Walcher: If states don’t want park sites, who does?

Funny how many federal officials think only federal officials can protect important places. As if nobody else could possible manage a park, monument, recreation area, trail, or even a historic home.

Carter Woodson (1875–1950) was an important historian and writer, founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. His home in Washington, D.C., was purchased by the National Park Service in 2005 as a National Historic Site, and restoration began. Twelve years later in 2017, the home was opened for a day to celebrate “phase 1” of the renovation, and for three days during National Park Week. About 200 people visited before the home was again closed for the ongoing renovation, which the Park Service said it expected to complete for reopening in the fall of 2023. It is still unfinished and closed to the public, 20 years after the government purchased it.

Bags of money have been spent, but has federal ownership proven to be the best way to preserve and share this historic site? If federal ownership is the only sensible approach, how would one explain the successful preservation and educational programs at sites like Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, the Hermitage, the Woodrow Wilson House, and the Reagan Ranch? FDR’s Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, is operated by the state, as are the homes of seven other presidents. One is operated by a city, two by universities, one by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and 11 by private foundations. Hundreds of important historic sites are privately operated, such as the homes of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller, and there are nearly six times more state parks (2,474) than national parks (433).