15 July 2008
When a Park Is Not a Park
A park, by the common English definition, is an environment with woodlands, flowers, and winding paths where one goes for recreation. But some sites maintained by the National Park Service don’t fit this description at all. Browse through the index of the 391 “units” in the NPS system, and you’ll find battlefields, military parks, historic sites, memorials, monuments, rivers, seashores, and trails. And parks, too.
More than 130 years have passed since the designation in 1872 of the first national park in the United States. In fact, that first park -- Yellowstone -- had entered middle age by the time the National Park Service was created in 1916 to be the agency responsible for overseeing these treasured national places. Over the decades, ideas on the sites that merit federal protections have varied and evolved.
Whether they are officially known as monuments, parks, historic sites, or one of the other 20 park categories, the places chosen by the generations for special protections and preservation reveal a lot about what the United States values and the story it wants to save for the future.
National Parks contain a variety of resources and encompass large land or water areas to help provide adequate protection of these natural features. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the southeastern United States and the Grand Canyon in the Southwest are two of the most popular sites in this category.
National Monuments preserve at least one nationally significant resource. Arizona’s Canyon de Chelly (pronounced shay) and Casa Grande Ruins are both remnants of dwellings of ancient peoples and are designated national monuments. The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, given to the United States by the French in honor of America’s centennial in 1876, is also designated a national monument.
National Historic Parks and Sites mark places where the fate of the nation unfolded for better or worse, and may also include military parks and battlefields. Independence National Historical Park includes structures and sites in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where rebellious American colonists drew up their plans to declare independence from the British Crown. The Manzanar National Historic Site in eastern California protects and interprets the site where Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. This group also includes the Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) National Military Park, the scene of a significant battle in the U.S. Civil War in 1863.
National Memorials are primarily commemorative sites that do not necessarily have a direct geographic link to their subject. Memorials in Washington, D.C. pay tribute to World War II and to the Korean and Vietnam wars. The memorial designation is also frequently given to sites honoring former presidents, be they statues that honor leaders of the past or the actual residences of those individuals.
National parkways, seashores, lakeshores, rivers, river ways, scenic trails, and recreation areas are some of the other special designations for the almost 400 sites under National Park Service jurisdiction.
One national park “unit” in a category all its own is the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. Located in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., nearly 100 performances are presented on the center’s stages each summer, featuring artists from a range of genres. In the summer of 2008, performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, a Gilbert and Sullivan operatic company, country singer Trisha Yearwood, and jazz guitarist George Benson are on the schedule.
