The George Wright Forum

The George Wright Forum

The GWS Journal of Parks, Protected Areas & Cultural Sites

volume 34 number 3 • 2017

Society News, Notes & Mail • 243

Announcing the Richard West Sellars Fund for the Forum

Jennifer Palmer • 245

Letter from Woodstock

Values We Hold Dear

Rolf Diamant • 247

Civic Engagement, Shared Authority, and Intellectual Courage

Rebecca Conard and John H. Sprinkle, Jr., guest editors

Dedication•252 Planned Obsolescence: Maintenance of the National Park Service’s History Infrastructure

John H. Sprinkle, Jr. • 254

Shining Light on Civil War Battleﬁeld Preservation and Interpretation: From the “Dark Ages” to the Present at Stones River National Battleﬁeld

Angela Sirna • 261

Farming in the Sweet Spot: Integrating Interpretation, Preservation, and Food Production at National Parks

Cathy Stanton • 275

The Changing Cape: Using History to Engage Coastal Residents in Community Conversations about Climate Change

David Glassberg • 285

Interpreting the Contributions of Chinese Immigrants in Yosemite National Park’s History

Yenyen F. Chan • 299

Nānā I Ke Kumu (Look to the Source)

M. Melia Lane-Kamahele • 308

A Perilous View

Shelton Johnson • 315

(continued)

Civic Engagement, Shared Authority, and Intellectual Courage (cont’d)

Some Challenges of Preserving and Exhibiting the African American Experience: Reﬂections on Working with the National Park Service and the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site

Pero Gaglo Dagbovie • 323

Exploring American Places with the Discovery Journal: A Guide to Co-Creating Meaningful Interpretation

Katie Crawford-Lackey and Barbara Little • 335

Indigenous Cultural Landscapes: A 21st-Century Landscape-scale Conservation and Stewardship Framework

Deanna Beacham, Suzanne Copping, John Reynolds, and Carolyn Black • 343

A Framework for Understanding Off-trail Trampling Impacts in Mountain Environments

Ross Martin and David R. Butler • 354

Seeking Park-based Science Information: Interpreters at the Gate

Martha Merson, Cynthia Char, Nickolay Hristov, and Louise Allen • 368

Status and Extent of Aquatic Protected Areas in the Great Lakes

Scott R. Parker, Nicholas E. Mandrak, Jeff D. Truscott, Patrick L. Lawrence, Dan Kraus, Graham Bryan, and Mike Molnar • 381

The National Park Service LGBTQ Heritage Initiative: One Year Out

Megan E. Springate • 394

On the cover: Virginia State Capitol, Richmond, Virginia. The Virginia State Capitol (1785) was designated as a National Historic Landmark (NHL) as part of the commemoration of the centennial of the American Civil War. From 1960 until 2017 the ofﬁcial Interior Department name of this property was “Confederate Capitol,” a moniker that referenced its use as a seat of government from 1861–1865 rather than its association with either the oldest legislative body in the United States or its architectural qualities as designed by Thomas Jefferson. At the request of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell changed the name in early 2017 as part of an effort to update the NHL documentation of the property to recognize the panorama of its historic signiﬁcance. Since the 1960s only about 3% of all National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmark nominations have ever been updated for content since their initial listing. Historic American Buildings Survey photo.

242 • The George Wright Forum • vol. 34 no. 3 (2017)

Society News, Notes & Mail

Three new members join GWS Board

Three new members are joining the George Wright Society Board beginning January 1, 2018: Jerry Emory, Bill Walker, and Mike Walton, proﬁled below. They take over from Nathalie Gagnon, David Graber, and Lynn Wilson. The GWS Board ofﬁcers for 2018 are Jerry Mitchell, president; Dave Reynolds, vice president; Armando Quintero, treasurer; and Jennifer Thomsen, secretary.

Jerry Emory

Following work with several conservation organizations based out of both Latin America and the Western US in the 1980s, Jerry became a professional writer and communications consultant. He is the author of ﬁve books and numerous magazine articles. He worked as a consultant with The Nature Conservancy of California, the Packard Foundation’s Conservation Program, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, where he was a senior communications ofﬁcer. Mostly recently Jerry was the vice president for communications, programs and government affairs at the California State Parks Foundation, where he worked the past 10 years. He has served on the boards of the George Wright Society and the Rose Foundation’s Northern California Environmental Grassroots Fund. A graduate of Stanford University and University of California–Berkeley, he lives with his family in Mill Valley, California.

