Visitors to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, located 110 miles east of El Paso, Texas, can see a 1,000-foot-high limestone cliff, salt basin dunes and fossilized mountains in the Chihuahuan Desert. There are hikes for the intrepid — such as an 8.5-mile-long trudge with a 3,000 feet elevation gain to Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in the state. Easy hikes include a half-mile-long, out and back, stroll to Manzanita Spring. 

Hikers need to watch their step over fractured limestone pieces, especially when there are fierce winds that can affect one’s balance. Of the 227,340 visitors in 2023, one climber tumbled off an edge and died. That was the same year the park’s superintendent, Eric Leonard, left to take another position in the National Park Service. 

Leonard is now superintendent of the High Plains parks — Amache, Sand Creek Massacre and Bent’s Old Fort national historic sites in Colorado, and Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico.  So far, there has been no permanent replacement for Leonard at Guadalupe Mountains, where Jason Hardy is both the acting superintendent and facility manager. There also are four other vacant senior positions at the park, according to its website. 

While it’s relatively easy to identify vacant positions in one of the more than 430 units of the National Park System, the National Park Service can’t say how many superintendent positions are waiting to be filled.

“We don’t have a way to readily compile the names of parks with vacancies," said Cynthia Hernandez, public affairs specialist in the agency's Washington headquarters, during the last days of the Biden administration on January 16.  

Hernandez did provide links to USAJOBS website postings for superintendent positions at the National Park of American Samoa, Ninety Six National Historic Site [since filled] in South Carolina, and combined responsibilities at Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park and Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, also in South Carolina. 

Calls to regional offices following President Trump’s inauguration in a bid to expand the list fared even worse. Only two regions — Pacific West and Intermountain — responded. Both directed the Traveler to obtain the information from the Washington, D.C., office. 

“As I explained last week, the NPS does not have a way to readily compile this information,” replied Hernandez in a January 24 email. 

The Traveler has identified at least a dozen superintendent vacancies across the agency, from the one at Guadalupe Mountains and those Hernandez pointed out to others at Saguaro National Park, Great Smoky Mountains, and, any day now, Yosemite National Park, where Cicely Muldoon has announced her retirement after 40 years of service. At Great Smoky, former superintendent Cassius N. Cash departed last month to serve as president and CEO of Yosemite Conservancy.

In addition, a superintendent has not been selected at the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, a 2023 park addition established by President Biden in Mississippi. (It’s not unusual for newly created parks to not have a superintendent for several years.)

Other superintendent vacancies the Traveler has confirmed are those at Petrified Forest National Park and Saguaro National Park, both in Arizona; Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in Montana and Wyoming; and Colorado National Monument in Colorado. 

There’s also still no replacement for Oalia Fernandez, who retired as superintendent in January 2024 at Palo Alto Battlefield in Brownsville, Texas. Eric Brunneman, superintendent at Padre Island National Seashore, is responsible for supervising the superintendent at Palo Alto Battlefield, but an acting superintendent has not been designated, said Naaman Horn, a regional public affairs specialist, in an email. 

A potential complication for filling those slots is the Trump administration's push to reduce the size of government. It has imposed a 90-day-long hiring freeze through mid-April for all federal departments and agencies, except several positions, including those in public safety, such as wildland firefighters, currently posted on USAJOBS. It is unclear when vacant positions will be filled. The administration also has directed agencies to come up with reduction in force (RIF) plans by mid-March, and ordered that "each agency hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart."

What is easier to discern than vacancies is that Park Service employment has declined while the number of units to the park system has increased, as has visitation.

The Park Service lost 15 percent of full-time employees from fiscal years 2011-2022, at the same time as park visitation rose, according to an inspector general report issued last year. In addition, there are 30 more park units today than there were in 2010, said Michael A. Caldwell, associate director for park planning, facilities, and lands, in testimony before the Senate National Parks Subcommittee last May. 

Vacant superintendencies impact not only internal park operations, points out Phil Francis.

“The superintendent job is about a lot of different things. It’s not only supervision of the park and division chiefs…it’s also relationships with the public, relationship with communities, relationship with local governments, and members of Congress,” said Francis.

Now executive council chair at the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, Francis worked for the Park Service for 41 years, including eight years as superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and 11 years as deputy superintendent at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

He remembers when superintendents were formally trained. Newly named superintendents would meet over the course of a year to discuss issues that arose. It was a way to pass along “institutional knowledge,” something that Francis believes gets lost when people miss opportunities to discuss the rationale for previous decisions and priorities.

One way, especially in the past, to become a superintendent was to move up the ranger ladder and eventually become a park’s chief ranger. Along the way one learned how to manage parks. But the path today to the superintendent position also includes becoming a division chief in resource management, law enforcement, interpretation, facilities or administration and working as a deputy superintendent.

Rather than having an appointed mentor, Francis believes “it’s more effective when people find their own mentors and mentors find their own mentees, and they connect.”

Whether the number of superintendent vacancies is a problem for the agency is impossible to say, said Francis, without knowing how many there are and where.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility also has no idea how many vacancies there are.

“We are still in [a lawsuit] with NPS about its 2003 staffing, rescues, and assaults. Have just filed similar requests covering 2024,” said Jeff Ruch, the organization’s Pacific director.

Former superintendents criticize the Park Service for the short time that positions are advertised on USAJOBS.  Longer periods would allow the agency to accept more applications and could increase the likelihood that there would be qualified applicants. Instead, when the applicant pool is small, parks oftentimes have to readvertise the position.

Having served as acting superintendent at the park in North Carolina and Tennessee, Francis knows the responsibilities required. He said it is hard and takes a lot of time to simultaneously serve as an acting superintendent and also do one’s normal job.

Given the hiring freeze and Trump administration efforts to cut the number of federal government employees, it’s unclear how the agency will be staffed or when positions will be filled. But fondness for parks is historically bipartisan.

“Our national parks are one of a few things that brings us all together on this committee, “ said Senator Steve Daines (R-Montana) last May during the Senate National Parks Subcommittee hearing on the Fiscal Year 25 budget request for the Park Service.