50 Years, 50 Legacies: Joe Cayou
#21: Joe Cayou
Credit: NPS
When Voyageurs National Park was still “a park in the making,” Joe Cayou arrived in February 1973 as one of the park’s first field leaders, hired as District Ranger during the build-out of operations.
At the start of his career with the park, Cayou helped stand up day-to-day protection and visitor services across the Kabetogama district, doing everything from early visitor contact and safety patrols to shoreline cleanups as newly acquired lands transitioned into the national park. In a 1973 NPS newsletter from those first months, he described confronting heavy litter in recently acquired areas, a simple glimpse of the everyday, often thankless work that defined the park’s first years.
Within a few years, Cayou moved into park-wide leadership. By 1980, he was serving as one of the park’s first Chief Rangers, overseeing law enforcement, emergency response, and visitor-use management across Voyageurs’ landscape.
Cayou’s seamanship and deep knowledge of the lakes became a resource not just for rangers but for researchers and later Voyageurs employees. Archeological field teams working remote fur-trade sites in the early 2000s thanked “Joe Cayou, an experienced boat operator and guide, now semi-retired from the NPS, who consistently demonstrated patience, skills, and good humor in getting us to and from project areas within the park” – evidence of how his years of work and institutional experience continued to support science and stewardship even after he’d left the front lines.
Joe Cayou (Left) with the 2001 VOYA underwater survey team at the Kabetogama Lake Visitor Center marina. Credit: Kenneth V. Knutson & NPS
After more than two decades of service through the park’s formative period, Cayou retired from Voyageurs National Park in 1994 as an Operations Specialist.
Check out the full list of our 50 legacies!
This year, we’re celebrating 50 years of Voyageurs National Park by sharing 50 inspiring stories of the people who shaped its legacy. Years, 50 Legacies is a yearlong storytelling series highlighting individuals whose lives are woven into the fabric of the park – whether through conservation work, cultural traditions, recreation, research, or personal connection.
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