Bethany Barron Named First Woman to Lead the Park Service's Denver Service Center

This page reports a National Park Service announcement of May 8, 2024.

Bethany Barron. Image from the National Park Service's page.

On May 8, 2024, National Park Service Associate Director Mike Caldwell announced that Bethany Barron would become director of the Park Service's Denver Service Center. She is its 10th director and the first woman to lead it in the center's 53-year history. Barron was to start on June 3, succeeding Ray Todd, who retired in March.

The Denver Service Center

The center handles the Park Service's large-scale planning, design and construction projects as part of the Park Planning, Facilities and Lands Directorate. It is the largest project execution office in the Department of the Interior, with more than 300 planners, landscape architects, engineers, architects and other professionals.

Her career

Barron is a registered professional engineer with more than 35 years of experience in the private sector, the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Forest Service and the Park Service, working as a civil designer, project manager and program manager. She had worked at the Denver Service Center as a project manager in the 1990s.

Before her appointment she was deputy associate director of the Park Planning, Facilities and Lands Directorate, serving as principal adviser to the associate director, managing the Major Construction Division and running the program for the Great American Outdoors Act. She created the program management office for the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund. Earlier, as chief of the directorate's Construction Program Management Division, she oversaw policy, program development and technical leadership for all the Park Service's major capital construction programs.

Caldwell said Barron's broad experience, her record of leading change, her technical knowledge of construction and her openness to new ways of delivering projects made her the ideal candidate at a critical time. Barron said she was honored, respected the center's traditions, and looked forward to examining and refining its business practices as it carries out large projects funded by the Great American Outdoors Act, disaster supplemental funds, line-item construction, and recreation and franchise fees.

Barron holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Texas Tech University. In 2024 she received a Departmental Superior Service award for her leadership and strategic vision for major construction across the National Park System.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Bethany Barron Named Director of Denver Service Center." https://www.nps.gov/articles/bethany-barron-dsc-director.htm