Former GW student Brian Joyner last month assumed responsibility for maintaining and managing Rock Creek Park after spending two decades exploring his passions for preservation and D.C. history with the National Park Service.
The park service late last month appointed Brian Joyner — who took graduate classes in historic preservation at GW from 2001 to 2004 — as the superintendent of the District’s oldest federally managed park after he spent 20 years documenting public history, managing parks and drafting federal policy with the agency. As a D.C. native, Joyner said he grew up visiting Rock Creek Park and hopes to boost the community’s interest in park rehabilitation projects while continuing to document its cultural and historical significance, like the role it served as a meeting point for White House-bound protesters.
“Rock Creek Park has always been a part of my life,” Joyner said.
Rock Creek Park is divided into more than 20 green spaces, spanning 2,749 acres. The largest area falls between the National Zoo and Silver Spring, Maryland, making up 1,754 acres, according to its foundational documents. Rock Creek Park also includes significant parks outside of the main park, including Meridian Hill Park and the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway’s termination at the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge, which brings Joyner’s jurisdiction deep into Foggy Bottom.
Joyner, who served as the park’s deputy superintendent since 2022, succeeded Superintendent Julia Washburn, an adjunct professor of educational leadership at GW who served in the role from 2017 to 2024. Before he became deputy superintendent, he oversaw the maintenance and personnel for a national historical park that honored Harriet Tubman’s role in the Underground Railroad and conducted research and advocacy on environmental policy for the park service in Congress.
During his period as acting superintendent at Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park between 2014 and 2015, Joyner oversaw the park’s transition from a national historic site to a national historical park, which required him to negotiate boundary adjustments with government officials. He had to mitigate community opposition to the adjusted boundaries, which helped him learn how to balance federal priorities with community needs, he said.
“Learning how to manage that, engage with the politics around that, engage with the communities in that space that had definite feelings about whether the park service should be there was really eye-opening,” Joyner said. “That probably would be the thing that probably most prepared me for what I’m doing now.”
Joyner’s Bevinetto Fellowship, a specialized park service program that the park service selected him for in 2015, involved analyzing legislation, communicating the park service’s needs to lawmakers and independently studying environmental issues. Joyner said he learned how to write legislation and how policy and budget discussions “collide,” broadening his perspective beyond interacting with park stewards.
While taking historic preservation classes at GW, Joyner said he worked a full-time job at the park service as an editor for the Cultural Resources Diversity Program at Rock Creek Park, a program to promote inclusive historical preservation. He contributed to its “Reflections on the American Landscape” series in 2003, listing historic sites in the American landscape through various cultural lenses.
“I would get done with work, leave work at like 4 o’clock and try to get over as fast as I could to GW to get to my 4:30 class,” Joyner said.
Balancing graduate courses and a full-time job, Joyner said he never forged a strong connection with the GW community but instead grew an appreciation for the Foggy Bottom campus by spending time in nearby parks, like Washington Circle, Rawlins Park and the National Mall.
“Going to sit in Washington [Circle] if I had some time to kill before and after class or going down 23rd street to get over toward the Lincoln Memorial,” Joyner said.
Joyner later co-authored “Hispanic Heroes Walking Tour of Washington, D.C.” in 2012, a short guide to seven culturally significant stops along Virginia Avenue, the southern end of campus. Those sites, however, are under the National Mall and Memorial Parks’ purview, not Rock Creek.
As superintendent, Joyner said he wants to document in the park service’s collections how traditions like Native Americans’ 50-year-old annual drum circle at Meridian Hill Park compare to the space’s modern uses, like picnicking. He said when Native Americans participated in the “Longest Walk” in 1978 from California to D.C. to protest legislation that would eliminate Native American reservations, people chose to go to Meridian Hill because they viewed it as a sacred site in connection with the Anacostan people who lived in the area.
“This park, like all parks, has a life of its own, and you need to spend time in it to understand what that is,” Joyner said.
Joyner said he will oversee significant rehabilitation efforts at Rock Creek Park, focusing on the restoration of two major facilities — the Rock Creek Golf Course and Carter Barron Amphitheatre, two once-heavily used assets of the park that have fallen into disrepair.
The amphitheater closed in 2017 after facing years of structural and accessibility issues and caught on fire in 2022. The park service plans to overhaul the 100-year-old golf course later this year because the area faced poor playability, deteriorated cart paths and invasive vegetation, and its clubhouse is inaccessible to people with disabilities. Renovations will include reducing the course’s 18 holes to nine, adding a clubhouse, pro shop, indoor practice area and a 50-bay lighted driving range.
Joyner said he plans to engage community members in the projects because park boundaries are scattered throughout residential districts like Georgetown and Fort Totten. As deputy superintendent of the park, Joyner said he led discussions to hear community input on the two projects. Some environmentalists have voiced concerns about the golf course rehabilitation project’s plan to cut down 1,000 trees, while other community members look forward to being able to use the course again.
“Our borders are fairly porous, in some ways, they literally abut people’s backyards,” Joyner said. “It is incumbent upon the park, and I think the park service in general is, to stay in dialogue with all the different constituencies in the District.”
