National Graveyards

Our nation's national parks - not just for dumping the bodies of kidnapped women!

Take freshly unemployed former business executive Bruce J. Colburn, who flew to the far northwest corner of Montana in search of a place to die. Studio apartment not good enough? In early October, he paid a hotel clerk to drive him into Glacier National Park. He spent the night in a campground and then made his way on foot to a valley between two deep glacial lakes. On a forested slope not far from the trail, he shot himself in the chest with a handgun, according to park officials.

Investigators found evidence on a computer that Colburn had searched for information about suicide in Glacier park, according to their branch chief of ranger operations. "He clearly intended to come here for that purpose," he said. Would have been nice to know that before he led that extensive search once the man was reported missing.

Colburn was one of at least 33 people who chose to purposefully last year in a national park. The number is higher than recent years, although the National Park Service hasn't consistently tracked suicides. "It's some place where, toward the end of someone's life, when they're feeling a total sense of despondency, they want to return to a place of natural beauty ... for their final moments".

Park officials estimate people made more than 274 million visits to the country's 391 national parks last year, so given the numbers, it doesn't even register. While the overwhelming majority are intent on seeing breathtaking vistas, wildlife in its natural habitat or places where history was made, some had no intention of leaving. Among them:

• A 46-year-old carpenter with cancer climbed into a canoe and vanished in Everglades National Park.

• A 49-year-old builder blamed the economy in a note he left for his ex-wife and attorney before killing himself at the edge of the woods at Georgia's Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

• A 65-year-old university biology professor disappeared into Utah's Canyonlands National Park, telling relatives in a note he was returning "body and soul to nature."

• A 70-year-old woman left a suicide note in the trunk of her car at Arizona's Saguaro National Park before killing herself about a half-mile from a trailhead.

• Three people, in separate cases, jumped off a towering bridge at West Virginia's New River Gorge National River.

In 2007, there were 26 suicides or probable suicides in the parks. Park Service search-and-rescue records show 18 suicides in 2006, 18 in 2005 and 16 in 2004. More suicides occur in Grand Canyon than any other park in recent years. The park averages two a year. There were three in 2008. Suicides have been on the rise in some places like Colorado National Monument, where 26 people attempted suicide last year. Two were successful, including a who hung himself from a juniper tree near in July.

Suicides take a toll emotionally on rangers and financially for agencies that are part of search-and-recovery operations. After Colburn went missing in Glacier, as many as 40 people from various agencies looked for him. Recovering bodies or cars that go over cliffs can be dangerous as well as expensive. Most law enforcement rangers in national parks are also trained in emergency medicine, which includes strategies in dealing with people in crisis. Some park employees are taught to keep an eye out for notes taped to steering wheels and at least one park, Colorado National Monument, has contemplated closing certain areas at night.

Several suicides are prevented by rangers each year, but it would be impossible to stop them all. Perhaps instead of a vista point, maybe there can be a special area for folks to terminate. And no permit needed.