My first association upon seeing the heading and photo with this post was Richard Brautigan's first short story collection, 'Trout Fishing in America'. It got him published but sold a quite limited press run until long after he'd published his first novel, 'A Confederate General from Big Sur'.
Here's my general thought: places honoring the dead that fail to make space for the living risk obsolescence because people won't remain invested in their preservation.
Interesting discussion. I agree with the those raising the question, are there fish in the pond? One wonders. I also suspect the act of fishing on the Park offends people more than the pond.
I first heard about this issue at Gettysburg listening to an episode of the "Military Historians are People Too" podcast. An interesting podcast oriented primary at academic historians. My reaction then was let PA DNR move the Beavers to an appropriate habitat away from the Park, drain the pond and and get on with life. The site was preserved to memorialize the battle and stopping changes to the landscape was one of the reasons for preserving these sites (I realize that wasn't strictly true but I think it has become part of the mission). But the more I thought about it the Beavers moved in on their own, I assume. The Park service didn't invite them in. This is part of a natural process of landscape change. Should we interfere?
I still think the answer is yes. There is value in preserving the site as it was in July 1863. That is, in my opinion, the point of the park. However, I suspect Mr. Hennessy is correct, I imagine the Beavers now have a significant constituency. I don't think I would want to be the Cultural Resource Manager charged with relocating them a placating the public's reaction.
How is that for coming down squarely on both sides of an issue.
Forgive me if I bring up Fort Monroe at Point Comfort too often, but to me, the questions here bring vividly to mind what has happened and not happened in the two decades since the Army retired that post on that spit of land where British North American slavery began in 1619 and where--once Union soldiers and sailors in 1861 began making slavery's crumbling possible--U.S. slavery began to crumble.
Readers will recall that the post contains a 63-acre moated stone fortress--Freedom's Fortress, Civil War self-emancipators called it. But not even the most ardent preservationist called for returning the overall 570-acre post to, say, its 1861 state. Much of the overall post is quite historic in its own right, aside from the arc of the moral universe that bent, during a quarter of a millennium, toward emancipation. (Yes, I'm among those who believe that abolition was inevitable.) And certainly nobody wanted to return Point Comfort to its 1619 state, which would mean removing Freedom's Fortress.
Nevertheless, there's a spirit of place to be respected there. The land itself is intrinsically historic--something you can't even say about Gettysburg. Those armies could have clashed elsewhere, but there's only one place on the planet that you can fortify to guard the lower Chesapeake Bay AND the natural channel into Hampton Roads harbor.
The overdevelopment-obsessed politicians won. To sideline and nullify voices calling merely for decent respect for spirit of place, they politically engineered a fake, bizarrely split, quite limited national monument. The ploy has worked great. The public thinks that Fort Monroe and Point Comfort have been spared overdevelopment.
The official vision for Fort Monroe, on the brief "Reimagine Fort Monroe" web page, still says today what was proclaimed in 2005: "To redevelop this historic property into a vibrant, mixed-use community." The page never so much as mentions the national monument or the token presence of the National Park Service.
I'm glad that fishermen can still fish from the pier there, but I'm sorry that spirit of place overall is being scanted. History matters, and spirit of place is a part of healthy national memory.
I don't object to the man fishing, but I do support removing the beavers by live-trapping them and relocating them to another appropriate habitat. I've always appreciated the wildlife at the park---once saw a fox stalking some prey out in the fields in front of the High Water Mark Area, and I may have seen a bald eagle during one of my tours this past June---but I think it is reasonable to discourage a beaver dam that creates a lake where there should only be Plum Run.
Gettysburg should be appreciated, even loved, and to me, part of a family which always enjoyed fishing, this is just one more reason to do that. Amen to your thoughts about wildlife...
I don't know. When I fish, I generally prepare for my trip by making sure there are fish in the body of water I am visiting. Maybe that's just me.
The fisherman is a comic distraction from the underlying issue, which in my years with the NPS we confronted every day. When the values that guide management of natural resources and cultural resources collide, how do we resolve such things? Usually there is some happy middle ground...but in this case, there is either a pond or no pond in the middle of this highly visible and valued cultural landscape.
During my career, I summoned the NPS management policies on this question probably 100 times. They appear in the Director's Order 28, for managing cultural resources. Pretty straightforward:
"Planners should work with natural resource management specialists to ensure that natural resources are protected consistent with cultural resource objectives."
In this case, that's obviously not happening. I am not surprised. The NPS has long seen itself as a "nature" organization. It is--and at its founding was ONLY that. But there are now as many or more cultural parks than natural parks. During the Latschar/Fitzgerold/Hartwig years, Gettysburg was wildly successful (in part due to immense public support and excellent outreach) at managing and balancing natural and cultural resource values, with the battlefield and the public benefitting immensely as a result. But, clearly, the pendulum has tilted the other direction. If the park itself wanted to dam up Plum Run to make a lake, of course it would never happen. But beavers? Okay. There are ways to deal with beavers and their ponds--pond levelers, which we had good success with at Chancellorsville years ago.
But, I suspect that the beavers now have quite a constituency of their own, and dealing with this issue in a public space will be far more difficult now than it would have been when the beavers first started building.....
