LAKE Mead, America’s most dangerous national park, is currently on pace for its deadliest year yet with 19 fatalities as of July 3.

The Lake Mead National Recreation Area is home to one of the most beautiful and scenic shorelines in the country – but it is also one of the most deadly.

The shoreline spans over 750 miles and has been a hotspot for fishing, camping, boating and swimming for generations.

But over the years, the park’s beauty has been continuously overshadowed by the large amount of deaths that take place within the park’s borders.

According to experts, car crashes and drownings are the two main contributors for the record-breaking number of deaths recorded in the area this year and last.

Since Lake Mead was first filled just under a century ago, there have been over 300 drownings that have taken place.

Last year alone, 29 people died at the Nevada national park.

The year before that, the park service reported 21 deaths – including four bodies that were found, one being in a barrel in the lake, with police concluding it was a homicide from the early 1980s.

In total, six bodies have been found throughout the park’s history.

This includes a 2022 finding of a missing man’s remains, and another 2022 discovery of another man’s remains who experts concluded drowned in the 70s after a diver came across a human bone.

On average, the park sees about 18 people die inside the recreation area each year, according to park data.

But this year’s numbers already beat the average, and are on pace to pass last year’s record number, with 19 recorded deaths taking place in the first of the year alone, the same number of total deaths from 2016 to 2019.

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On a wider scale, Lake Mead is undoubtedly the most deadly national park in the country.

The park’s recreation area reported a total of 317 deaths just between 2007 and 2024.

The second deadliest park, The Grand Canyon National Park has had just a little over half the amount of deaths as Lake Mead with 198 in the same time frame.

This year, just over half way in, there have already been four drownings recorded at Lake Mead.

Last year, there were six for the entire year.

Between just 2013 and 2023, 56 people have drowned at Lake Mead, according to a study conducted by Connecticut Trial Firm.

That number does not count the four from this year so far, bringing the number to 60 from 2013 to now.

That increase is scary when compared to numbers from 2007 to 2024, which found that that there have been 110 drownings in that time frame, according to research by Panish law.

There have also been two heat related deaths from record-breaking temperatures.

Lake Mead has aggressive winds that can mess with the speed of the water’s currents, temperature and even create waves that can impact swimmers.

“You think you’re jumping out of your boat for a quick swim and you’re going to swim back to your boat,” National Park Service public information officer, John Haynes told local ABC affiliate KTNV-TV.

“But because of high winds, all of a sudden, your boat is drifting away and you’re stuck in the middle of the lake.”

Haynes says most drownings are a result of not following safety protocols, such as wearing life vests.

Another risk that swimmers have to watch out for, is a brain-eating amoeba that park officials warned may be contaminated in a famous and highly-visited hot spring.

The death of a Nevada two-year-old Woodrow Turner Bundy last July was attributed to a brain-eating amoeba from a hot spring.

These amoebas are so deadly that only four people in the US have ever caught it and survived the condition.