From Blue Ridge Parkway Daily Staff.
Question: If you were the next Blue Ridge Parkway Superintendent, what would be at the top of your to-do list? Let us know in the comments.
On September 22, the Blue Ridge Parkway, headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, will officially have a new leader. Having been selected as the new Blue Ridge Parkway superintendent, Mark Woods, 53, will leave his current post as superintendent of Cumberland Gap National Historic Park.
Though the position marks a change in the location and parkway scope Woods is accustomed to overseeing, it simultaneously marks his consistency over the course of a 30-plus year career. While he has served as Cumberland Gap superintendent since 1997, he initially became involved in the National Park Service in 1980 as an interpretative ranger. While his duties in this capacity took him to various parks in Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, they never relocated him from the Southeast.
He made no exception to his service in the Southeast when taking his position at Cumberland Gap, a park which covers sections of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. The Greenville, South Carolina, native will face a sharp change in scale as he exits Cumberland Gap, which attracted approximately 860,000 visitors in the previous year, to become the Blue Ridge Parkway superintendent. The Parkway welcomed an estimated 15.2 million last year, by far the most visited unit in the National Park System.
Although the incoming Blue Ridge Parkway superintendent was not exposed to numbers on par with the Parkway’s at Cumberland Gap, he did manage issues similar to those he will take on Asheville. In his new position, Woods will be expected to work with a budget dramatically reduced (by almost $800,000) by sequestration scale-back. As sequestration has already hit the National Park Service’s over 400 individual parks, Woods has already gained experience with associated cuts.
This will not be Woods’s first supervisory role in North Carolina; he previously served in Greensboro as Guilford Courthouse National Military Park’s superintendent. The Southeast Regional Director of the National Park Service, Stan Austin, who recently announced the new appointment, has commended Woods for his “collaborative skills, operational experience, and commitment to park neighbors.”
In bringing these qualities to the Parkway, Woods will take over from long-time superintendent Phil Francis. Following Francis’s retirement in April, deputy superintendentMonika Mayr stepped into the superintendent role pending the official appointment of a new leader.
The 469-mile highway composing the Blue Ridge Parkway ranges from Shenandoah National Park to the Great Smoky Mountains.