Ten Disappearances in US National Parks That Still Have No Answers

Dennis Martin was six years old, a few days short of his seventh birthday, when his family from Knoxville took him camping in the Smokies over Father's Day weekend in 1969. On the afternoon of June 14, near Spence Field on the Appalachian Trail, the children planned to jump out and surprise the adults. Dennis, in a bright red T-shirt, ducked behind some brush. He never came out.

His father began calling and searching within minutes, and his grandfather combed nearby trails. Heavy rain fell that evening. Over the next two weeks the effort grew to about 1,400 people from 35 organizations, including National Guard troops and Army special forces, and it remains the largest search in the park's history. Dogs, helicopters and grid lines turned up nothing. Park officials have since said the sheer crowd, plus the downpour, may have destroyed clues, and modern searches use smaller, trained teams for that reason.

In 1985 a ginseng hunter said that years earlier he had seen a small skeleton in Big Hollow near Tremont, but had kept quiet because harvesting ginseng there was illegal. Searchers checked the area and found nothing. Investigators believe Dennis became lost and died in the park. His case is a fixture of online "Missing 411" theories, which claim a sinister pattern behind park disappearances; those theories offer no evidence, and the terrain itself is explanation enough for how a small boy could vanish.

In October 1928, newlyweds Glen and Bessie Hyde pushed off from Green River, Utah, in a homemade wooden scow, aiming to run the Green and Colorado rivers all the way to Needles, California. Glen, 29, had run rivers before; Bessie was 22. At a stop along the way, the photographer Emery Kolb noticed they carried no life jackets.

On November 18 they had lunch at Hermit Camp with a traveling companion, who photographed them before they climbed back into the scow. That is the last confirmed sighting. When they failed to arrive, the search began. On December 19 a government plane spotted their boat floating upright near Mile 235, still stocked with provisions, Glen's gun, a camera and Bessie's journal. The couple was gone.

The journal's entries ran to November 30, and searchers found traces of a camp dated the day before, so the Hydes survived at least 12 days past their last sighting. Decades of claims followed, including an elderly woman on a 1971 river trip who said she was Bessie and later took it back. None held up. The likeliest explanation is that both were thrown into a rapid, but their bodies were never found.

Joseph Halpern was a 22-year-old astronomy graduate student at the University of Chicago, gifted at math, chemistry and chess, with a summer job at an observatory in Wisconsin. In August 1933 he was camping near Estes Park with his family and a college friend. On August 15 he and the friend set out from the Bear Lake area, and Halpern went on alone to climb Taylor Peak carrying an Army knapsack.

He never came back. His friend reported him missing, and a snowstorm moved over the high country soon afterward. Up to 150 rangers and volunteers searched for about ten days. They found no body, no gear, and no sign of his handwriting in the summit registers where climbers signed in.

Over the next two years, people reported seeing him in Phoenix, with a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Nebraska, and with a traveling circus in Michigan. None of those sightings was ever confirmed. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation still lists the case as open, and relatives have given DNA so that remains could be identified if they are ever found. Whether he died somewhere on the mountain or chose to start over elsewhere is a question the record cannot settle.

Trenny Lynn Gibson was 16, a sophomore at Bearden High School in Knoxville, when about 40 students went on a class field trip to hike to Andrews Bald, near Clingmans Dome (now officially Kuwohi). The group split up on the trail, and students drifted between clusters walking at different speeds. Around 2:50 p.m., on the way back toward the parking area, a classmate saw her walking ahead in the distance.

When the group gathered at the bus about 3:30 p.m., she was not there. Crews searched into the night. A ten-day search followed with dogs and helicopters, hampered by rain and fog; the trail there runs along steep, brushy slopes. Dogs picked up her scent in several places, including Clingmans Dome Road, and lost it. A second search in the spring of 1977 also found nothing.

Investigators chased leads, including a possible sighting in Bryson City and a report of a girl boarding a flight in Newark, and none checked out. Over the years, agencies have contacted the park about unidentified remains that might be hers, without a match. Her family has long believed she did not simply get lost. The case remains open with the National Park Service and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Paul Fugate was a 41-year-old park ranger at Chiricahua National Monument, a landscape of rock spires in the southeastern corner of Arizona. On January 13, 1980, he was working in the visitor center. At about 2 p.m. he left to hike a park trail, wearing his green-and-gray National Park Service uniform and gold ranger badge. He was never seen again.

This was not a tourist who wandered off. Fugate knew the monument well, and search teams combed the area several times without finding a footprint, a scrap of uniform or his badge. According to the Park Service, investigators suspected foul play early on. No one has ever been charged, and the case remains an open missing-person investigation with the agency's Investigative Services Branch.

