Last updated: August 25, 2023
Article
My Park Story: Nick Crowley
NPS/Nick Crowley
Where are you from? What was your pathway to the National Park Service?
I grew up in Big Water, UT, spending my summers working on houseboats with my parents at Lake Powell. They owned a small houseboat maintenance business so I spent a lot of time out on the water.
While in high school I became an advanced open water scuba diver and would dive in the lake as often as possible. After high school, I joined the Navy and spent some time in Hawaii diving recreationally. When I returned home after the Navy, I wanted to dive for a living so I joined Aramark’s harbor maintenance team and worked on most of the marinas lake wide for about two years until a maintenance worker position opened up with the NPS’s Aids to Navigation (AtoN) team. In January of 2016, I started working for the NPS and because of my knowledge of Lake Powell, I quickly moved up and within two years I was leading the AtoN program and the dive team.
What do you do for NPS?
I was recently selected as the Facilities Operations Manager. It is a huge step from the field work I was in previously, but we have a great staff and everyone has been supportive of me in my new role.
What interested you in the park service?
I first became interested in working for NPS because of their dive team. While working for the concessionaire, we were always jealous of the equipment and boats the NPS dive team had.
Since I grew up here, I am also very committed to protecting the resources Glen Canyon has and being able to provide an enjoyable visitor experience.
NPS/Nick Crowley
What do you find most rewarding about your job?
What is most rewarding about working for the Park Service is being able to see families enjoy the lake and the surrounding area. Watching a grandfather launch his boat with a couple grandkids and a bunch of fishing equipment on a launch ramp that we just spent hours prepping so it would be an easy experience for them is extremely rewarding. Hearing stories from people that have been coming to Lake Powell since it was created and how much they appreciate what we do is also a great feeling.
What advice do you have for youth and young adults thinking about a career at NPS?
Learn Patience! The NPS has very complex operations in very remote locations and sometimes things aren’t as easy as we think they should be.
NPS/ Nick Crowley
Whats your favorite memeory?
My favorite memory of my job with the NPS is how I met my wife, Hilary. Our dive team was called to the U.S. Virgin Islands after the 2017 hurricanes to inspect over 400 buoys around St. John. The island was destroyed by two hurricanes that season and when we showed up at the end of November they were still in the beginning stages of repair. Most of the island didn’t have power and there were no tourists there because of the devastation. It was an enormous effort and I was just a small part of it, inspecting buoys and removing debris from the beaches and things like that. During the first few days, I noticed a cute young GIS intern there and we got to talking. That led to hanging out after work for the last week we were there, which then led to many cross-county flights as she lived in Washington D.C. Fast forward to May 2019 and Hilary was selected for a remote GIS position with the Department of Interior’s Emergency Operations Center, and she moved from Washington D.C. to Big Water, Utah. We were married in October of that year at a spot overlooking the lake that I love and have spent most of my time on.
NPS/ Nick Crowley