Thanks for providing this context for those of us (myself included) who know nothing about how the NPS deals with these issues when they arise. I wonder if it is not too much trouble, can you provide one or two examples of cases where this issue has arisen under your watch at Fredericksburg? Thanks.
Beaver ponds, twice. Once at Chancellorsville on Nine-Mile Run, right along Route 3. We eliminated the ponds by using a leveler, which is just a pipe run through the dam, allowing the water to flow out of the pond. The beavers never quite figure it out, and leave.... 2d, at Spotsylvania we had a series of Beaver ponds that ran through a portion of the Mule Shoe salient. In that case, the ponds were in the woods along the tour road. Visible....but we opted to leave them....judging them not overly intrusive. After a couple years of excellent beaver watching, the beavers moved on (or perhaps more likely, were poached).
The balance between natural and cultural values comes up most often in the question of scene restoration. Gettysburg blazed an important trail for all other landscape-based parks on that account.... The image of Park Rangers with chainsaws strikes many as an oxymoron, and resistance is often loud. We did a major clearing of the landscape in front of Chatham, to reconnect the place with the Rappahannock and to allow it to be seen on the landscape, as it had been for 200 years. We did a lot of prep work with the public AND the staff....and were assiduous about the processes/public reviews such projects are subject to. We got complaints for sure, but it went better than I thought it would. And today....virtually everyone praises the outcome.....
This is incredibly helpful. I love the idea of using a pipe to drain the water, which makes the decision at Gettysburg that much more inexplicable. Given your point about managing the expectations of the public when it came to clearing landscapes, I wonder if the same should have been done for those who have expressed concerns about the pond and its threat to maintaining a historic landscape.
As much as I want to see the battlefield as intact and immaculate as possible, this doesn’t bother me too much. I go to battlefields to understand the battle. Others go because it is a place of recreation. I went to Henry House Hill on the Bull Run battlefield one evening in 2021 to get some “golden hour” photographs. There were all manner of people there enjoying the site as a public park, not as battlefield tourists. I thought it was perfectly fine. I think the men who fought there would want us to remember them and their battles, but to also enjoy the life that some of them forfeited on those grounds. Also, some of these people will get a brush with history that could turn them into the next students of the war.
The amateur historian and battlefield trekker in me has less concern about sharing the space with a fisherman than the fisherman in me has with the disbelief that there are any fish in plum run in the first place. 🤷🏻♂️
My first association upon seeing the heading and photo with this post was Richard Brautigan's first short story collection, 'Trout Fishing in America'. It got him published but sold a quite limited press run until long after he'd published his first novel, 'A Confederate General from Big Sur'.
While we’re discussing our National Park System, here’s a reflection from Heather Cox Richardson https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/history-extra-for-august-25-2024?r=5hbsd&utm_medium=ios
Here's my general thought: places honoring the dead that fail to make space for the living risk obsolescence because people won't remain invested in their preservation.
Interesting discussion. I agree with the those raising the question, are there fish in the pond? One wonders. I also suspect the act of fishing on the Park offends people more than the pond.
I first heard about this issue at Gettysburg listening to an episode of the "Military Historians are People Too" podcast. An interesting podcast oriented primary at academic historians. My reaction then was let PA DNR move the Beavers to an appropriate habitat away from the Park, drain the pond and and get on with life. The site was preserved to memorialize the battle and stopping changes to the landscape was one of the reasons for preserving these sites (I realize that wasn't strictly true but I think it has become part of the mission). But the more I thought about it the Beavers moved in on their own, I assume. The Park service didn't invite them in. This is part of a natural process of landscape change. Should we interfere?
I still think the answer is yes. There is value in preserving the site as it was in July 1863. That is, in my opinion, the point of the park. However, I suspect Mr. Hennessy is correct, I imagine the Beavers now have a significant constituency. I don't think I would want to be the Cultural Resource Manager charged with relocating them a placating the public's reaction.
How is that for coming down squarely on both sides of an issue.
Forgive me if I bring up Fort Monroe at Point Comfort too often, but to me, the questions here bring vividly to mind what has happened and not happened in the two decades since the Army retired that post on that spit of land where British North American slavery began in 1619 and where--once Union soldiers and sailors in 1861 began making slavery's crumbling possible--U.S. slavery began to crumble.
Readers will recall that the post contains a 63-acre moated stone fortress--Freedom's Fortress, Civil War self-emancipators called it. But not even the most ardent preservationist called for returning the overall 570-acre post to, say, its 1861 state. Much of the overall post is quite historic in its own right, aside from the arc of the moral universe that bent, during a quarter of a millennium, toward emancipation. (Yes, I'm among those who believe that abolition was inevitable.) And certainly nobody wanted to return Point Comfort to its 1619 state, which would mean removing Freedom's Fortress.
Nevertheless, there's a spirit of place to be respected there. The land itself is intrinsically historic--something you can't even say about Gettysburg. Those armies could have clashed elsewhere, but there's only one place on the planet that you can fortify to guard the lower Chesapeake Bay AND the natural channel into Hampton Roads harbor.