Bill Walker

Bill is the cultural resources program manager for Three Rivers Park District, a 27,000-acre “Special Park District” serving the Twin Cities metropolitan region (Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota). In this role, he manages all aspects of cultural resources monitoring, preservation and legal compliance, and oversees the operation of the Park District’s public historic sites.
Bill began his career in parks and protected areas with the National Park Service, serving as an interpretive park ranger at Salem Maritime National Historic Site (Salem, MA), Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site (Saugus, MA), and Virgin Islands National Park (St. John, USVI). From this early experience, Bill strongly believes that effective interpretive programming is one of the most powerful preservation tools available to resource managers, as it connects visitors with the meaning behind a park’s protected status, and empowers them toward a personal stewardship ethic.
Bill holds a BA in History and Museum Studies from Gordon College (Wenham, MA) and a Masters of Education from the University of Minnesota. He is a New Yorker by birth, a New Englander by association, and a Minnesotan by marriage.

Mike Walton

Mike grew up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at a time when parents directed children to “go outside and play.” This resulted in unsupervised mounted (bicycle) and pioneer (foot) ex-

The George Wright Forum • vol. 34 no. 3 (2017) • 243

ploration of parks, ravines, rivers, ponds, paths, and tracks across the city. Getting dirty and bloody in nature resulted in a life-long passion about wilderness and what parks and institutions do to protect it. Presently, as the senior manager for the Regional Parks system with the Capital Regional District, on Vancouver Island in Victoria, British Columbia, Mike oversees the protection and use of 13,000 hectares (32,124 acres) of parklands and regional trails that welcome 7 million visits annually.
Previously, Mike worked with Parks Canada for 23 years including as ﬁeld unit superintendent, Northern Ontario; resource conservation manager, Yukon Field Unit; Aboriginal relations and federal relations business unit leader with Alberta-Paciﬁc Forest Industries (on secondment from Parks Canada); director, parks liaison, Secretary of State (Parks); superintendent, Georgian Bay Islands National Park; and manager, visitor services, Pukaskwa National Park. Mike was also an assistant park superintendent, head of interpretation, and park warden with the Ontario Provincial Park System.
Mike recently completed his PhD with the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
His PhD research investigated the governance of protected areas, particularly sharing power and decision-making. Dr. Walton also holds a M.Sc. in Parks and Recreation Resources Management from Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania; an Honours Degree in Outdoor Recreation from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario; and a Diploma in Economic Development from the University of Waterloo, Ontario. Mike lives in Victoria, B.C., with his wonderful and patient partner of 37 years, Sylvie. They have three grown children and two grandchildren. Mike now directs his grandchildren to “go play outside” with him.

Announcing the Richard West Sellars Fund for the Forum

Jennifer Palmer

Dear GWS members and friends, As many of you know, our community recently lost one of our most beloved and devoted friends of parks, protected areas, and cultural sites. Richard West Sellars dedicated 35+ years of his life to the National Park Service and continued to expand his leadership through many esteemed publications, most notably his 1997 landmark book, Preserving Nature in the Na- tional Parks: A History. His ongoing contributions and service truly shined a light on the preservation of historic sites and parks management and he will be dearly missed by all of us.
In honor of his legacy, the Richard West Sellars Fund for the Forum has been established to recognize the long association between Dick Sellars and the George Wright Society. The fund celebrates his personal interest in The George Wright Forum as a reader and a regular contributing author. As a life member of the George Wright Society, Dick served as our president for two years, and faithfully participated in many GWS conferences. In 2011, he was awarded the prestigious George Melendez Wright Award for Excellence.
As our Society goes through some necessary transitions in the coming year, this fund will ensure that The George Wright Forum continues to maintain its standard of excellence with professional editorial direction, and that through 2018 it will continue to be published in both a hard-copy as well as an electronic format for the beneﬁt of all Society members. It is our expectation that the Richard West Sellars Fund for the Forum will also ensure a smooth transition to an even better, redesigned George Wright Forum in the future.
The Richard West Sellars Fund for the Forum will be used to strengthen the programs of the George Wright Society and speciﬁcally enable The George Wright Forum to continue as the preeminent interdisciplinary park and protected areas journal. The George Wright Forum stands alone as a journal that addresses natural and cultural heritage issues, social science, and the state of current research and stewardship. The Forum is now more essential than ever to support a network of park and protected areas professionals and contribute to the critical work of conservation scholarship.