The reward fund reached $20,000 in the first few years. In 2018 the Park Service raised it to as much as $60,000 for information on his whereabouts or leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible, and renewed its appeal with the Cochise County sheriff. His widow, Dody Fugate, has spent decades pressing for answers and told a Tucson station in 2022 that the family is still in pain. The NPS tip line remains 888-653-0009.

Stacy Ann Arras, 14, of Saratoga, California, was on a horseback pack trip through Yosemite's high country with her father in July 1981. On July 17 the group reached Sunrise High Sierra Camp, a backcountry camp roughly five miles south of Tenaya Lake. Stacy, carrying a camera, wanted to walk down and photograph the lakes nearby.

An older man from the group walked part of the way with her, then stopped to rest. Stacy kept going alone toward the water, passed behind a stand of trees, and disappeared from view. When she did not come back within a few minutes, the group started looking.

The search that followed was one of the biggest Yosemite had mounted. Park records released under the Freedom of Information Act describe about 100 people at its peak, including dog teams, climbers and divers, plus three helicopters, working a grid of three to five square miles around the Sunrise Lakes for roughly 11 days. A ranger's summary was blunt: nothing significant found. Some later accounts say a camera lens or lens cap turned up near where she was last seen, but the released park files do not mention one. She was still on Yosemite's list of missing persons in 2017.

Thelma Pauline Melton, known as Polly, was 58 and staying with her husband in their Airstream trailer near the Deep Creek area on the North Carolina side of the Smokies. On the afternoon of September 25, 1981, she went walking on the Deep Creek Trail with two friends. It was a route she knew well and considered easy.

Shortly after 4 p.m., she suddenly picked up her pace, moved ahead, and went over a rise out of their sight. Her friends assumed she had headed back to the campground. When they arrived about 30 minutes later, she was not there, and her husband had not seen her. They reported her missing to a ranger around 6 p.m. She had no money, identification, medication or car keys with her.

Searchers using dogs and grid teams found no sign that anyone had left the trail. Her sister later recalled that the dogs circled the spot where she was last seen but would not track off it. Investigators found no evidence of abduction, and the official search ended after several days. She was declared legally dead seven years later; her family in Alabama placed a headstone. Her whereabouts, and why she hurried ahead that afternoon, remain unknown.

Michael Allen Ficery, 51, was an experienced backpacker. On June 15, 2005, he set out alone from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in the northwest corner of Yosemite, intending to hike a trail around the north side of the reservoir. Somewhere along the way he changed plans and turned toward the Pacific Crest Trail.

His wilderness permit ran through June 19. When he did not come home by then, his family grew worried, and on June 21 they contacted the Park Service. Searchers eventually found his backpack near Tilltill Mountain, just off the trail, in terrain described as extremely rugged and hazardous. The spot was not on his planned route.

A water bottle, a camera and a topographic map were missing from the pack, which may mean he set it down and walked off with a few essentials. Searchers found no trace of him beyond that point. The Charley Project lists him as lost or injured missing, and Yosemite still includes him on its roster of unresolved disappearances. The backpack is the last fixed point in the story, and it raises as many questions as it answers.

Samuel "Sammy" Boehlke was eight years old and lived in Portland. In October 2006 his family was staying near Diamond Lake, and on October 14 he and his father were exploring the woods north of Crater Lake. Late in the afternoon, with dark coming on, they stopped near a cinder slope. Sammy did not want to come down.

His father stepped toward the car, then went after him, but Sammy stayed about 50 feet ahead and ran over the top of the slope. His father lost sight of him there at about 4 p.m. Sammy had a mild form of autism and was frightened by loud noises and bright lights, so searchers could not rely on the usual air horns and whistles to draw him out.

More than 200 searchers worked the area for about a week with dogs, helicopters and heat-sensing cameras, and the search continued off and on until snow fell in November. The weather was cold and wet, and investigators concluded he could not have survived long without shelter. His family held a memorial service in November 2006. Authorities do not suspect foul play and believe he became lost and died in the park, but he has never been found.

Sam Dubal had an unusual résumé: a medical degree from Harvard, a PhD in medical anthropology from the University of California, and a job as an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Washington. He was 33 and, by his family's account, an experienced hiker. On October 9, 2020, he set out on an overnight trip on the Mother Mountain loop from the Mowich Lake trailhead, on the northwest side of Mount Rainier.

He was due out on October 10 and did not return. Rangers and volunteers began searching, and over roughly two weeks teams used ground crews, dogs, drones, helicopters and infrared cameras across steep, forested terrain. He reportedly carried overnight gear, rain and snow gear, and a phone. Searchers found no sign of him.

With winter closing in, the Park Service suspended the ground search on October 23, saying the case would stay open as new leads came in. His family pushed hard to keep it going. He is still listed as missing, presumed lost or injured in the wilderness. His case is a reminder that even in an era of GPS and drones, a single person can disappear completely in a national park.