Ranger Ranks Thinning as National Parks Near 75th Birthday : Outdoors: ‘I’m paid in sunsets’ has become an outdated slogan as low salaries and hazardous duty take their toll.

MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK, Colo. —  The National Park Service has replaced the Anasazi as guardian of the land here, but 10,000 years later, today’s rangers have much in common with those vanished cliff dwellers.

Magnificent scenery--but inadequate shelter. Clean air--but harsh weather. Star-swept nights--but family hardships.

In many of the nation’s 357 national parks, bad housing, low wages, a graying work force combined with declining enlistment and increasingly hazardous duty have given rangers few reasons to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the National Park Service this summer.

Beginning rangers at parks such as the Grand Canyon, who once took pride in the old motto, “I take my pay in sunsets,” now supplement their groceries with government-subsidy cheese and milk because they can’t feed their families on $15,000 a year, park spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge said.

Throughout the system, administrators say they hear stories of employees on food stamps but can’t document them because of privacy laws.

“One cannot feed a family on sunsets,” commented Rep. Constance A. Morella (R-Md.) at a hearing on rangers’ problems last year.

Rangers who are required to live in parks often inhabit 25-year-old dilapidated trailers, drafty, antiquated dwellings barely up to safety codes, adequate but cramped quarters in cheek-by-jowl housing developments or, in drastic cases, tent-frame quarters without plumbing, said Pat Smith, who runs the park service’s housing department.

The ranger responsible for safeguarding Alaska’s historic Anaktuvuk Pass at Gates of the Arctic National Park lives in a 250-square-foot ranger station with no running water. The ranger based on San Miguel Island off Ventura, Calif., lives in a 20-by-8 shipping crate with no indoor toilet. A ranger at Mt. Ranier National Park in Washington finally wangled a transfer because he and his wife refused to live in dilapidated park-provided housing, choosing instead to camp in their truck.

First-year rangers at the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell must spend up to 60% of their salaries on rent because of high-priced urban housing. In San Francisco, permanent rangers at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area have established an informal food bank at the office to help seasonal and beginning rangers feed themselves.

Congress has appropriated $18 million in the last three years to upgrade park housing, but parks administrators say $547 million is needed to completely upgrade substandard houses and add necessary new ones. The last major effort to modernize and add housing to the park service was in 1966.

“We’re chipping away at the problem,” said Smith, who oversees 5,183 National Park Service housing units.

Other federal agencies, like the FBI, provide housing assistance to employees assigned to expensive areas. Not so for the park service.

“Entry-level rangers are living hand-to-mouth in urban areas such as Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles because they cannot compete for housing on the open market,” said Rick Gale, president of the Assn. of National Park Rangers.

“Congress is real good about authorizing new parks, but not so good about giving money to operate them,” said Gale, who is based in Boise, Ida.

In the last two decades, the low pay and poor housing and a logjam of career veterans blocking upward mobility has driven more and more of the rangers corps-- 3,200 year-round employees and 3,000 seasonal hires--into the private sector or into better-paying branches of state or federal agencies.

Annual systemwide turnover today is 8%, compared to 3% in the early 1970s. In urban areas, turnover is as high as 20% a year.

Children frequently endure long commutes to school, or must get their education at home in isolated areas. Spouses often drive hours to and from jobs that are vital to make ends meet, or forgo careers altogether because of a lack of opportunities and isolation. It is not uncommon for dual career park service rangers to work at different parks and meet on weekends.

“I can recommend it (being a ranger), but it’s not the life for some people,” said Linda Martin, 45, a 19-year Park Service veteran who is at Mesa Verde.

The ranks of those familiar folks in the hat are being stretched thinner just at a time when they are needed more than ever. Between 1973 and 1990, Congress added 97 new parks to the system, and last year, nearly 257 million people visited America’s official back yard.

At the congressional hearing last year, National Park Service Director James M. Ridenour said the service is losing its ability to compete for qualified college graduates lured by better pay and benefits elsewhere.

“More than a third of new hirees lack a four-year college degree, and among those with degrees, only 50% held them in subjects related to parks and recreation management, history and the natural and biological sciences,” Ridenour said.

Law enforcement--the original reason for patrolling parks--once again has become one of the most critical parts of a job that now includes guiding, resource management and interpretation, or helping visitors understand what they are seeing.

Law enforcement rangers throughout the system now carry .357-magnum pistols, and all are encouraged to wear bulletproof vests on duty as Congress debates whether to authorize them to carry semiautomatic rifles.

Last year, Ranger Robert McGhee, 50, was shot to death while on patrol in Gulf Islands National Seashore in Mississippi when he confronted two prison escapees. His assailants were captured in a police shootout and sentenced to life terms without parole.

“I’m not saying crime is rampant in national parks, but people who commit crimes anywhere else also commit them in national parks,” Park Service Chief Ranger Walt Dabney said.

For families such as the Hutchinsons here at Mesa Verde, the hardships of low pay and a tiny, old house in the remote place where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona come together are outweighed by the benefits of living in beauty and serenity in one of the nation’s most prized places.

“There are three women, me, and one bathroom,” says Art Hutchinson, a ranger who lives in a half-century-old 846-square-foot house with his wife and two daughters and earns an above-average ranger’s salary--$21,000 a year.

Hutchinson’s daughters, ages 10 and 9, ride the school bus 62 miles daily. His wife, Mona, commutes 110 miles daily to a job with the Bureau of Land Management.

“We think the benefits of park life far outweigh the detriments. Our girls love it, it’s beautiful, and it’s safe, even though a mountain lion dragged a deer through the yard last winter. I’d prefer a mountain lion to a drive-by shooter in Denver any day,” said Hutchinson, 39.

“There’s no garage, no storage, no place to plug in appliances we probably don’t need anyway, and 99% of our books are in storage,” he said of his Park Service house on the mesa.

“But we don’t need curtains on our windows, and when I walk outside at night I only see stars.”