Category Archives: National Park Service

Sunday morning coffee

01 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Ellis Island, National Park Service

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original Ellis Island graffiti

Hey everybody, it is Sunday morning. We are relaxing with our coffee and Ravi Shankar on the record player.

Last week when a good friend of ours was visiting from San Antonio the two of us visited Ellis Island. I made certain to point out the original graffiti written by the immigrants all those decades ago. Waiting in long lines, stressed individuals left a record of themselves on the walls of the immigration depot. During the renovation in the 1980s these marking were discovered and some, now behind plexiglass, were left for posterity. It is my favorite part of the museum. During a recent renovation of Constitution Hall in Topeka workers discovered graffiti dating back to the days of Bleeding Kansas in 1855. I am always captivated by these tangible remnants left by those who came before us. They are reminders that those who came before us were real people, not just stories in a book.

Enjoy your Sunday.

(image/National Park Service)

Teaching Ellis, virtually

15 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in Ellis Island, National Park Service

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Hey everybody, a friend of mine is in town and I am playing tour guide. Saturday we are going to Ellis Island. I have not been there since the reopening of the renovated gallery spaces last year. My friend is excited because her grandparents came to America through Ellis at the turn of the last century, from Russia. The woman who would eventually become her grandmother made the passage by herself when she was all of sixteen. Soon thereafter she met the man who would become her husband, and they built a life for themselves. Tomorrow we are taking the Long Island Railroad to visit the cemetery where they now rest. I never tire of hearing stories of the brave individuals, each of the twelve million with his or her own story, who passed through the Golden Door.

Next week I will post with a review of the new Ellis Island exhibits.

Speaking of Ellis, if you are reading this and are a teacher be aware that the National Park Service is collaborating with Scholastic for a live webcast on Thursday 29 March at 1:00 Eastern Time. The program is free and will run approximately 35 minutes. Register here.

A new Arlington House

28 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by in National Park Service, Washington, D.C.

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Union troops pose before Lee Mansion, June 1864

Regular readers of The Strawfoot may remember when I wrote last March about our trip Arlington House and Cemetery. It was my first visit to the site, and as you can imagine it was a moving experience. The Lee Mansion is undergoing extensive renovations and there wasn’t a whole lot to see on the day we were there. Much of the construction entails such glamorous details as new duct work and ventilation. Another aspect of the project, however, is focusing on updating the interpretive experience of the plantation. Visitors are now getting a more nuanced understanding of the house, the grounds, and the people who lived, worked, and died there. The story of Arlington House is a fascinating one and is something we are only just now beginning to understand in its entirety. The Park Service is currently collaborating with Arlington National Cemetery (which is run by the U.S. Army) to offer a number of unique programs at Arlington. Here is a brief clip from one.

I haven’t been back to Arlington since that visit almost a year ago, but I imagine things are progressing. I am looking forward to getting back when construction is complete.

(image/National Archives)

Where soldiers left their mark

25 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by in Ellis Island, Museums, National Park Service

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Andrew Johnson home, Greenville, Tennessee

When your humble writer was a volunteer at Ellis Island his favorite part of the museum was the graffiti written by immigrants waiting to be processed. In the tense, hurry-up-and-wait atmosphere of the immigration station people standing in line often sketched portraits of themselves, scribbled little vignettes of doggerel, or simply noted the time and day of their arrival. Of course, one cannot make out what the person was saying unless one reads Polish, Hungarian, Italian, or whatever language the scribbler happened to write in. Still, they are powerful testimonials that bear witness to the strength and perseverance of those who passed through the Golden Door. When the NPS renovated Ellis in the 1980s, Park officials wisely left some of these off-the-cuff testimonials, now behind plexiglass, for us to contemplate today.

A few years ago my brother and I were at the Museum of the Great War in Perrone where we saw similar works, written by poilus on wooden planks in trenches on the Western Front and now on permanent exhibit. (“Clemenceau the liar” read one in French, translated for me by my brother who has lived in Switzerland for nearly twenty years.)

When Andrew Johnson was serving as Union military governor of Tennessee during the Civil War his home was confiscated by rebel troops for the duration of the war. By the time he returned as former president in 1869, the home was back in family hands. Johnson’s daughter did her best to erase, or more precisely cover, all evidence of Confederate presence. She wallpapered over the graffiti left by Southern troops on walls throughout the house. The Park Service obtained the home in 1956 and soon discovered these remnants during renovations. Ironically, it is when building or rebuilding that we often rediscover the past. Words and drawings are spread liberally across the house. Rangers have even been able to trace the biographies of some of the soldiers who actually signed their names to the walls of Johnson’s home using the NPS’s Soldiers and Sailors System database.

See it for yourself. Park guide Daniel Luther has created this short video.

Pretty cool, huh?

(image/Brian Stansberry)

The Way Home

09 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in National Park Service

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Hey everybody, you never know what is waiting for you when you log on but today something special came through my inbox. Amy Marquis, an associate editor at National Parks Magazine, has just released a short film chronicling a visit to Yosemite by a group of late adult African Americans. For most, perhaps all, it was their visit to a national park. I’ll let the film say the rest.

