Being a Park Ranger is more than a career, it’s been a way of life for Marin Karraker, who is now the superintendent of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

Karraker was born in Flagstaff, Ariz., while her father was a park ranger at the Grand Canyon. Her mother was also a park ranger. Her parents met while working at the Everglades National Park in Florida before Marin was born. The Karrakers lived in several national parks and raised Marin and her two siblings in the process.

Marin graduated from Grand Canyon High School in 1982 and was valedictorian for her class of 14 students. She then attended the University of Alaska in Fairbanks where she obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in natural resource management.

Her career has taken her to the Alaska Public Lands Information Center, back to the Grand Canyon, Olympic National Park and San Juan Island National Historical Park in Washington, Death Valley National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Haleakala National Park on Maui, Hawaii.

Since moving into administration, she has had assignments in Texas and New Mexico, where she helped the Valles Caldera National Preserve transition from the United States Forest Service to the National Park Service.

Later, she moved to southeast Arizona as the administrative officer for three units: Chiricahua National Monument, Coronado National Memorial and Fort Bowie National Historic Site.

In January 2025, she arrived at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument on a temporary assignment, which was only supposed to be for four months but was extended to July. She returned to Arizona but returned to the Fossil Beds for a week each month. She was named permanent superintendent in April 2026.

There were significant challenges when she returned for keeps, “but I wasn’t starting from scratch. I had 15 months of dress rehearsal. I knew what I was getting into.”

At that time, the Monument was severely understaffed. During the winter of 2025-26 they had no maintenance staff and everyone there had to do everything to keep the Monument open.

“I even had to scrub toilets,” she grimaced.

She did hire a facility manager who hired an assistant. She is in the process now of hiring a visitor center manager who will oversee several programs including interpretation, education, fees and volunteers. They will also be hiring a museum technician and a park ranger.

“Great work is happening this summer by the volunteer trail crew, the visitor services volunteers, resources seasonals and interns and visiting specialists,” she said.

One of the most obvious projects that has been completed was a makeover for the Hornbek Homestead.

Karraker is getting the staffing to a more sustainable level and has also been focusing on working on planning documents, protecting the park from wildfires through mitigation and resource management to rid the park of invasive plant species.

A big need of the park is housing for employees and she hopes by the summer of 2027 to have housing availability of three apartments and two trailer pads.

“Housing for employees presents a real problem and I want to help make living here a bit easier,” she said.

Florissant Fossil Beds is one of 433 managed by the National Park Service. The Fossil Beds are rich with geology, fossils and human history. The layers of rock beneath this valley contain one of the richest fossil deposits in the world. They hold clues of unexpected environments and life that existed here during a time called the late Eocene.

The monument’s main gate and Visitor Center are currently open every day from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Hornbek Homestead area is open 24/7 and it’s a fantastic location for night sky viewing.

Please visit www.nps.gov/flfo for more information.