Beloved park ranger dies in Utah’s Bryce Canyon during an annual festival in the fall

A beloved National Park Service ranger died when he tripped, fell and hit his head on a rock during an annual astronomy festival in southwestern Utah, park officials said this weekend.

Tom Lorig was 78 when he died Friday evening after the incident in Bryce Canyon National Park.

He was known for his extensive work as a ranger and volunteer at 14 National Park Service sites, including Yosemite National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Dinosaur National Monument, the park service said in a statement Saturday.

“Tom Lorig served Bryce Canyon, the National Park Service and the public as an interpretive park ranger, forging connections between the world and these special places he loved,” Bryce Canyon Superintendent Jim Ireland said in the statement.

In a separate statement on Facebook, the park said: “Tom was a dedicated public servant, and his loss will be felt by the many who knew him within the National Park Service.”

Lorig was sending a Bryce Canyon visitor to a shuttle bus around 11:30 p.m. — the last shuttle was scheduled to leave the festival at 12:15 p.m. — when he tripped, fell and hit the rock, the park service said.

A park visitor saw that he was unconscious and called for help.

Other park rangers, Garfield County Emergency Medical Services first responders and park visitors tried to revive Lorig, the park service said.

Lorig had been working and occasionally volunteering for the park service in 1968 when he began a five-year stint at New Mexico’s underground Carlsbad Caverns National Park, according to the National Park Service. He also worked for a time in the Seattle area as a registered nurse.

In June 2013, he drove his truck from his home in Washington State to New Mexico to return a historic painted wooden sign that once marked the location of Mirror Lake in the Big Room 79 stories below grade at Carlsbad Cavern, the park service said.

Lighted signs were installed in the park in 1973 and employees were allowed to take the old ones with them, he said in a 2013 statement. Lorig described Mirror Lake’s sign as “the most coveted sign.”

The sign is now in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park museum collection and features “mirror image text that reads right side up when reflected on the surface of the pool,” Lorig said in 2013.

“I’m glad the sign is back at Carlsbad Caverns,” he said at the time. “This is where it belongs.”

The Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival Wednesday through Saturday celebrated space using the night sky. Telescopes, astrophotography workshops and constellation tours are offered every year.