The George Wright Forum, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 245–246 (2017).
© 2017 George Wright Society. All rights reserved.
(No copyright is claimed for previously published material reprinted herein.) ISSN 0732-4715. Please direct all permissions requests to [email protected].

We are pleased to report that we are launching the Richard West Sellars Fund for the
Forum with an anonymous lead challenge gift of $10,000. We can think of no better tribute to his lifelong commitment to scholarship and park professionalism.
Together let’s make a tangible contribution in honor of this remarkable legacy and the future of the George Wright Society! To make a donation to the fund or to the GWS in general, please visit https://ww w .georgewrightsociet y .org/donate.

Kind regards,

Jennifer Palmer, Executive Director George Wright Society

Values We Hold Dear

Last August, Greg Moore, president and chief executive officer of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, posted on the organization’s homepage its perspective on the National Park Service (NPS) decision to approve a First Amendment permit for the proposed Patriot Prayer event at Crissy Field in Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
As the nonprofit partner of Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Presidio
Trust, the conservancy made the restoration of Crissy Field an early signature project. Moore’s thoughtful statement actually looks beyond the issue of the permit, and, in a much broader context, addresses not only the conservancy’s own visions and values, but also speaks to the motivations and expectations of all people who answer the call of park stewardship, public service, and environmental humanism. The statement, at its heart, is a thoughtful reaffirmation of why we create and work to sustain national parks and other protected areas and why we must not retreat on progress that has been made in our national parks on behalf of conservation, equity, and inclusion.
I will not go into the full story of the ultimately aborted August 26th Crissy Field event
(canceled by its organizers at the eleventh hour), but suffice it to say that other events staged by the small alt-right Patriot Prayer group, which describes itself as fighting big government, have been a magnet for white nationalists of various affiliations. San Francisco officials feared that the event, billed as a “Freedom Rally,” would trigger violent confrontations in the park. Given the broad diversity of park users at Crissy Field, Patriot Prayer’s selection of this rally venue was perceived as deliberately provocative. In the eyes of many people, including a number of young people of color at the conservancy’s Crissy Field Center, the proposed event was profoundly disturbing and even personally threatening coming so soon after the violence at Charlottesville.

The George Wright Forum, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 247–251 (2017).
© 2017 George Wright Society. All rights reserved.
(No copyright is claimed for previously published material reprinted herein.) ISSN 0732-4715. Please direct all permissions requests to [email protected].

Every national park has at least one designated area where free speech and freedom of assembly rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution are accommodated through a no-cost permit system. While NPS regulates aspects of the activity to protect park resources, it never regulates the content of the message. As long as technical requirements are met, no group that wants to lawfully assemble to exercise First Amendment rights can be denied a permit. NPS eventually issued a First Amendment permit for the rally with a comprehensive list of conditions attached.
In the days leading up to the event, concurrent scheduled public programs were canceled, facilities and stores planned to close, and law enforcement was mobilized. It was in this context that the conservancy released the following statement seeking to reassure its staff and volunteers, members, donors, agency partners, and the general public just where the organization stood, and to refocus attention on the larger purposes of its work. In this, my 18th Letter from Woodstock, I have included most of the statement as it appeared on August 23.

The Parks Conservancy Perspective on the Decision of the National Park Service to Approve a First Amendment Permit for the Patriot Prayer Event on Crissy Field on August 26, 2017

Acknowledging a Decision

Today, the National Park Service (NPS) announced its decision to go forward with a First Amendment permit for an event on Crissy Field. The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is a nonproﬁt partner to the parks and does not have jurisdiction over permits issued for events and activities in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

We acknowledge the complex factors affecting this decision. We appreciate the priority that the NPS gave to public safety in its consideration. And we reﬂect upon our First Amendment rights to free speech and the NPS obligation to follow federal law and policy regarding this fundamental American principle.

