Longtime Glacier National Park ranger dies at age 102

Lyle Ruterbories, a longtime ranger and one of the oldest rangers ever in the National Park Service, died last week.

He was 102 and 10 months old.

Ruterbories and his wife, Marge, were mainstays at Glacier National Park’s Kintla Lake for years.

“He was a legend in his own time,” said longtime co-worker Douglas Andrews, who worked in park maintenance with Ruterbories.

Ruterbories worked in Glacier from 1993 to 2017 as a seasonal ranger at Avalanche Creek campground early on, but spent most of his career at Kintla.

Marge died when she was 87, but Lyle continued at Kintla for 10 more years. He retired at age 97, and only because he came down with pneumonia after he got a tooth infection at the end of the season.

Ruterbories was a no-nonsense ranger, with a heart of gold.

Marge and Lyle traveled the world visiting national parks, so when he retired as a sheet metal worker they came to Glacier as seasonal staff.

At the behest of then Ranger Scott Emmerich, they started at Kintla Lake in 1991 after stints as volunteers at Avalanche and Apgar, beginning in 1987.

Lyle was the ranger at Kintla, and Marge the campground host.

Even at his age, he could still out-hike a lot of people. On more than one occasion he would hike the “loop” in a day, patrolling from the head of Kintla up and over Boulder and Brown passes to the head of Bowman Lake, a trip of more than 20 miles, with thousands of feet of elevation gain and loss. A boat ride took them to the head of Kintla and the foot of Bowman.

Ruterbories also had a wry sense of humor.

In a 2005 Hungry Horse News interview he said that through the years, through all this work, he’s learned a lot about wildlife and plant life, with the most interesting thing being that bears seem to enjoy having a drink every now and then.

“They like beer,” he said. “It’s probably as bad as leaving a loaf of bread out.”

Marge would die in 2005, but Lyle continued at Kintla for another 12 years.

Lyle was a ranger there for so long, he recalled a spruce tree that was 40 feet high in the campground. When he started, it was only waist-high.

“Marge called it heaven on earth,” Lyle said in a 2013 interview. “That’s the reason I come back. The people make it special.”

Longtime ranger Regi Altop recalled Ruterbories fondly. He noted Ruterbories really worked at making the auto campground a nice place — leveling it out and fixing the drainage, one wheelbarrow at a time.

“People don’t have work ethic like that anymore,” Altop said.

Ruterbories also hiked every trail in the park, except for the Nyack drainage.

In a 2013 interview, he said his longevity came from his ability to see people from their perspective.

“Any time I meet someone, I’m not my age, I’m their age,” he said.


He also never drank and never smoked.


“I don’t let anything worry me,” he said.