ASH RIVER – The spring wind off the lake tugged at the edge of Bob DeGross’s jacket as he stood near the dock at the Ash River Visitor Center, not far from the water that has defined so much of his life these past eight years. His tone was calm, measured, and grateful – but there was a hint of hesitation in his voice, too.
“I love my career,” he said quietly, looking out over the lake. “I’m excited about the next steps or the next phase, but I’m a little worried about how I wake up Monday morning on June 2 and don’t have to go into the office and everything.”
DeGross retires this Friday, closing the book on a 36-year run with the National Park Service, most recently as superintendent of Voyageurs National Park. It’s a decision that feels right, he said, but not easy.
“It’s a bittersweet thing, right?” he said. “I’m at that point right now where I’m sort of thinking, I hope I’ve done the best that I could with everything that I’ve had to deal with.”
Beginnings
DeGross grew up in Spring Valley, Wis., not far from the Twin Cities, in a family that spent plenty of time in the woods. Early on, he felt a pull toward a life outdoors, something deeper than just a love of nature.
“As a native of west-central Wisconsin, I have always held a deep connection to the northern woods of the Midwest,” he said. “Being inspired early on by conservationists like Sigurd Olson and Aldo Leopold… this, in part, drew me to Voyageurs.”
Their writings, steeped in reverence for wilderness, sparked something in him as a young reader. He said another book, “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv, gave him language later in life for something he’d always felt but hadn’t fully named.
“One of the things that connected with me later was ‘Last Child in the Woods,’” he said. “It theorizes that some people have an outdoor sense, basically a sixth sense.”
For DeGross, that rang true.
“I truly believe that I have that sixth sense of just really being able to make connections for myself personally in the outdoors,” he said. “It’s always been there, so I’ve always wanted to work outside. Though the irony of it is, as you move up in your career, the less you’re actually outside.”
He started with the Park Service as a seasonal interpreter at Mammoth Cave in 1989, later taking on a position at Shenandoah before spending over two decades in Florida. There, he served at Everglades National Park, Biscayne, Dry Tortugas, and eventually Big Cypress National Preserve, where he became chief of interpretation and public affairs, immediately prior to coming to VNP in 2016.
But his heart, he said, always stayed rooted in the North.
A milestone
Among the many projects DeGross helped shepherd during his tenure, one that looms large is the new Crane Lake Visitor Center, both for him personally and for the people of Crane Lake.
“That’s actually something that the community has been trying to get done for 40 years,” he said. “There are people in Crane Lake who’ve worked on this for decades, and to be able to work collaboratively with them in a manner that actually sees that project come to completion and everything like that, it means a lot.”
The new center will celebrate not just the park’s landscape but also its cultural and celestial heritage. The exhibits, still in development, will focus heavily on the Anishinaabe presence in the region, the wonders of the night sky, and the role of water in shaping both human and ecological stories.
“It’s been really exciting to see the actual building completed,” he said. “The seed is there, the vision is there, and that’s what matters. I won’t be here to see the final exhibits go in, but I’ll be in the neighborhood, and I’ll definitely be back to see it all come together.”
The official grand opening is set for June 6, just days after his retirement.
Community engagement
DeGross said that from the start, one of his most important goals as superintendent was maintaining and deepening relationships with the gateway communities that surround the park.
“I do hope that I played a role in assuring the ongoing positive connection with the local communities, the gateway communities to the park,” he said. “I know that was started with my predecessor, Mike Ward, and the superintendent before him, Kate Miller. And I hope that I continued that.”
It hasn’t always been easy.
“In my role and function as superintendent, unfortunately you have those moments when you have to maybe implement something that might be unpopular,” he said. “But I hope that I was forthright with people as I had conversations with them and explained why something had to be implemented, or found ways to implement it in a different manner that was more favorably looked upon by the local communities.”
One example was the recently abandoned frozen surfaces use plan, a proposal policy that prompted considerable and often contentious debate.
“We came to an outcome with that that has a very clear definition of how we’re going to manage it,” DeGross said. “That was my objective as we went through that, to clearly define it so that people knew what they can do and what they can’t do. And that was a positive outcome in that, I believe.”
Big picture
Throughout the interview, DeGross returned often to the idea of “big-picture thinking” – of planting seeds that others may one day tend and harvest.
“I always had a desire to have a much larger overarching understanding and appreciation for everything that was going on,” he said. “Not what is happening tomorrow or next week or the next year even, but what are we doing for the next 5, 10, 15 years?”
During his time at Voyageurs, that has included work on the Mukooda Trail, major improvements at Kettle Falls, the wetland restoration project targeting invasive cattails, and laying the groundwork for employee housing solutions. He also advocated for infrastructure fixes at Rainy Lake, Kabetogama, and Ash River.
Over the course of his career, DeGross also had the chance to take his conservation work beyond U.S. borders, collaborating with parks in Indonesia and Guatemala, and partnering with Canadian colleagues through the Heart of the Continent initiative. He also helped secure Dark Sky certification for both Voyageurs and Big Cypress, a designation that recognizes efforts to protect night skies from light pollution.
“That was something I was really proud to be part of,” he said.
Investing in people and the future
DeGross is quick to deflect credit. He’s proudest, he said, of the people he’s worked with.
“I wouldn’t want to start naming them for fear of missing people, right?” he said. “But the park team, I’m so proud of the team of people that I work with. The entire park team that is here at Voyageurs National Park is dedicated not only to the National Park Service, but to Voyageurs National Park specifically.”
He singled out the park’s facilities staff, noting the exceptional quality of campsites and the care with which they are maintained.
“I’ve said it several times through the eight years that I’ve been here, and I’ll continue to say it – the fact is that we here at Voyageurs National Park truly do have the best campsites in the National Park Service across the country.”
He also praised the park’s educational work in partnership with the Voyageurs Conservancy, particularly the launch of the Mobile Classroom, the Field Fellows internship program, and virtual learning sessions that have reached tens of thousands of students.
“One of the last remote learning opportunities that we did reached 40,000 students across the country,” he said. “They may never visit, but at least they have some understanding of it and the importance of why we protect areas in our own backyard.”
As he prepares to step away, DeGross said he’s mindful of the challenges ahead—not just for Voyageurs, but for the Park Service as a whole.
“I would encourage the leaders of the National Park Service and the Department of Interior to recognize that national park areas across the country provide a financial benefit to the communities that they’re within,” he said. “You will always see that the amount of revenue that they generate far outweighs the amount of operational funding that those parks receive.”
He added that many national parks, including Voyageurs, are situated in rural communities that depend on the parks not just for conservation and recreation, but for stability.
“Recognizing that, and recognizing that impacting that will have a great effect on those communities, that’s something I encourage the current and future leadership to keep in mind as we go through these future challenges.”
Staying close
As for retirement, DeGross said he’s not going far. He plans to remain in International Falls, take some long-anticipated trips, Alaska among them, and spend more time enjoying the park on his own terms.
“I’m gonna do more grand farewell tours of the park for myself after I retire,” he said, “when I can actually be on my own boat and just go and explore and do some things.”
Asked if he had any final reflections, he paused for a moment.
“I just reflect back and just hope that I did the best that I could with everything that I tried to achieve,” he said.