The overdevelopment-obsessed politicians won. To sideline and nullify voices calling merely for decent respect for spirit of place, they politically engineered a fake, bizarrely split, quite limited national monument. The ploy has worked great. The public thinks that Fort Monroe and Point Comfort have been spared overdevelopment.
The official vision for Fort Monroe, on the brief "Reimagine Fort Monroe" web page, still says today what was proclaimed in 2005: "To redevelop this historic property into a vibrant, mixed-use community." The page never so much as mentions the national monument or the token presence of the National Park Service.
I'm glad that fishermen can still fish from the pier there, but I'm sorry that spirit of place overall is being scanted. History matters, and spirit of place is a part of healthy national memory.
I don't object to the man fishing, but I do support removing the beavers by live-trapping them and relocating them to another appropriate habitat. I've always appreciated the wildlife at the park---once saw a fox stalking some prey out in the fields in front of the High Water Mark Area, and I may have seen a bald eagle during one of my tours this past June---but I think it is reasonable to discourage a beaver dam that creates a lake where there should only be Plum Run.
Gettysburg should be appreciated, even loved, and to me, part of a family which always enjoyed fishing, this is just one more reason to do that. Amen to your thoughts about wildlife...
I don't know. When I fish, I generally prepare for my trip by making sure there are fish in the body of water I am visiting. Maybe that's just me.
The fisherman is a comic distraction from the underlying issue, which in my years with the NPS we confronted every day. When the values that guide management of natural resources and cultural resources collide, how do we resolve such things? Usually there is some happy middle ground...but in this case, there is either a pond or no pond in the middle of this highly visible and valued cultural landscape.
During my career, I summoned the NPS management policies on this question probably 100 times. They appear in the Director's Order 28, for managing cultural resources. Pretty straightforward:
"Planners should work with natural resource management specialists to ensure that natural resources are protected consistent with cultural resource objectives."
In this case, that's obviously not happening. I am not surprised. The NPS has long seen itself as a "nature" organization. It is--and at its founding was ONLY that. But there are now as many or more cultural parks than natural parks. During the Latschar/Fitzgerold/Hartwig years, Gettysburg was wildly successful (in part due to immense public support and excellent outreach) at managing and balancing natural and cultural resource values, with the battlefield and the public benefitting immensely as a result. But, clearly, the pendulum has tilted the other direction. If the park itself wanted to dam up Plum Run to make a lake, of course it would never happen. But beavers? Okay. There are ways to deal with beavers and their ponds--pond levelers, which we had good success with at Chancellorsville years ago.
But, I suspect that the beavers now have quite a constituency of their own, and dealing with this issue in a public space will be far more difficult now than it would have been when the beavers first started building.....
Hi John,
Thanks for providing this context for those of us (myself included) who know nothing about how the NPS deals with these issues when they arise. I wonder if it is not too much trouble, can you provide one or two examples of cases where this issue has arisen under your watch at Fredericksburg? Thanks.
Beaver ponds, twice. Once at Chancellorsville on Nine-Mile Run, right along Route 3. We eliminated the ponds by using a leveler, which is just a pipe run through the dam, allowing the water to flow out of the pond. The beavers never quite figure it out, and leave.... 2d, at Spotsylvania we had a series of Beaver ponds that ran through a portion of the Mule Shoe salient. In that case, the ponds were in the woods along the tour road. Visible....but we opted to leave them....judging them not overly intrusive. After a couple years of excellent beaver watching, the beavers moved on (or perhaps more likely, were poached).
The balance between natural and cultural values comes up most often in the question of scene restoration. Gettysburg blazed an important trail for all other landscape-based parks on that account.... The image of Park Rangers with chainsaws strikes many as an oxymoron, and resistance is often loud. We did a major clearing of the landscape in front of Chatham, to reconnect the place with the Rappahannock and to allow it to be seen on the landscape, as it had been for 200 years. We did a lot of prep work with the public AND the staff....and were assiduous about the processes/public reviews such projects are subject to. We got complaints for sure, but it went better than I thought it would. And today....virtually everyone praises the outcome.....
This is incredibly helpful. I love the idea of using a pipe to drain the water, which makes the decision at Gettysburg that much more inexplicable. Given your point about managing the expectations of the public when it came to clearing landscapes, I wonder if the same should have been done for those who have expressed concerns about the pond and its threat to maintaining a historic landscape.
As much as I want to see the battlefield as intact and immaculate as possible, this doesn’t bother me too much. I go to battlefields to understand the battle. Others go because it is a place of recreation. I went to Henry House Hill on the Bull Run battlefield one evening in 2021 to get some “golden hour” photographs. There were all manner of people there enjoying the site as a public park, not as battlefield tourists. I thought it was perfectly fine. I think the men who fought there would want us to remember them and their battles, but to also enjoy the life that some of them forfeited on those grounds. Also, some of these people will get a brush with history that could turn them into the next students of the war.
The amateur historian and battlefield trekker in me has less concern about sharing the space with a fisherman than the fisherman in me has with the disbelief that there are any fish in plum run in the first place. 🤷🏻♂️
I thought the same. In fact, I thought that perhaps he was making a statement about the size of this new water feature.