Cassius Cash (born December 10, 1968) is a federal career official who serves as the 16th superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, encompassing the eponymous mountain range in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. He started his career in the Forest Service, in wildlife management, and nearly two decades later transferred to the National Park Service. He is the former superintendent of Boston National Historical Park and Boston African American National Historic Site. In 2015 he was selected as the first African American superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in the United States welcoming 12.5 million visitors in 2019. Early life and education Cash was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, to a father who worked as a police officer in the Memphis Police Department, and a mother who worked as a cosmetologist. Cash attributes some of his earliest interest in the natural world to watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom documentary television series in his family home. His interest was further solidified through participating in outdoor excursions with Memphis Boy Scouts Troop 511. After graduating from high school in Memphis, Cash earned a bachelor of science degree in biology from the historically black college, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and later studied wildlife management at Oregon State University. Cash is a member of Phi Beta Sigma and Sigma Pi Phi, Beta Theta Chapter. Career Cash began his federal career in 1991 with the United States Forest Service as a wildlife biologist at the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State. He went on to work with the US Forest Service for 18 years in various leadership positions. He served as an administrative officer at Nebraska National Forest, district ranger at the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, a civil rights officer at the National Forests in Mississippi, and was the deputy forest supervisor at the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon before leaving the Forest Service to join the National Park Service in 2010. Cash served as superintendent at Boston National Historical Park and Boston African American National Historical Park from 2010 to early 2015. While there, he worked with the City of Boston to open a new visitor center in historic Faneuil Hall, which now welcomes more than 5 million visitors a year. Cash also worked with several park partners to secure $4 million to reopen the African Meeting House, the