National Park Service housing began with the military housing it inherited in the remote natural areas that became the National Park System in 1916. Today the Park Service manages more than 5,000 housing units — single-family homes, apartments, cabins, dormitories and RV sites.
Besides its staff housing, Glacier National Park keeps a network of backcountry patrol cabins, so staff can travel light on patrol or on a hitch.
School to park
In 2018 Glacier and Columbia Falls High School in Montana started a partnership that is still running: students build cabins for park housing and other needs. Places are competitive — rising third-year students submit résumés and are "hired" into the class, practice for the job market after graduation.
Students take part in:
- designing the building with computer-aided design and drafting (CADD) software;
- estimating the cost of materials;
- planning the construction;
- building a fully equipped two-bedroom cabin from late August to May, during the school year.
At the end of the year the finished cabin is moved into the park, set on its foundation and hooked up to utilities in time for the summer's seasonal employees. Each year's cabin houses two seasonal workers. The "School-to-Park" idea was first piloted at Denali National Park in Alaska in 2004.
Who does what
The park supplies building materials, tools and construction supervision, and the students work side by side with park staff, learning trades and putting them straight to use. The school provides the students and space on its campus for the build.
Park staff and students alike say they get great satisfaction from working together on something real that helps park employees, and the programme is also a good way to recruit volunteers and future staff. So far it has built three cabins. With other funding, students have also helped build a soccer shed for the school, a new entrance station for the park and a housing storage shed in the park headquarters historic district.
Sources
- National Park Service, "Creative Community Partnerships Improve National Park Housing." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/creative-community-partnerships-improve-national-park-housing.htm
- Photo: David Restivo, NPS.
- Rewritten in hubnx's own words.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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