Park historian Doug Stover will retire July 31

After 32 years with the National Park Service, park historian and cultural resources manager Doug Stover will retire on July 31. 

Over the course of his career, Stover worked in positions of increasing complexity, and along the way, his career spanned five United States parks in three regions and included many interesting and unusual special details in both the U.S. and other countries. 

Stover’s Park Service career includes the Outer Banks Group (Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Wright Brothers National Memorial, and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site), C&O Canal National Historic Park, National Capital Parks-East, George Washington Memorial Parkway, Acadia National Park, White House liaison, and special details ranging from site manager to landscape architect throughout the National Park System.

Stover has spent the past 13 years with the Outer Banks Group performing a variety of interesting duties, including diving on the USS Monitor shipwreck with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a NPS certified diver, performing archaeological digs at Fort Raleigh NHS with local universities in search of additional clues to The Lost Colony, conducting “shipwreck schools” in partnership with the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum and the U.S. Navy with middle school and Youth Conservation Corps students. 

In addition, he served as planning section chief on numerous hurricane preparedness events while serving at Cape Hatteras National Seashore. 

Stover also worked on several special details for presidential visits and other high profile special events in parks across the National Park System, including work with the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in Washington, D.C., preserving aquatic waterlilies.  His work in this field took him to the water gardens of the Taj Mahal in India and the Moroccan Palace, home of the king of Morocco.

In addition to his many contributions to parks across the country, Stover has been instrumental in a number of key projects for the Outer Banks Group, including his recent historic and architectural support aspects of the four-year long renovation project of the famed 1872 Bodie Island Lighthouse, one of three iconic beacons in Cape Hatteras National Seashore. 

“Doug has a wealth of institutional knowledge that only experience and dedicated service can acquire.  His remarkable career is filled with many wonderful memories and we wish him well as he moves forward to new adventures,” said Superintendent Barclay Trimble.  “Doug is known throughout the Park Service as an outstanding historian and cultural resource specialist.  The Outer Banks Group has truly benefitted from his experience and hard work for the past 13 years.  On behalf of his many Park Service colleagues throughout the country, we wish Doug well in his retirement.”

After retirement from the Park Service, Stover will begin a new consultant job with the United Nations and World Heritage Sites.  Doug and his family will make their home in Nags Head.