Hey everybody, the Hayfoot and and I took some time off from the Civil War and ventured two hours north of the city to Hyde Park.

The Park Service has a great amenity called the Roosevelt Ride.  Once a day during the season this bus picks up visitors at the Poughkeepsie train station, takes them to the various Park sites in the area, and returns them in the early evening for the train back to Grand Central.

This is Top Cottage, Roosevelt’s retreat on the grounds of the estate.  I think mainly he was retreating from his mother Sara.

Yes, you were allowed to sit on the furniture.  This was FDR’s spot on the sofa, which is not the original.

This is difficult to make out but it describes the visit of Queen Elizabeth and King George VI to Hyde Park.  Indeed, this was the royal figure depicted in The King’s Speech.  The Roosevelt Administration tactfully ensured that the king would not have to address a joint session of Congress.  The couple were on a goodwill tour of North America and traveled to Hyde Park to spend some informal time getting to know the the Roosevelts.  The king and queen visited Franklin and Eleanor in June 1939, less than three months before war broke out in Europe, and were the first British monarchs ever to visit the United States.  That they would go so far out of their way says something about the shifting balance of power in the Anglo-American alliance.

FDR’s personal effects

The Fala rug is a nice touch

We also went to the nearby Vanderbilt Mansion, the inside of which was ghastly even by Gilded Age standards.

It does offer spectacular views of the Hudson, though.

Here are some National Park rangers you don’t see every day.  In the distance we saw these goats and walked down to investigate.  As it turns out the Park uses goats to control the grass on the treacherous slopes.

The sign explained the project.  If you look closely you will see that they are doing the same thing underneath the Verrazano-Narrows bridge at Ft. Wadsworth, something I did not know when we visited this past March.  The goats are only out during the grass growing season, which explains why we did not see them in the winter.  Leave it to the Park Service to come up with something like this.

This is just one of the many books Eleanor Roosevelt wrote.  I was especially struck by this one, having written my masters thesis on relations between the United States and India during the Cold War.  In addition to her books, Mrs. Roosevelt published thousands of “My Day” columns over the decades.

Summer 2011: Taking our show on the road

When I return from a trip to a Civil War battlefield I often get asked the question above.  Contrary to what many believe, the National Park Service does not permit the reenacting of Civil War battles on Park property.  The Park Service does allow Living History programming, such as demonstrations of artillery and musketry (with blanks) and camp life.  To clear any confusion, the NPS has created this video.

(Antietam Creek June 2011)

One of the ironies of visiting our Civil War battlefields is that these places, the scenes of some of the most terrible moments in our nation’s history, are also some of the most beautiful.

(Gettysburg June 2011)

The oppressive heat, venomous serpents and boot-snatching muck that made the Great Dismal Swamp a barrier to European settlement ever since colonial times also made it a haven for thousands of people escaping slavery before the Civil War.

This fall, a permanent exhibition will open to provide some detail about those lives, part of an expanding effort by the National Park Service and other agencies to recast the experience of pre-war slaves. Scholars are using sites like the Great Dismal Swamp, straddling the line between North Carolina and Virginia, to highlight a little-known side of history, in which the freedom trail for slaves didn’t always run to the north.

Hey everybody, we got back from Gettysburg and Antietam on Friday.  We had a great time hiking and taking in a number of tours.  The cottage we rented was beautiful.  The only “problem” was that it was so serene and peaceful we didn’t want to leave in the mornings.  Now I am catching up on everything I missed here at home.

I don’t see the visitor centers at our National Parks going anywhere anytime soon, but I can imagine fewer VCs being constructed and existing ones having shorter hours in the decades to come.  Increasingly, visitors are finding information (including ticket information) online before even setting out for their destination.  I myself spent the past few days searching Park websites to find the logistical details for our upcoming trip to Pennsylvania and Maryland, including the full complement of interpretive programming at Gettysburg for the summer season.  Social media have already changed the way the Park Service interacts with the public.  This trend will certainly continue and probably accelerate.

Digital technology increases the options of the consumer and puts the power in the hands of the customer, which are always good things.  My experience as a volunteer in the Interpretation Division at Ellis Island has taught me, however, that people still want that human interaction.  According to Laura Petersen:

. . . people still seek out rangers at parks they do not regularly visit. After pre-trip planning information was posted online for Yellowstone National Park, rangers expected a drop in visitor center activity, said Diane Chalfant, the agency’s deputy associate director of interpretation and education. “But what actually happened is the visitors came in more informed and curious because they had more in-depth questions to ask,” said Chalfant, who was Yellowstone’s chief of interpretation for 10 years.

The role of ranger is changing from providing basic facts and directions to discussing more detailed elements of the park. It means they have to know their subject matter in and out, Chalfant said.

Whatever does happen, it is safe to say that the NPS will look different even five short years from now when it celebrates its centennial.