Glacier Park Supt. Mow to retire at end of year

When Glacier National Park Superintendent Jeff Mow began his career in government service 33 years ago he never dreamed he would be where he is now.

The man who began his National Park Service career as a seasonal park ranger at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Gustavus, Alaska recently sent an email to his staff announcing his intention to retire at the end of the year.

“One of the things I have noticed in my career is that I have always had new opportunities come up at times when maybe I wasn’t ready to leave,” Mow said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Because of that, I have always had this feeling that maybe it is better to leave when you are not quite ready.”

During his career with the National Park Service, Mow has helped guide the agency through a number of tough situations, including serving as the Department of the Interior’s Incident Commander on the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010, an investigator on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Alaska in 1989, and as a policy adviser to the NPS Climate Change Response Program.

Mow has served as Glacier National Park’s superintendent since August 2013, but was assigned to temporary detail in April as acting director for the Alaska region of the National Park Service, overseeing 17 national parks, preserves, monuments and national historical parks there.

Now 62, Mow spent most of his career in Alaska before coming to Montana. Over the course of 22 years in the Last Frontier, he served as a law enforcement ranger, chief ranger, management assistant and superintendent in seven NPS units.

“Coming back to Alaska this summer, I was able to go back and see some of the work that I was part of in the planning and design phases,” Mow said about his return. “I was able to see the final construction and how it has been operating for the past 10 years. It has been amazing and rewarding to be able to see how others have been able to pick up the ball and run with it. It’s all a great team effort.”

A NATIVE of Los Angeles, Mow said his time spent outdoors hiking and climbing with the Boy Scouts helped steer him toward his career with the National Park Service, though he never thought it would take him as far as it has.

“I grew up around national parks. I spent a lot of my formative years in high school in and around Yosemite National Park. Working in conservation and in an outdoor setting, it was a natural direction for me to go,” Mow said. “I never had aspirations to be a superintendent or sit in the regional director’s position. Those are both things I never would have seen coming. Early in your life, you make some decisions of where you want to go. Some of those decisions you can hold onto, but you also have to let opportunity take you where it will.”

Mow earned a degree in environmental education from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1981 before focusing on geology while in graduate school at the University of Michigan. During his time at both schools, Mow spent his summers in southwestern Montana as a geologic field assistant with the U.S. Geological Survey, first coming to the state in 1979. He spent four summers working for the USGS doing geologic mapping in the Flint Creek, Anaconda Pintler and Sapphire Ranges of Montana.

After spending some time working as an electrician, picking up skills he says still come in handy today, teaching geology at a community college and working for four years as an instructor at the Yosemite Institute, Mow moved north to Alaska to begin his NPS career working as a seasonal park ranger at Glacier Bay National Park.

Mow’s first permanent NPS job was as a park ranger at Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway before he took over the a district ranger, chief of operations, and subsistence manager at Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Bettles, a place that still holds a special place in his heart.

“It’s hard to pick favorites amongst your children, but Gates of the Arctic was just unbelievable,” Mow said. “It’s eight and a half million acres without a single road or developed infrastructure. Just flying over it is incredible — the vastness of it all. I think some of my and my wife’s favorite memories are the ones skiing during the afternoon up there (Gates of the Arctic), as long as the temperature was above 20 below. The way that light would cast such long shadows was quite memorable.”

MOW MOVED to Washington, D.C. in 2001 as a NPS Bevinetto Congressional Fellow working with the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee before returning to park management as superintendent of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado in 2002.

He became the superintendent of Kenai Fjords in Alaska in 2004 and spent eight years there before taking the position of acting superintendent of Denali National Park and Preserve at the end of 2012.

After returning to Kenai Fjords, Mow made the move to Glacier in August 2014. Through the years he combatted a number of issues head on, including wildfires, the rebuilding of the historic Sperry Chalet after one such fire, skyrocketing visitor numbers and even a pandemic.

Glacier National Park saw many changes during Mow’s tenure, including its designation as a Dark Sky Park, the reintroduction of wild bison herds and the adoption of a ticketed-entry system for motorists on the iconic Going-to-the-Sun Road in 2021 in an effort to relieve congestion.

Temporary assignments have taken Mow away from Glacier during his time there, including serving as deputy Intermountain regional director in Denver at the beginning of 2018 and his more recent duties in Alaska, which drew him away from Glacier just as the new ticketed-entry system was poised to begin this summer.

“I left on pretty short notice for me and the staff, but looking back at the last seven months and seeing how well things have gone has been very rewarding. I think it’s every superintendent’s dream to have a team that can operate so seamlessly in their absence,” Mow said. “Because of that, maybe this is a good time if I want to go out and do something else. With the dream team that is in place in Glacier, this would be the right time if I wanted to step away.”

While Mow says he is not sure what he plans to do with his time after retirement, he says he knows he wants to spend more time enjoying the areas around his home in Whitefish.

“I see retirement as a different phase of life. My father, who is 98 now, retired when he was 59, so he has been retired now longer than he ever worked. If I have such aspirations, it’s hard to know what is going to come next for me,” he said. “I’m interested in continuing on some of these issues around conservation and climate change. How I do that, I’m not sure yet. I also plan to enjoy being able to do more of the things I could only do on weekends or when I took a day off, like skiing on Big Mountain.”

A Rotarian for more than 15 years, Mow served as the mayor of Bettles, Alaska, from September 1995 until January 1998 after being elected to the City Council by a landslide 17 votes in a city of 84. Mow says he wants to again be more involved in community service, something he says being a superintendent never really gave him much of a chance to explore.

“It’s been a great ride and I’ve been fortunate to have some great experiences and work with some great people,” he said. "When looking back at all the accomplishments during my NPS career, all of those things were possible through the hard work of staff, volunteers and partners. While we at the NPS are stewards of special places, everything happens because of their efforts."

Reporter Jeremy Weber may be reached at 406-758-4446 or jweber@dailyinterlake.com.