Park County Commissioner Joe Tilden had made what he thought was his final motion after 12 years of service as a county commissioner. 

His fellow commissioners wouldn’t let him go that easily, as more than one voted against the motion to adjourn the final meeting of the year. So it took one more motion, and then Tilden’s three terms as a commissioner were all but technically over, giving him more time to spend with family and not schedule his life around meetings.

“We all appreciate what you’ve done,” Commission Chair Dossie Overfield said. 

Tilden started as a county commissioner in 2010 and dove into a topic he knew a lot about as a ranch manager and now as a ranch consultant.

“When I first became a commissioner, the big issues were federal land issues,” he said. “We were going through the … resource management plan with BLM and then we started with the Forest Service plan [for the Shoshone National Forest].”

Tilden and former Commissioner Loren Grosskopf were on both committees for those plans, which he said were two of his greatest accomplishments on the board.

The effort midway through his tenure to address Park County’s Wilderness Study Areas left a more sour taste in his mouth, as Tilden said the issue was never fully resolved.

More recently, the last three years he said have been dominated by the large influx of people moving into the county, which has led to a bevy of new subdivisions, and the subsequent push to enact a new land use plan. Tilden said while he’s enjoyed being a part of the process to create the plan, he’ll miss seeing it come to fruition. 

But he doesn’t plan to be a stranger and said he’ll be back at the courthouse if an issue touches him personally. He looks forward to being in the crowd looking at the commissioners. 

Those people he’ll be looking at — and he thinks Scott Steward will be a great replacement in his corner seat — are the reason he said he’ll miss the gig the most. 

“It truly has been an honor and a privilege to serve the people of Park County,” he said. “But these people I’ll miss the most: the county commissioners, the elected officials, our department heads and basically the staff in general. We have a great bunch of people. They are marvelous.”