The National Park Service turned 100 on Aug. 25, celebrating a century’s worth of breathtaking views, towering forests and picturesque landscapes — as well as extremely spooky vanishings, unsolved disappearances and mysterious discoveries of human remains.
From the redwood forest to the Gulf stream waters … this land wasn’t made for the weak.
Here are six stories of people who went into one of America’s 59 national parks — and never returned.
1. Smoky Mountain mysteries
Three unsolved disappearances have haunted the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for over four decades.
The first took place on June 4, 1969, when 6-year-old Dennis Martin was scheming with his brother and two other boys in the park’s Spence Field while on an annual family camping trip. They were planning to sneak up on their family and startle them. But when the boys ran and jumped on the adults, Dennis was nowhere to be found.
On Oct. 8, 1976, while on a horticulture field trip with 40 of her classmates, 16-year-old Trenny Lynn Gibson was hiking along Andrews Bald. No one can recall seeing her after 3 p.m. Searches continued for months, but no trace of Gibson was ever found.
Fifty-eight-year-old Thelma Pauline Melton was hiking near Deep Creek Campground, a trail she’d been on many times before, on Sept. 25, 1981. She was with friends when she walked ahead of them and vanished over a hill, but they couldn’t find her on the other side, nor could they find her at the campground where she was staying.
All three disappearances ignited massive search efforts (Dennis Martin’s cost $65,000), but not a single trace of them ever turned up.
2. The disappearance of Jared Negrete
In 1991, a Boy Scout went on his first overnight camping trip with his church in the San Bernardino National Forest.
Twelve-year-old Jared Negrete — described in articles at the time as a shy and pudgy kid — was with five other Scouts and their troop leader when they left Camp Tahquitz to hike up 11,500-foot Mount San Gorgonio (the highest peak in Southern California).
Jared fell behind the group. Differing reports have him either wandering off the trail, falling behind after stopping to tie his shoe, or being told to hang back for the troop to collect him on the way back down from the summit. Whatever the case, he was never seen again.
Rescue teams as far west as Malibu searched around the clock, eventually turning up Jared’s backpack, some candy wrappers, beef jerky and a camera.
Twelve photographs were developed, mostly landscapes, but the last one was of Jared’s eyes and nose, taken after he went missing.
The camera was discovered in the same area as the other items, but after a 16-day search that included five helicopters, rangers on horseback and infrared cameras, Jared Negrete was never found.
3. The Cowden family massacre
Seven-and-a-half months after the Cowden family was reported missing in 1974, police found their bodies.
The Cowdens had gone camping in the Siskiyou Mountains in Applegate, Oregon, over Labor Day weekend 1974, but failed to show up for dinner at Richard Cowden’s mother’s house on Sept. 1.
Media accounts from the time described their campsite as undisturbed, as if the family left abruptly. Investigators later postulated that they had been abducted.
Their bodies were discovered in April 1975, about 100 feet from the campsite. Richard’s body was found tied to a tree, while the bodies of his wife and two small children were found in a cave with rocks sealing the entrance.
Dwain Lee Little, a rapist and killer serving two life sentences, allegedly confessed to a fellow inmate that he murdered the Cowdens while on parole. But there was no conviction, and the case remains open.
4. The Death Valley Germans
Death Valley National Park is an eerie stretch of arid land that covers 3 million acres along the border of California and Nevada. Considered the hottest location in North America, park rangers constantly remind visitors not to underestimate the Mojave sun.
During a record streak of 120-degree days in July 1996, four German tourists went missing.
The last known trace of the group was a guestbook signature in a box at a small ghost town that read “7-23-96. Conny Egbert Georg Max. We are going through the pass.” Rangers assumed this referred to the Mengel Pass.
The family wasn’t on their return flight on July 29, and Interpol listed them missing on Aug. 14. Their locked rental van was discovered abandoned on Oct. 23, with three flat tires.
No tracks, wallets, keys or passports linked to the group were ever found. Dozens of theories circulated about whether they encountered the wrong people, perished while trying to find shade, or even if they had staged their own disappearance.
In 2009, human bones were discovered in Death Valley. According to the Associated Press, authorities were “fairly certain” they belonged to the tourists.
5. The disappearance of Keith Reinhard
Keith Reinhard was working as a sports reporter at the Daily Herald in Chicago in 1988 when he announced he’d be taking a 90-day sabbatical.
“I love these mountains and want to live in them before I die in them,” Reinhard wrote in a letter to a friend, according to an article published in the Daily Herald in August 2008.
Reinhard took off for Silver Plume, Colorado, a small mining town of 200 that sits inside the Arapahoe National Forest, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
In addition to fulfilling his lifelong dream of living in the Rocky Mountains, Reinhard wanted to write a novel about Tom Young — a man who had vanished from the same town in September 1987. When he arrived, Reinhard opened an antique store in what had formerly been Young’s bookstore.
One late afternoon, while nursing a hangover, Reinhard went to hike Pendleton Mountain, and never returned. More than 100 people logged over 10,000 hours searching and never found a clue to what happened.
“Sometimes the answer is there is no answer,” Reinhard’s widow, Carolyn O’Donnell, told the Daily Herald in 2008.
6. Vanished in the Adirondacks
Douglas Legg, an 8-year-old boy from Syracuse, vanished from his family’s summer home in the Adirondacks on July 10, 1971.
Douglas was going for a family hike when his uncle told him to go back to the house and put on pants to protect his legs from the poison ivy. But something happened on the short walk back to the family’s cabin, and Douglas was never seen again.
Described as a “mini woodsman” and avid hiker, Douglas’s familiarity with the area (what is now Santanoni Preserve in Newcomb) makes his case a unique one. The majority of unexplained disappearances involve inexperienced hikers in unfamiliar territory.
His disappearance launched the Adirondacks’ largest manhunt ever. More than 600 rescuers searched the dense woods, as US Air Force planes used infrared equipment to try to detect body heat. An article published in The Journal in July 1971 reported that a C131 aircraft also surveyed the area with “a thermo-scanner device used to penetrate the Vietnam foliage.” The family even paid for the elite Sierra Madre Search and Rescue Unit to fly in from California.
“It’s such a wilderness out there,” Patrick Kelleher, the State Police senior investigator who’s still overseeing the investigation, told the Post Star in 2011.
No trace of Douglas was ever found, and the search was abandoned after 33 days. The family sold their property a few months afterward.