The African American Guidebook

22 Sunday Jan 2012

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Cane River Creole National Historic Park, Natchitoches, Louisiana

The other day I received from Eastern National the Guidebook to African American History in the National Parks. The monograph was published last summer in conjunction with the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall. The guidebook is not a comprehensive account of African American history as interpreted by the NPS, but it is extensive. Some sites, such as the African Burial Ground in Manhattan, are obvious inclusions; however some entries are less intuitive. Examples include the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (the St. Louis arch), Port Chicago (California) Naval Magazine National Memorial, and Hot Spring (Arkansas) National Park. In addition to site information there are brief essays about the Civil War, Juneteenth, the Buffalo Soldiers, and other aspects of African American heritage. The book is insightful not just for the information it provides on the sites themselves, but for what it says about the Park Service’s efforts to tell a more inclusive version of our nation’s history. With Black History Month coming up there could not be a better time to read this new offering from the NPS.

(image/James W. Rosenthal)

That cure for the post holiday blues

13 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in National Park Service

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Looking for something to do this weekend but spent your allowance in December? The National Park Service has you covered. The NPS is waiving fees today through Monday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The winter is a great time to visit your national parks and monuments; crowds are smaller and the vistas are often greater because the foliage is off the trees. Visiting a park off-season makes me feel like a kid getting an extra day off school. The Park Service waives fees several times throughout the year, but keep in mind that many sites never charge for admission. With over 400 to choose from you cannot go wrong.

The Edison National Historic Site in New Jersey is just one national park waiving fees this weekend.

(image/Jim Henderson)

The Gettysburg cyclorama building

19 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Gettysburg, Museums, National Park Service

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The fate of the Gettysburg Cyclorama Building reached a new phase last week when the Park Service contracted with consultants Vanasse Hangen Brustlin to perform an environmental impact study of the 1962 building. As many of you know the Park Service intended to demolish the Richard Neutra designed structure a few years ago after completion of the new visitors center. Those plans were complicated by advocates who maintained the building should be saved for its historic and architectural significance.

The Park Service essentially has three options, though the final decision maybe be out of the hands of the NPS: keep the building on its current site, move it to another location, raze it. Several months ago the Park Service announced it was seriously exploring option two.

This writer’s preference is either to demolish the structure or find a new home for it. I have made my argument here before and so won’t repeat it. The report will be be available to the public in early 2012.

Atlanta Cyclorama building

The new home for the Gettysburg cyclorama in the visitors center was long overdue and others are taking notice. Today a group from Atlanta travelled to Gettysburg to inspect the new facility and make recommendations for Atlanta’s own cyclorama. That painting is housed in a late nineteenth century structure (above) that cannot offer the protection the delicate artwork needs. Moreover, the building is located in a part of the city that is now off the beaten path for most Atlantans. Attendance has been declining for some time. And what indifference cannot kill off, shrinking budgets might. Finding a longterm solution to the Atlanta cyclorama’s financial and other problems may be easier said than done.

(image/Scott Ehardt)

Unearthing Gotham

06 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in National Park Service, New York City

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A year and a half ago, on the anniversary of the Battle of Brooklyn, my wife, some friends, and I took an organized tour of the battlefield. There is little physical evidence left to tell even the most observant that George Washington once led his troops down Flatbhush Avenue; a cannon here and there, a few plaques, and some witness trees are about it. Still, we walked the sites following the chronology of the battle at least getting s sense of the topography. The talk was conducted by an anthropologist–not historian–from Hunter College. It was one of the best and most informative of the dozens of tours I have been on in my years of visiting historical sites. I had always known of course that much history still lies below our feet waiting to be rediscovered. Laborers, most of them immigrants who had passed through Ellis Island, discovered the centuries-old Tijger when digging the 7th Avenue subway line in 1916. Construction workers unearthed the detritus of everyday Dutch colonial life during the construction of the Word Trade Center in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Last year another ship was found at what is now Ground Zero, this one dating back “only” to the late eighteenth century. Most famous of course is the African Burial Ground, which is now a national monument run by the Park Service. The ABG is commemorating the 20th anniversary of the rediscovery of the 17th century grave. Intellectually I had always known about phenomena like the ones I mentioned above. It is just that it was not until standing there at the entrance to Prospect Park–the very place where we and thousands of other New Yorkers buy their fruits and vegetables every Saturday–hearing this anthropologist talk about the soldiers’ remains likely still present eight to ten feet below us, did it hit home emotionally. It was announced this week that Con Ed workers have unearthed 5,000 new artifacts while digging on Fulton Street this autumn.

Ironically when New York City builds for the future it discovers more of its past.

“I need to wear that uniform”

11 Friday Nov 2011

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Ranger Betty Soskin works at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California.  She is ninety and began her NPS service five years ago.  Ranger Soskin is also a blogger.  The Rosie the Riveter park seems like a fascinating place with an interesting story to tell–the World War II period being much messier than we sometimes believe–and Soskin is uniquely positioned to tell it.  She was born in Detroit in 1921, lived through the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 while living in New Orleans, and moved with her family to California not long thereafter.  She was not a factory worker during the war, but did work in a Jim Crow era union hall during the conflict.

In the mid 1990s military historian John Keegan wrote that the true history of the Second World War has not yet been told.  Thankfully it now is at places like the Rosie/Homefront Historical Park, by people like Ranger Betty Soskin.