the data in this study, it's no wonder the Gateway Arch and its park came in safest in the United States. It's smaller than many national parks, and generally, going up in the Arch is a safe bet. I don't believe there are a significant amount of dangerous trails or wildlife around either. When your key metrics are deaths, missing persons, search and rescue missions, and closures due to dangerous wildlife, the Gateway Arch is going to be really safe.

On top of that, no National Park is horribly dangerous. Their study points out that you're more likely to have more than ten fingers or toes, more likely to live to 100, or more likely to become an astronaut than you are to wind up part of a fatal incident in a National Park.

The bottom line, some parks are safer than others. However, most significant injuries and deaths are related to fatal incidents people have while camping and hiking. I suspect there's not a lot of that going on at the Gateway Arch, which is why according to Kuhl, it's the safest National Park in the system.