CUSTER, S.D. (AP) - On March 23, Craig Pugsley for the last time turned off the lights in his modest office at Custer State Park’s headquarters, ending a 40-year career with the state Game, Fish & Parks Department and leaving the only job he’s ever really known.
In his four-decade stint, first as park planner, then as long-time interpretive director, Pugsley has helped refine and define the 110-square-mile preserve and illuminate the beauty of the Black Hills for millions of prospective visitors. In so doing, some have even called him the “face” of Southern Hills tourism.
For others, Pugsley’s long-term commitment to the remarkable park and his tireless efforts to foster public-private partnerships that have bolstered visitation numbers, expanded the visitor season and enhanced all Custer State Park has to offer, leaves out the bonds of myriad friendships established over time and ignores any mention of the kind of guy who would bring a stranded motorist home for the night.
The Rapid City Journal (https://bit.ly/2oFLRNi ) reports that born Sept. 9, 1952, in Huron to Eugene and Grace Pugsley, a banker and homemaker, the young Pugsley headed straight for South Dakota State University after graduating from high school, where he earned his degree in 1975 in environmental geography with an emphasis on wildlife, forestry and park management.
Pugsley lived in the dorms for four years, served as president of the inter-residential hall council and became involved in campus politics. After earning his undergraduate degree, he pursued a master’s degree in geography with a concentration on recreational planning. But a job opening for a park planner at Custer State Park captured his attention in December 1976, and he interviewed for the position. It would change his life.
After returning from a quick Christmas trip to visit a brother in Michigan, Pugsley returned home to find a note by his phone that said Custer State Park Director “Tal Lockwood thinks you’re his man.” Abandoning his master’s thesis for a $5.48 an hour position, Pugsley enlisted the help of two friends to move to the Black Hills and, on Jan. 7, 1977, he arrived at the park to start his new job. He quickly discovered they weren’t expecting him.
“I checked in at the park and they said, ’Oh, you’re here already,’” Pugsley recalled last week while sitting in a Rapid City coffee shop. “They weren’t totally ready for my arrival. But I was just excited to have the job my dad always said I should have.”
After being assigned a house in the park and a basement office, Pugsley had been working two weeks on developing interpretive components of the park’s new master plan when a forester wandered into his office and asked him what he was still doing there.
“Well, I work here,” Pugsley responded. “He thought I was an intern.”
Those initial experiences later led Pugsley to develop a six-day orientation program for all new employees, as well as seasonal workers and volunteers, where they receive “a well-rounded overview” of the park as well as an introduction to partnerships Pugsley helped establish with the city of Custer and its chamber, Crazy Horse Memorial, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, South Dakota Tourism and the U.S. Forest Service.
The orientation program was one of Pugsley’s many successes. When he arrived so many years ago, the park had a lone Florida couple who served as summer campground hosts. Today, the park allots 40 full-service campsites to hosts and averages 80 volunteers per year.
“The coolest thing is we’ve integrated those volunteers into virtually every program in the park,” Pugsley said with pride. “They not only serve as campground hosts, but virtually staff four visitor centers within the park and assist park office administration, law enforcement, maintenance and resource management.
“By having volunteers, it’s provided us the opportunity to increase levels of service to guests by tenfold. It’s allowed us to meet or exceed our guests’ expectations.”
Each fall, in a ritual as regular as falling leaves, thousands of people gather on hillsides surrounding Custer State Park’s corrals to await the arrival of a scene straight out of the Old West, as 1,300 American bison stampede across the prairie in the annual Buffalo Roundup. Last year, an estimated 21,000 spectators witnessed the event.
But it was not always that way.
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, the park’s Buffalo Roundup attracted a mere handful of interested people, growing to a couple of hundred. But Pugsley recognized the potential of the event to bring attention to the park and its resource management objectives. With the acquiescence of park directors (he’s served under seven) and the support of park staff, it grew to monumental proportions and now is a mainstay that has helped extend the fall season of Black Hills tourism.
“Craig shouldered a major part of that burden of accommodating those growing pains and the safe handling of that many people amid a wild herd of 1,300 stampeding buffalo,” said former park Director Rollie Noem, who worked with Pugsley from 1985 to 2005. “The planning and coordination was a huge task, and it continues to grow. The intricacies of coordination - the flow, parking, motorcoaches, logistics, Porta-Potties, traffic direction, medical services, media relations, an arts festival held in conjunction with the roundup - all could be tied to Craig’s coordination.
