CHEYENNE, Wyoming — At least six Italian and Chinese tourists died in a fiery van crash in Idaho near Yellowstone National Park. This is a warning that the roads that lead to the park can be just as dangerous as the grizzly bears and hot springs that are in the park itself.

On Thursday, the van and pickup truck crashed on a highway just west of Yellowstone. Both cars caught fire, and the people who were still alive were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to the police. The tourists from China and Italy were killed, the police said.

Eight Chinese people were hurt in the crash, according to the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco. In 2019, a bus from Las Vegas bringing Chinese tourists crashed near Bryce National Park in southern Utah, killing four and hurting many more. This accident happened soon after.

No one knew where the van in the crash on Thursday was going or coming from. After the snowy winter, some Yellowstone roads were still closed. One of these was south of Old Faithful, the park’s most famous geyser.

The accident happened on a highway south of West Yellowstone, Montana. At this time of year, the highway between Yellowstone and Grand Teton can be used to get between the two parks before a north-south road is ploughed and the park opens for the summer.

People from all over the world visit national parks, including Yellowstone, which was the first one in the world.

The most current data from the International Trade Administration shows that 36% of international visitors who came to the U.S. by air chose to visit national parks and monuments as their favourite thing to do for fun while they were here.

A park tourist use study that used the most recent and complete data found that 17% of Yellowstone’s visitors came from other countries in 2016.

Most of the tourists from outside the U.S. were from Europe and Asia. 34% were from China, 11% were from Italy, and 10% were from Canada.

Brian Riley, whose company, Old Hand Holdings, is based in Wyoming and markets the Yellowstone region in China and runs tours, said that those numbers changed a lot because of the COVID-19 virus.

“In Chinese school, every kid learns about how great Yellowstone is,” Riley said Friday.

Riley said that the pandemic stopped all kinds of tourism in a hurry, but especially tourism from China, which has still not fully recovered. He said that most trips from Chinese people now come from people who already live in the U.S.

Riley said on Friday, “Foreigners don’t feel safe here like they did before.” “These ideas are being spread by the Chinese behind the scenes.”

The U.S. tourism business thought that 2025 would be another good year for tourists from other countries. But after a few months, the number of foreign visitors has been dropping sharply. Some people from other countries are choosing to travel instead of coming to the U.S. They are angry about President Donald Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric, and they are scared about stories of tourists being arrested at the border.

Riley grew up in Jackson, Wyoming, which is just south of Grand Teton. He also lived in China for a while to learn Mandarin and learn more about why Chinese people wanted to visit the U.S.; these days, he’s more interested in getting them to visit Hawaii, which is seen as less dangerous.

Visitors from other countries are of all kinds.

Riley and West Yellowstone Mayor Jeff McBirnie say that the busiest time for Yellowstone is in the summer, but the busiest times for foreign tourists are in the spring and autumn.

A lot of foreign visitors are the parents of overseas college and university students in the U.S.

McBirnie, who runs a pizza place in town, said, “They’re like, ‘Hey, let’s drop our kid off and go on vacation for a week.’ Or, ‘Kid’s graduating, let’s get them through college and go on vacation.'” “They make a huge difference in this town’s economy.”

In 2022, Yellowstone was hit by both a pandemic and terrible floods that blocked entry to parts of the park for months.

Last year, 4.7 million people visited Yellowstone, making it the second busiest year on record for tourism.

A “legion” of deaths on the roads in the last ten years

Many crashes happen in and around the park because of the winding roads and natural distractions.

People died in Yellowstone for the first time in a passenger car just a few years after the park became fully motorised and buses took the place of the stage coaches and horses that were used for transportation in the park’s early years.

There was a 10-person bus accident in the Fishing Bridge part of the park in 1921. The driver lost control and the bus went down a slope, killing a 38-year-old Texas woman who was hit in the neck.

In his book “Deaths in Yellowstone,” Whittlesey writes about all kinds of deaths, from people falling in hot springs to hunters being mauled by bears to people being killed in plane crashes. What Whittlesey wrote was that auto deaths are so common in the park that he didn’t think they should be counted as deaths.

According to another list of deaths in Yellowstone, at least 17 people have died in car accidents inside the park since 2007. This makes car accidents the second most common cause of death in the park, after medical problems.

Whittlesey introduced the part of his book that talks about road deaths with a quote from the 15th-century witch Mother Shipton: “Carriages without horses shall go, And accidents shall fill the world with woe.”