Afﬁrming the Parks Conservancy’s Vision and Values

Given recent national events, this decision requires an even deeper reﬂection. The Parks Conservancy ﬁrmly believes that our national parks celebrate diversity—as places of welcome and enjoyment for people of every age, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, religion, or gender identity. That principle is fundamental to our democracy and the unique American invention of a National Park System. Our national parks are places of inclusion.

Through the ongoing work of the Conservancy’s Crissy Field Center and many other programs with a multitude of community partners, the Conservancy continues to advance this vision of inclusion. For almost 20 years, the Conservancy has carried these principles forward by encouraging people of all backgrounds to

enjoy Crissy Field and offering special programs to reach a broader cross-section of our community. We believe our public lands—like the nation itself—are made stronger by diversity.

Rejecting Hate and Intolerance

Recently, events in and around a park in Charlottesville, Virginia demonstrated how our public places can be invaded. Emancipation Park was overtaken by those who promote intolerance and exclusion. The Conservancy stands directly against all forms of hatred, bigotry, or oppression as anathema to our American ideals, as well as to the values of our national parks as places of welcome and inclusion. We stand against movements that promote and foster this reprehensible thinking, including white supremacy, white nationalism, and neo-Nazism—and any other spokesperson or movement spreading intolerance or hatred.

Recalling Crissy Field as Common Ground

The potential for hatred and intolerance being promoted by groups or individuals on Crissy Field is especially poignant to us because, in 1999, the Conservancy led the effort to restore Crissy Field from an old military airfield to a national park for all. Our values embraced—and continue to embrace—diversity and inclusion. Today, Crissy Field is a beloved national park that recognizes and shares the Presidio’s complex history. It is where native peoples hunted and fished. It has seen immigrants pass through the Golden Gate and into San Francisco Bay. It was an airfield that saw many aviation milestones during the early 20th century. And it was home to a school that trained Japanese Americans as linguists during World War II—even as orders to incarcerate their families were carried out in the Presidio. Crissy Field is a place replete with meaning, a space for reflection and recreation, and a destination park that welcomes over a million visitors every year.

Advancing Our Vision

With the recent events in Charlottesville and the upcoming event on Crissy Field this Saturday, the Conservancy recommits itself to our vision of diversity and inclusion at Crissy Field and throughout the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. There is still much work ahead of us—and work that we proudly and humbly advance. Not everyone has easy access to our parks or the comfort that they are welcome. Our parks often lack the facilities and programs that support and serve a broad cross-section of our community. And our parks aren’t equally enjoyed by all members of our community.

We embrace the opportunity to serve more kids, reach more people, and make the beneﬁts of our national parks available to a wider spectrum of communities—with a focus on kids and families who need our parks the most, due to lack of access to nature and the outdoors.

Reﬂecting Upon and Learning from Our National Parks

Even while there is work to do, we can look to our National Park System as a source of introspection and reflection. Many national park sites and national monuments commemorate important progress in human rights, and also reflect upon times of intolerance, bigotry, and oppression. The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, Stonewall National Monument, César E. Chávez National Monument, Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, the Statue of Liberty National Monument, and other national park sites speak to civil rights, celebrate American immigrants, and honor progress in social justice. Other places such as the Japanese American Internment Camp at Manzanar National Historic Site, the Indian Memorial at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, Angel Island Immigration Station National Historic Landmark, and many other sites challenge us to reflect upon and remember the tragedies of intolerance and oppression—and its misguided consequences.

Asking You to Join Us

Only through reﬂection and action can we advance our democratic ideals as represented in our national parks. The Parks Conservancy asks our community of friends, supporters, and partners to continue to join us on the long and important journey of “Parks For All Forever.”

Thanking Our Partners, Volunteers, Supporters, and Community

The Conservancy extends our profound gratitude to our public agency partners, to our thousands of dedicated volunteers, to our scores of community partners, to our members and donors, and to the youth we serve who give us hope for the future. And that future is fundamental to the founding principle of our National Park System—to preserve these timeless places for the “enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.”