Category Archives: National Park Service

Sunday morning coffee

09 Sunday Oct 2016

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img_3577We are getting the front end of the Hurricane Matthew rainfall here in New York City. It makes for a relaxing Sunday, especially when I don’t have to leave the house at 7:30 to go to Governors Island. I was out-and-about yesterday running some errands in the city when I came across this window display in the Oxford University Press office on 35th and Madison. A quick perusal shows that OUP has created a small online site dedicated to the NPS’s 100th. Most passersby certainly walk past this with a sense of incongruity, not realizing that there are at least a dozen Park Service sites in and around Greater New York City.

I always found it curious that Woodrow Wilson created the Park Service in August 1916, what with the presidential election in full swing and Europe mired in the death and destruction of the Great War. Just how important he believe the Park system to be is something I suppose we will never truly know. It is a flawed institution in many ways, for reasons mainly outside of its own control, but our national parks are still, as the saying goes, one of our best ideas.

“We’re in the forever business.”

21 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in Gettysburg, Governors Island, Heritage tourism, National Park Service

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IMG_3441Author Brent D. Glass spoke about his new book 50 Great American Places this afternoon in the Commanding Officers Quarters at Governors Island. Author talks are not unusual at Governors Island but there was a particular reason Mr. Glass showed up when he did: this August marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service. President Woodrow Wilson signed the enabling legislation on August 25, 1916. That signing came in the midst of the presidential election and less than a year before American entered the Great War. Not all of the places about which Mr. Glass writes in his tome are under the auspices of the Park Service; some are state or local concerns, or even in the hands of privately-controlled institutions.

IMG_3445Glass is Director Emeritus of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution and categorized the selections into five themes, which included Democracy, Cultural Diversity, and Military. Among the sites included are the Seneca Falls (NY) Convention, the Statue of Liberty, Mesa Verde, Little Rock Central High School, and Gettysburg. That last one had special resonance for Glass; his father had trained under Eisenhower at Gettysburg’s Camp Colt during Word War I. Glass added that though Eisenhower’s job was to train doughboys in tank warfare, so unequipped was the Army that his father did not see an actual tank until he reached France. I’d read this from others’s accounts of those training exercises.

Summer is winding down but there is never a bad time to explore America’s cultural heritage. There is no substitute for going where history was made, and Brent D. Glass provides a valuable guide for doing just that.

Bull Run plus 155 years

21 Thursday Jul 2016

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We were up and out early this morning to attend an event at the Manassas battlefield. When we got there at 7:45 there was only one other person there, a gentleman from Texas who was playing Pokemon Go on his phone sitting on the porch at the Henry Hill house. He and I had a good conversation for about twenty minutes between ourselves while the Hayfoot stayed back at the visitors center. It was so nice being there early before people began showing up to mark the anniversary of the first battle. I could feel he dew scrunching under my feet as I walked along. The rangers and volunteers told me that most of the events are to be held this coming weekend. These images are all from today.

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Baptized by Fire, redux

21 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Civil War centennial, Civil War sesquicentennial, National Park Service

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Incredibly I first posted this five years ago today. I remember being in DC, though not Manassas, that Thursday in 2011. The heat index was in the 120s but they still managed to get a sizable crowd for the 150th anniversary of First Bull Run. We were following it online. The sesquicentennial itself. is already receding into memory.

(Kurz & Allison; Library of Congress)

I am writing this from Washington, DC.  Today marks the 150th anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run, which took place only about thirty miles down the road.  It was not until I began visiting DC regularly a few years ago that I realized just how close to the capital the Civil War occurred.  Fifty years ago today New York State made some history of its own when it donated one hundred and twenty six acres of Virginia countryside to the federal government.

The monument to the Fourteenth Brooklyn was rededicated on July 21, 1961.  Thankfully it today lies within park boundaries.  (photo by William Fleitz, NPS)

In 1905 and 1906 the New State legislature authorized the purchase of six acres of land for the construction of monuments for the 14th Brooklyn (later renamed the 84th New York), the 5th New York (Duryee’s Zouaves), and the 10th New York (National Zouaves).  Each regiment was granted $1,500, which was the standard rate for such projects at the time.  (The monuments for the latter two regiments were in recognition of those units’ actions during Second Bull Run.)  The three monuments were dedicated together on October 20, 1906, with scores of veterans taking the train from New York City and elsewhere in a pounding rain.

