Stafford woman hired as superintendent of Prince William Forest Park

Fron the National Park Service: 

Tanya M. Gossett has been named the new superintendent of Prince William Forest Park in Virginia. 

Gossett’s appointment to the position was finalized before the Presidential Memorandum Regarding the Hiring Freeze was issued on January 23, 2017.

Gossett brings more than 17 years of National Park Service (NPS) experience to her new position. She comes to the park from National Capital Parks – East, in Washington, D.C., where she served as chief of resource management, overseeing the care and management of diverse ecosystems and treasured historic places such as Frederick Douglass National Historic Site and Capitol Hill parks included in the L’Enfant Plan. She has advanced the park’s partnerships with the District of Columbia and conservation partner organizations to improve the Anacostia River ecosystem and preserve the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House and the Carter G. Woodson Home national historic sites.

Previously, she worked for the NPS Office of Cultural Resources, Partnerships, and Science, where she managed the Historic Preservation Planning Program and served as the cultural resources representative on the NPS’s Planning Leadership Group. For nearly a decade, Gossett was the preservation planner for the American Battlefield Protection Program, where she led two teams preparing national studies of historic battlefields for Congress. Gossett began her NPS career in 1991 as a seasonal interpreter at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, Va.

Prince William Forest Park protects the largest piedmont forest in the national park system and the largest green space in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. The park gives area residents and visitors a unique opportunity to camp in, hike through and explore 15,000 wooded acres filled with wildlife and more than 300 years of human history.

A Fairfax, Va., native, Gossett earned her bachelor of arts with honors in history from James Madison University and her master of arts in historic preservation planning from Cornell University. She lives in Stafford County with her husband, Dean, and two teenaged sons.