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Historic News 2008

Antietam Illumination Named Top 100 Event
December 2008

At 6 p.m. on December 6, over 20,000 candles will fill the National Battlefied at Antietam in Sharpsburg, Maryland. Lines of cars will file through the field, witnessing the ground of the battle that allowed President Abraham Lincoln to announce his Emancipation Proclamation. The event was recently named one of the Top 100 events of 2008 by travel industry experts. Antietam National Military Park remains one of the most intact Civil War battlefields in the nation and is well worth a visit, whether in spring, summer, fall, or winter.

Museum of National History Reopens on the National Mall
November 2008
With a stellar cast of dignitaries and people anxious to see the refurbished Smithsonian gem, the Museum of American History opened November 21 on the Capitol National Mall. From Colin Powell reading from an original copy of the Gettysburg Address to visitors walking past Dorothy's ruby red slippers, and the new exhibit of Fort McHenry's original Star-Spangled Banner, the popular museum is now ready to welcome visitors on their visits to Washington, D.C. again.

Memorial Hall, Philadelphia
October 2008
While now filled with children, instead of dignitaries from all nations of the world, the Art Museum, Memorial Hall, from the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition is now open to visitors again as of October 18, and in grand fashion. As the new home to the Please Touch Museum, this Fairmount Park structure includes exhibits for children, a large model of the old world's fair grounds where it sits, plenty of parking, and a whole lot of history. Outside its doors in 1876 stood a world exposition that shocked Europe and the rest of the world with American ingenuity, from Alexander Graham Bell's telephone (find the plaque in the park where it was exhibited, small and obscure across from Memorial Hall), Edison's phonograph, Otis' elevator, Colt's pistol, McCormick's reaper, and the Corliss Engine. No event in the history of the United States was more important to our development as a premier nation, yet largely unknown and recognized today. But now we have an ode to that event, albeit within a fun and engaging museum for kids. Take a look the next time you stop by Philadelphia for more well known history.

Fort Monroe Reuse Plan
September 2008
Fort Monroe, located in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, is currently under discussion on just what will happen to the site after the Army decommissions the area and hands it back to the state in three years. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has assured that part of the plan now includes using the site, home to history from the days of Captain John Smith to the issue of slavery and the Civil War to its more recent military past, will be used as a historic site. Whether it will become part of the National Park Service and exactly how the 570 acre site will be partitioned has not yet been decided.

The New Gettysburg
August 2008
The new pattern for visitor visitation at Gettysburg National Military Park is now four months old with the hub at the new Visitor Center on Baltimore Pike. The opening of the Cyclorama is still to come, on September 26, and the Wills House not yet completed, but visitation to Gettysburg, for the most part, now has taken shape. The visitor center has been a big success. Gettysburg visits are over 10% higher than in 2007. However, some problems do exist. Downtown shopowners along Steinwehr Avenue, near the former center, complain about lost revenue, partly due to the economy in general, but also the move of the visitor center. It is still to be seen whether the new downtown to visitor center trolley will be able to assist in mitigating that fact. There is so much to do at the new visitor center, there is some fear that it is drawing people from the field itself, this despite a concerted effort by park staff to push people toward the variety of free Ranger Walks, for fee Licensed Battlefield Guides or Bus Tours, or the self-guided driving tour.

Washington's National Mall Planning for the Future
July 2008
Planning for the future of the National Mall and what it will look like is currently underway. The plan, which is focusing on the next fifty years, is currently debating whether additional monuments and memorials should be built (beyond those already on the table, such as the Martin Luther King Memorial), whether additional services, parking, or shuttle services beyond the Tourmobile, should be added. To take a look at some of the discussion, go to National Mall.

Bentonville Preservation Moves Forward
June 2008
A fundraising campaign to save 173 more acres of the Bentonville, North Carolina battlefield has begun. More than 1,100 acres have already been preserved at the Civil War site known as the last stand in the Carolinas where the Confederate army took a final loss to General Sherman during three days in March of 1865, just one short month before the end of the war. The Civil War Preservation Trust is looking for donations to save this land, which would provide additional acreage to Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site.    

Oldest World's Fair Building in USA Reborn
May 2008
The Art Museum building from the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition is undergoing extensive renovation for its new use, home to the Please Touch Museum starting this fall.  This building has been underutilized and in disrepair over the past thirty years and will now be home to not only the Please Touch exhibits, expanded to three times its current size, but exhibits on the Centennial exhibition itself, including a huge model of the event.  The 1876 Centennial is perhaps the most important event in American History that is unknown to most today.  It brought to the world inventions such as the phonograph, telephone, elevator, reaper, and proved to the world that the USA was now equal or superior to the other nations of the world.

America's Heritage For Sale
May 2008    
The National Parks Conservation Association is urging Federal officials to use the dedicated funds of the Land and Water Conservation Funds to buy the remaining private lands still within the borders of the 391 units of the National Park System.  The Land and Water funds have been withheld, over the last number of years, for general funds purposes, instead of the purpose stated by Congress when the fund was passed in 1964 to conserve lands.  Funded primarily from oil and gas leases, which bring in $900 million per year, only $44 million of that number was used for conservation in 2008.  There are now 1.8 million acres of park inholding to be bought, with the goal of eliminating that backlog by 2016.  For more information and to read the report, America's Heritage for Sale, go to http://www.npca.org.

New Gettysburg Visitor Center Opens
April 2008
A new era began at Gettysburg National Military Park with the opening of the $103 million new visitor center on April 14. The new structure houses exhibits, films, and beginning in September, the restored Cyclorama painting. For more info, go to ABH-Gettysburg, and to read the America's Best History review of the new museum.    

Civil War History Under Siege
March 2008
The Civil War Preservation Trust and Trace Adkins announced on March 12, the Top Ten list of endangered battlefields in their History Under Siege report for 2008. The list includes some of the most well-known history locations in the nation to those lesser known jewels, ranging from Pennsylvania to Florida. This year's list is comprised of the Maryland battlefields of Antietam and Monocacy; the Virginia sites of Cedar Creek and Cold Harbor; Hunterstown, Pennsylvania, site of the North Cavalry field of Gettysburg; Natural Bridge, Florida; Perryville, Kentucky; Prairie Grove, Arkansas; Savannah, Georgia, and Spring Hill, Tennessee.

For more information, see the press release and History under Seige Report at CWPT.

Smoky Mountain Road to Nowhere
March 2008
A ten year fight to retain one of the last roadless areas on the East Coast has been settled between the National Park Service and Swain Country. The thirty mile project through the Smoky Mountains National Park has reached a conclusion on the Shore Road controversy with the settlement.