Fast forward to the early 1950s, when New York State officials prepared to give the six acres to the Manassas National Battlefield Park.  The deal became complicated, however, when the legislative Committee to Study Historical Sites realized that encroaching development threatened to cut the three monuments off from the rest of the battlefield.  Chairman L. Judson Morhouse advised the state to buy an additional one hundred and twenty acres to ensure that the Empire State’s units would fall within the parkland.  The state agreed and purchased the acreage in 1952.  Later in the decade the New York State Civil War Centennial Commission, Bruce Catton Chairman, proposed to transfer the land to the Park Service during the 100th anniversary of First Manassas in 1961.  Not surprisingly, the NPS was amenable to this and so fifty years today Brigadier General Charles G. Stevenson, Adjutant General of New York, handed over the deed to Manassas superintendent Francis F. Wilshin.

German-born Corporal Ferdinand Zellinsky of the 14th now rests in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.

A Day in the Life…

25 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in Ellis Island, Governors Island, National Park Service, Writing

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IMG_1785At the beginning of the summer I added my chapter from The Wonder of It All into Academic Works with the help of a colleague at work. She recommended to me and others that we post our efforts on social media, etc. And so I figured I would link here to “What a Day with a Park Volunteer Can Do.” Essentially it is the story of how I came to Governors Island 5-6 years back. They asked us not to use names in our submissions. Here though I can say that the volunteer in the title is the great Sami Steigmann. Sami if you are reading this: we will do that interview sometime over the summer.

The Fort Jay eagle

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in Governors Island, National Park Service, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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I am sitting in a coffee shop in Downtown Brooklyn as I type this. It’s clear and bright outside. I was back on Governors Island yesterday. It was good seeing old faces along with some new ones. I can already tell it’s going to be a special summer. We had our orientation, part of which included a special behind-the-scenes look at the restoration of the eagle atop Fort Jay. The sculpture is one of the oldest built-structures in New York City, tracing back to the construction of the fort in the 1790s. Over the centuries that Army and then the Coast Guard did what they could to preserve the sandstone figure; still, because historic preservation falls outside the bounds of their missions, their efforts were helpful but sometimes haphazard. Time, salt air and harbor winds took their toll, and Superstorm Sandy damaged the statue even further. The current renovation work has been progressing with all the accouterments of modern preservation techniques. As it turns out Governors Island National Monument is in the running with nineteen other NPS sites in a competition for funding to further the work. Learn more–and vote–here if you are so inclined. One can vote once a day through July 5.

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A ranger discusses the ins-and-outs of the project.

A ranger discusses the ins-and-outs of the project.

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The sandstone is heavy and is moved into place with hoists. One can the scaffolded eagle in the background.

The sandstone is heavy and is moved into place with hoists. One can see the scaffolded eagle in the background.

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The eagle as seen in a late nineteenth century publication of the Military Service Institution.

The eagle as seen in a late nineteenth century publication of the Military Service Institution. Note that it is called Fort Columbus here, which was the fort’s name for about a century until Elihu Root changed the name back to Fort Jay during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration.

Find your park.

The NPS’s Reconstruction

12 Thursday May 2016

Posted by in National Park Service

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large-271953 Reconstruction_eraWhen I was at the Lee Mansion at Arlington a few weeks ago I picked up a copy of the NPS handbook on the Reconstruction Era. The handbook was published in March and follows the same formula as the NPS offerings about the Civil War, War of 1812, American Revolution and other topics. It contains 12-15 chapters on various topics on the events of 1865-77 from a number of perspectives. What I like so much about these handbooks is that they contain the latest scholarship and interpretation written by leading scholars on the subject at hand. This one has essays by David Blight and Brooks Simpson, among others. Those who followed the Civil War sesquicentennial know that it was quite consciously a do-over of the failed centennial in the 1960s. Professional historians and interpreters have changed our understanding of Reconstruction. One can imagine what Robert E. Lee would have thought about people buying such a title in the gift shop at was once his home. Still the general public has been less quick to catch up to the historians. I suppose it is not all that surprising; the late 1860s and 70s were not an especially heroic time in our history to put it mildly.

