Christine Lehnertz quit the National Park Service on Thursday/NPS

Editor's note: This updates with additional details, including Lehnertz's comments on deciding to resign. Some language might be inappropriate for young readers.

A years-old saga of sexual harassment that welled up from the very bottom of Grand Canyon National Park claimed another individual Thursday as Superintendent Christine Lehnertz, brought to the park to right the park's moral compass, announced her resignation from the National Park Service.

Lehnertz had been in administrative limbo since last fall, when a senior staffer at the park accused her of fostering a hostile atmosphere among the staff and spending recklessly on renovations to employee housing.

An investigation by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General cleared her of all allegations, and in its report created a portrait of one of her accusers as determined not to follow her directives and even impede them. 

"The investigation has been completed and I am extremely pleased to let you know the allegations were determined by OIG to be wholly unfounded," Park Service Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith wrote in early February when the findings were released. "Chris has been fully exonerated of all allegations. Chris will be returning to the park soon to join all of you and assume her duties as superintendent. As we work out the details of her return, she asked me to send her appreciation to you for the work that you have done over the past several months in her absence."

But on Thursday the superintendent announced her resignation, saying what she experienced the last few months convinced her she could better impact people's lives elsewhere.

"The events of the past few months have led me to reflect on my personal and professional priorities and to reassess how I can make the greatest difference in peoples' lives," she said in a statement released by her attorney. "While I will always be dedicated to the protection of public lands, I have decided to resign my position as superintendent of one of the most inspirational places on earth in order to also pursue matters of significant importance to me, including women's empowerment, social justice, and supporting families living with the challenges of Alzheimer's.

"It has been the privilege of a lifetime to work for this extraordinary and diverse nation and, most recently, to steward the natural and cultural resources of the Grand Canyon alongside legions of dedicated and hardworking park employees. I am proud of the work we have done together to create a respectful and inclusive workplace, modernize our work processes and build a more diverse, equitable and resilient organization."

Park Service officials in Washington, D.C., said Lehnertz's service over the years was appreciated and that they "we wish her the very best in her future endeavors."

In an email to Grand Canyon's staff, Lehnertz congratulated the employees for building "a more resilient organization, and you can call on that resilience now and into the future."

She did not mention the allegations that led to her temporary reassignment while OIG conducted its investigation, but looked to the future and what progress was being made at the park in terms of "building a more respectful and inclusive workforce."

"Last week, the 2018 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey results were reported and show that employees who care about Grand Canyon are making a difference," wrote Lehnertz, who officially will resign March 31. "Since 2016, important indices of workplace conditions have gone up – the inclusion quotient is up 10 points, training/development is up 15 points, support for diversity is up 14 points, strategic management is up 20 points, empowerment is up 17 points, and fairness is up 18 points.  These gains are directly attributable to those of you who have chosen to stand up to make a better workplace at Grand Canyon National Park."

The turmoil that swirled up around Lehnertz, a gay woman who had been superintendent of Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco until former Park Service Director Jon Jarvis asked her to take on the Grand Canyon challenge, can be traced back more than two decades. Reaching back to about 2000, life deep in the Inner Gorge of Grand Canyon National Park at times reflected rowdy, sexually charged scenes from a frat party for some National Park Service employees, with male employees pawing and propositioning female workers, some of who at times exhibited their own risqué behavior.

The behavior was largely ignored by park managers, including former Grand Canyon Superintendent David Uberuaga and even former Intermountain Regional Director Sue Masica. But a group of 13 former and current Park Service employees in the early fall of 2014 wrote then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to complain and ask for an investigation.

The investigation by the Office of Inspector General generated a tawdry list of inappropriate behavior, from male employees taking photographs up under a female co-worker's dress and groping female workers to women dancing provocatively and bringing a drinking straw "shaped like a penis and testicles" to river parties. The incidents, the letter to Secretary Jewell charged, "demonstrated evidence of 'discrimination, retaliation, and a sexually hostile work environment.'”

Since 2003, the OIG reported stated, there have been a dozen disciplinary cases taken in connection with employee behavior in the Grand Canyon's River District. The matter led Uberuaga to retire rather than take an assignment in Washinton, D.C. While Director Jarvis instituted a "zero tolerance" policy across the agency in 2016, the agency has struggled with allegations of harassment. According to a survey of Interior Department employees in 2017, the odds that department employees would be a victim of harassment were better than one in three.

The allegations brought against Lehnertz last October challenged her proposed one-day suspension of a senior official and maintained that she had created a "hostile work environment and engaged in bullying and retaliatory behavior" along with wasting "nearly $180,000" on renovations to a park residence used by a deputy superintendent.

The report concluded that the one-day suspension was justified and that there was "no evidence that Lehnertz created a hostile work environment or that she wasted nearly $180,000 in unnecessary renovations to a park residence."