“The roundup has become a premiere tourist event for South Dakota because of the work Craig put in as much as any one individual,” Noem said.
Other former and current co-workers of Pugsley describe a committed individual who, while working hard and keeping the interests of the park at the forefront, never failed to add a bit of levity to his surroundings.
Bradley Block, now chief of interpretation at Jewel Cave, worked as a CSP naturalist with Pugsley for 11 years, describing him as “by far the best supervisor with whom I ever worked.”
“Frankly I’ve worked with a number of fantastic people, but Craig was one of those guys who got back to you - a friend-boss as much as an actual manager, and that’s something today,” Block said this week. “He was so good at planning ahead. He’s just a planner, and that’s a rare trait.”
Block couldn’t help but laugh as he described a prank he and Pugsley performed on co-worker Dee McCarthy, now assistant park manager. McCarthy had just purchased a new Mazda Tribute and, while parked in the lot near her office, the same red squirrel kept returning to her engine compartment, chewing on wires and causing mayhem. Eventually someone suggested she keep her hood up while she was at work.
“Craig and I knew it was really bugging her, so we drove to the visitor center and took a red squirrel taxidermy mount that was posed like it was eating a pine cone,” Block recalled. “We got staff to distract Dee, and Craig and I placed that squirrel like it was perched on her engine near the radiator, and it was looking back right at Dee’s window.
“We ran back into Craig’s office trying not to laugh like some schoolboys. She eventually turned around, uttered some expletives at the squirrel and ran out there,” he said. “She couldn’t understand why the squirrel wasn’t running away. Craig and I laughed so hard we about vomited.”
In hindsight, Block and McCarthy said those antics created a spirit of camaraderie and a tight team that worked in tandem on behalf of the park.
“We’re like family,” said McCarthy, who has worked under Pugsley’s direct supervision for a quarter-century. “I’ve known Craig since his boys were little. Now they are all grown up. We’ve not only had a good working relationship, we’ve had a great friendship.”
Richard Miller, who served as park director for a decade before retiring in 2011, said Pugsley’s experience helped him find his way after he was named to the post.
“I was the new kid on the block and Craig had a wealth of experience,” Miller said. “I valued his input and his help. Craig was a great colleague, fun to be around, as long as you wanted to listen to hunting and fishing stories.”
For his part, in retirement the 64-year-old Pugsley said he hoped to devote more time to developing the foundation for future hunting and fishing stories. He’d like to spend more time with his two children and travel more with Celine, his wife of 34 years, though she’s still working as a para-professional at a Rapid City Catholic elementary school. And he’d like to enjoy some spring walleye fishing on the Missouri River, hunt sage grouse in Montana and man a blind for the opening of the East River duck hunting season, something he’s never been able to do because it occurs on the same weekend as the Buffalo Roundup.
With no desire to fly south with the snowbirds in winter, Pugsley said he’d remain in South Dakota and likely would be a frequent visitor to Custer State Park, though, “I don’t want to be a pain to anybody.”
And, as Craig Pugsley switches off the light in his office this afternoon and scans the Ponderosa pines and rock outcroppings for free-roaming wildlife on his way home, he said he’d carry with him a backpack of fond memories for an alpine oasis in which he’s spent nearly two-thirds of his life. He’ll also recall many of his favorite moments in Custer State Park.
“I remember one time I was coming back from a Black Hills, Badlands & Lakes meeting in Rapid City, rushing to get back to the park office to answer my next 30 emails,” Pugsley said, his eyes wandering to the horizon. “I was driving through the east entrance to the park and there was this SUV from Illinois stopped, its occupants watching as a big bull buffalo sauntered across the roadway right in front of them.
“The three kids in the back got out of their seatbelts and were tracking the buffalo when one of the kids noticed me behind them, pointed at the buffalo, then pointed at me, as if he didn’t want me to miss this once-in-a-lifetime experience they were having. It’s always reminded me of why Custer State Park is here - to provide those memorable moments to millions of visitors who pass through the park gates.”
___
Information from: Rapid City Journal, https://www.rapidcityjournal.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.