"Last month, the Trump administration announced Scott Socha as its new nominee to lead the National Park Service, the most prestigious public lands agency in America, though much diminished since it was gutted by DOGE personnel cuts last year. As with many of the political appointees at Trump’s Interior Department, Socha comes directly from a corporation with abundant business interests before the agency he is slated to lead. He has worked for more than 20 years as a corporate executive at Delaware North, the hospitality and food services giant that controls lucrative concessions at national parks around the country.
Delaware North runs 11 general stores at Yellowstone National Park. It operates the Yavapai Lodge and related food and beverage concessions at Grand Canyon National Park. It manages “lodging, food and beverage, and retail stores” at Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park in California. It runs the Kalaloch Lodge in Olympic National Park, and has myriad commercial interests in Shenandoah National Park. It also owns a slew of hotels in national park gateway communities and in recent years was enmeshed in an acrimonious trademark dispute over naming rights at Yosemite National Park. With a sprawling array of business interests, the privately-held company generates billions in revenue each year.
After Trump took office, Delaware North hired The Bernhardt Group to lobby for it in Washington D.C. Founded by David Bernhardt, an interior secretary during Trump’s first term who remains a major figure in Trump World, The Bernhardt Group has taken $140,000 from Delaware North since last summer to lobby the Interior Department and Congress on “issue related to concessions contracts.”
When Socha was nominated to lead NPS, The Bernhardt Group publicly gushed about their friend’s good fortune."
Jimmy Tobias reports for Public Domain March 25, 2026.
