The National Park Service said Friday it was naming the superintendent of national parks in the Seattle area to oversee the USS Arizona Memorial, which has been rocked by allegations that tickets to the memorial were sold even though people aren’t supposed to pay to visit the solemn site honoring World War II dead.

Jacqueline Ashwell, who currently leads the Seattle unit of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park and other Park Service sites, will assume her new role Oct. 19, the agency said in a statement.

She will replace Paul DePrey, who was at the helm during the alleged ticket sales. Internal National Park Service reports released last year said tour companies sold tickets for boat rides to the memorial with the knowledge of park officials.

A September 2013 Park Service report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said Park Service employees gave walk-in tickets intended for independent visitors to commercial tour companies who then sold them.

Tickets were also given to Pacific Historic Parks, a nonprofit that runs a gift shop and raises money for the memorial. The organization gave some of these tickets to people spending $7 to rent an audio tour from the nonprofit, and gave others to companies leading clients to the audio tours, the report said.

There were rarely enough tickets for independent visitors while this was going on, the report said.

The Park Service in January adopted a new ticketing system to more clearly lay out the terms and conditions of the permits commercial tour companies operate under.

DePREY IS now superintendent of Salem Maritime Center and Saugus Ironworks national historic sites in Massachusetts. He told the Associated Press in April, before leaving for his new post, that the road wasn’t always smooth during his seven-year tenure in Hawaii starting in 2008. But DePrey said he believes he addressed many of the concerns people had about improving visitor experiences.

The Arizona Memorial is an open-air structure honoring the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed when their battleship was bombed by Japanese planes Dec. 7, 1941. The memorial sits atop the sunken hull of the vessel in Pearl Harbor.

Ashwell will also lead the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, which includes the newly created national monument for Honouliuli, a camp outside Honolulu where Japanese-Americans and prisoners of war were held during the war.

Ashwell is a 22-year Park Service veteran. She was chief ranger of Sitka National Historic Park in Alaska in 2009 and worked at Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska, from 2004 to 2009.