Other than Governors Island, the Park Service has few sites that deal directly with WW1. Still I would love to see Eastern National put something together during the centennial. If not the NPS, I guess it would fall to the American Battle Monuments Commission. I think there is enough to put something together, but we shall see. In the meantime make sure to consider this new offering about an era in American history that still shapes our lives in so many ways.

The Wonder of it All

15 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Governors Island, National Park Service, Writing

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NPS100 full cover.inddI have written about this a bit in the past but today is the official release date of The Wonder of it All, the book published by the Yosemite Conservancy for which I contributed a story. My chapter tells the tale of the first time I took the Hayfoot to Governors Island. One of the guidelines was that the stories could not give names. Here, though, I can point out that the guide we had was the one and only Sami Steigmann. Sami was later the person who talked me into transferring as a volunteer to Governors Island.

Don’t forget that 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. It was so much fun to be part of a project marking the NPS anniversary. Though the shift of emphasis is different, I approached Wonder in the spirit of Oh, Ranger!, which was itself influenced by a book written by Horace Albright in the 1920s. It is getting warmer by the day. Wherever you are, make the Park Service part of your spring.

Find Your Park in 2016

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in Civil War sesquicentennial, Governors Island, Great War centennial, National Park Service

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Yellowstone as it was in 1916, the year Woodrow Wilson signed the enabling legislation for the National Park Service. Grant had established Yellowstone itself as a national park thirty-four years earlier.

Yellowstone as it was in 1916, the year Woodrow Wilson signed the enabling legislation creating the National Park Service. President Grant had established Yellowstone itself as a national park forty-four years earlier.

With 2015 now in the books we can officially declare an end to the Civil War sesquicentennial. Some pundits claimed it to be underwhelming, but I believe our understanding of the events of 1861-65 is clearer now than it was five years ago. Visitation was up at the Civil War sites, and various bloggers did an outstanding job of telling the story. Scores of others contributed as well. That said, it is a cruel irony that it took the terrible events in Charleston this past June to bring the Civil War’s legacy into most of America’s homes. When they write the history of the Civil War sesquicentennial forty-five short years from now during the bicentennial, Charleston will be a big part of the narrative.

2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the creation of the National Park Service. National parks themselves date back to the Ulysses S. Grant Administration, and were further aided during Theodore Roosevelt’s tenure when he signed the Antiquities Act in 1906. Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation creating the Park Service itself a decade later. There are few NPS sites relating to WW1 in the United States; most of that work is carried out by the American Battle Monuments Commission overseas. Governors Island here in New York is about the closest one gets to an NPS site relating to WW1. (It is so much else besides that too of course.) I don’t have many details to give away just yet, but this coming summer on Saturday July 23 the National Park Service and the World War One Centennial Commission will be co-sponsoring a day-long event commemorating the First World War. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this and will share more detail as they come. This is the first I am mentioning of it publicly.

The National Park Service theme through December 31st is Find Your Park. Wherever you are, I encourage you to visit the various natural and historic wonders that are waiting to be discovered. And if you live in the New York area, please mark your calendar for July 23 so you can make it out to Governors Island.

(image/Internet Archive book images, via Wikimedia Commons; originally published in Campbell’s new revised third edition Complete Guide and Descriptive Book of the Yellowstone Park)

The smell of victory in the evening

06 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in National Park Service, Writing

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IMG_2766I got home tonight and there in the vestibule was the author’s copy of The Wonder of It All sent to me by editors at the Yosemite Conservancy. There is nothing quite like seeing your name in print. The official release date is March 15, 2016, but the Conservancy has it exclusively until then. I did not know that Shelton Johnson had written something for the collection. Longtime readers may recall that I interviewed Ranger Johnson two years ago. It’s kinda cool to now be associated with him on a project such as this one for the 100th anniversary of the Park Service. I’m looking forward to reading his and the others’ contributions.