Planner’s lifelong commitment to the outdoors pays off

MONTROSE —  Edd Franz is where he’s always wanted to be.

Early on, the 46-year-old outdoor recreation planner of the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area eyed a career working in the outdoors with the federal government.

It sent him on a long and interesting trip.

Franz’s first job, at age 15, was as a part-time retail clerk at a camera store. He spent most of his free time roaming the woods in Southern Indiana, where he grew up.

In his senior year of high school, Franz’s parents gave him an Outward Bound course: a 23-day backpacking trip through Canyonlands National Park in Utah. “After that was over, the Colorado Plateau was the only place I wanted to be,” he said.

Franz went into college at Indiana University Bloomington focused on medicine. The careers of his grandfather and father — one an engineer, the other a doctor — appealed to him. But his passion for the outdoors also remained.

“I went to Indiana University and I was a biology major. I got two, three, four years into the program and realized I had some other interests.”

He combined recreation classes with the requirements of a biology degree. He graduated with a Bachelor of General Studies — a “kind of major in biology and minor in recreation.”

Franz’s desire to live and work on the Colorado Plateau stuck with him following high school. The idea, he said, was to somehow find his way back to the area to live and work.

Just out of college, in 1987, he volunteered with the Student Conservation Association and spent “three glorious months” at Grand Gulch Primitive Area in southeast Utah.

For years following that experience, Franz worked seasonal jobs while his wife worked as a permanent park ranger.

That changed when the couple had kids. “The idea was that I would get a real job and my wife would be able to stay home with the kids,” he said.

But trying to go from seasonal to permanent employee was tough; the competition was high and the federal hiring process rigid, he said. “I probably put out over 100 applications anywhere in the country doing anything with any agency, and just got rejection after rejection.”

His pursuit took him across the U.S. into varied jobs, including a term stint with the Park Service doing preservation carpentry work on a plantation in Central Louisiana.

At 38 years old, Franz landed a full-time job with the Bureau of Land Management at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Today, he spends most of his time in the Montrose office but has the unique opportunity to help guide management efforts. “One of the things I’m really focused on doing eventually is getting an educational specialist on board ... because we have a lot of amazing opportunities to really engage students and schools with the public lands.”