New State Park Ranger/Manager Justin Rexrode – Parts 1 & 2

Part 1

At some point, Highland County will be home to a State Park, and to learn more, I spoke with one of the principals involved.

My name is Justin Rexrode. I’m the Park Manager Hayfields State Park. I started working here back in August, September was when I was hired on and made my way up here in October, full time. And I’ve been with Virginia State Parks now for four years. Started right at 2020, when the COVID time was hitting us. And I transferred from Tennessee State Parks since I was a law enforcement officer there and served a good 10 years there, working at different parks, and went to college down that way. But anywho, I grew up in this area as a child, I grew up in Churchville, born and raised there, and family owned land over in Highland here. And I felt like it was a calling home to come home when this park was open. So I was very excited to hear that they were gonna build a State Park in Highland County.”

He talked more about plans for the park itself.

“A State Park is unique in a sense that, you know, it’s kind of like its own little city or own little town, you know, where we have Rangers here full time and part time. Some live on site, some don’t, depending on if they’re law enforcement or not.”

“A lot of our State Parks, you know, have facilities from camping, campgrounds, cabins, day-use area, hiking, biking, fishing, horseback riding, and some of them boating, you know, all that stuff. So I mean, you know, each State Park’s a little bit different now.”

“Now, for Hayfields, we’re not officially open yet, so until the governor comes and opens up the park officially, we’re still, we’re in the developing stages right now. And there’s still a long road to hoe when it comes to actually opening up the State Park and having facilities here.

“The vision right now for the park is to be a day use area only, so we will have hiking trails accessible to see areas of the park, and people can park and fish on the river – having access to the river was one of the big things people were really wanting. But ultimately, the 10 year, 20 year goals of the park is going be determined by a development plan, which, that is something where the public will be invited out to contribute to. Stakeholders, shareholders will have their own meeting as well.

“I’ve been though this before with another State Park, Clinch River in West Virginia, and this will be the similar thing, where we’ll have this plan developed by the people and then approved by our higher ups and be implemented. So this could take a couple of years to do. I want people to be patient with us, but in the meantime, our goal in the next year is to really just have access to the farm as a day-use area.”

I asked where people could find out more about the development progress.

“Right now, our website is on development. It won’t actually post until we actually have, like I said, the governor comes out and opens up the park itself. But in the meantime, if the gate’s open here, I’ve told people that, you know, if you see the gate open, you know, come on up and talk with me. I’d be happy to talk with you. But yeah, people got questions or they want to talk with me more, the good number for the office here at Hayfields is 540-396-4489. They’re more than welcome to email me at my email address, which is justin.rexrode@dcr.virginia.gov.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this story.

Part 2

In Part 1 of this story, we met Justin Rexrode, the Park Manager/Ranger for the forthcoming Hayfields State Park in Highland County.

I had to ask – what does a Park Ranger do in a park that doesn’t really exist yet?

“That’s a great question (laughs). Some of my other fellow Rangers have kind of teased me a little bit, calling me the imaginary Ranger at the imaginary Park (laughs).”

“But, you know, in the sense of developing a park, my job right now is really just, I’m the only one here. I patrol, I do a little bit of law enforcement – being a Park Manager, I do have the authority of the Virginia State Law Enforcement Officer, so I do things like that. I’ve been purchasing things with the budget that the General Assembly has given me this year for upstart, so I’m buying equipment, things that are going to help us in the future, everything from tractors to four wheelers, UTV’s, things like that.”

“Also, just making sure things are up kept here. We have several houses here on the property that, some of them have been not as loved and cared for over the years as they should have been so some of the things here I’m having to fix and fix on my own, or to get contractors in to help with that. But this year, we do have a Park Ranger maintenance full time position starting here this month that’s going to be assisting me, and then hopefully we’ll have an office manager hired at some point, and then another Chief Ranger, which will be a law enforcement officer, sometime next year.”

“So that’s kind of my goals right now, is hiring people, getting them trained, getting them online, purchasing things, fixing things, and just really, come up with a game plan so people can have public access here.”

I asked if these upcoming employment positions were restricted to current Park Service personnel only.

“This is completely open to the public. So, our positions, when we post them, they’re always public. So, even me applying for the Park Manager position here, there was people from the outside that had every opportunity to get the position, and the same goes for here too. I can say that our Park Ranger maintenance was actually not from our agency, was someone local, and office manager, it seems like it’s probably going to be someone local.”

“People in the agency do have an upper hand at times to get their foot in the door, and you know, if you’re willing to bounce around or move around, that does look well, but the most part, we’re fair. I mean, if we’ve got locals that got strengths that we’re looking for, I mean, we can mold them to be a Ranger. Being a Ranger is a mentality every one of us goes through. Most of the times. I don’t address myself as a Park Manager, I say I’m a Park Ranger. You know, it’s kind of that cohesiveness we have with that term, and that all of us are equal in the sense that we’re all Park Rangers trying to preserve a park. And, best way I know describe it is we’re protecting the park from the people and the people from the park.”