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Shenandoah National Park rangers last week showed off the renovated cabin that President Hoover used as a getaway from politics during his term in office. |
SHENANDOAH National Park's super intendent this week used the spot Herbert Hoover created for escaping politics to explain the dual agenda underlying a state-of-the-park press tour.
Standing near Hoover's newly renovated presidential getaway, Camp Rapidan, Doug Morris said that the park and a national parks advocacy group agree on the need to celebrate new successes at Shenandoah.
To that end, much of the tour was focused on the restoration of the recreational woodland camp Hoover built with his own bucks in the early '30s to escape the heat, the crowds and the pressure-cooker of Washington politics.
But Morris, joined by leaders of the National Parks Conservation Association, said the day's other goal was highlighting problems caused by pollution, invasive species and funding shortfalls.
Park and NPCA experts hit on specific problems: acid rain's toll on park fish and other living creatures, ozone's stressing of trees and vegetation, invasive species' decimation of resources like the towering hemlocks and lagging federal funding that last year left Shenandoah more than 80 people and $6 million short of what one independent review said was needed.
The NPCA is a private, nonprofit advocacy group established in 1919 to preserve and enhance the national parks system.
In the State of the Parks report it released with the tour, the NPCA called Shenandoah the pride of the Blue Ridge, "a remarkable slice of southern Appalachian natural history and natural beauty."
But beneath its magnificence, the report said, "Shenandoah is a park in jeopardy. Years of inadequate funding, coupled with serious threats to the park's resources, are taking a toll."
Park interpretive specialist Claire Comer, introducing the visitors to Rapidan Camp, called it the perfect spot to show visitors because the same thing attracts them to the park today that attracted Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover there to build the Camp David of that day.
Built at the headwaters of the Rapidan River, where two small mountain streams tumble gently over rock stream beds to become one, the camp surprised archaeologists who unearthed the remains of a concrete-lined pond.
Turns out it was Hoover's very own trout pond, which answered another puzzling question.
Comer noted that good records exist on everything used in the construction of the camp, partly because Hoover paid for the materials himself, with labor provided by U.S. Marines stationed nearby.
"In those records, there were many references to the purchase of 'beef parts.' It was assumed initially that Hoover just really liked beef," said Comer.
When the pond was found, researchers turned up the fact that Hoover stocked it with trout, and liked to feed them for fun in the evenings--with beef parts.
Comer said much of the restoration of the president's cabin and two others that now comprise the camp involved taking off materials added through the years to modernize the buildings.
They are now pared down to the Spartan, heart-of-pine wood that formed the walls, floors and ceilings in Hoover's day.
With the sound of a specially constructed section of stream that runs near the expansive porch on the presidential cottage--Hoover was rumored to fish from there, but it would be a heck of a cast--the three low-slung, dark-wooded cabins inhabit a soothing, pristine place, designed in a way to displace as little of nature as possible.
Indeed, holes were left in the cottage roofs and decks to allow trees to grow through.
A nice touch of the restoration: chimneys were rebuilt in the same less-than-perfect but historically accurate fashion that the Marine Corps masons built them in the first place.
Comer said that while at the camp, the Hoovers often got up early, 3 a.m. or so, and hiked to some nearby summit to see the sun rise.
Camp Rapidan will get more work this summer and winter, with appropriate furnishings and decorations added and an interpretive exhibit installed at one of the other restored cabins. For now, visitors can see the camp on guided tours taken via a park van. Hikers can walk in for an unguided look at the camp.
The hope is to find a volunteer to live in one of the cabins and open up the site more regularly.
NPCA and park officials celebrated the restoration, but said it's typical of the problems the park faces.
Park natural resource specialists noted the loss there and elsewhere in the park of the lion's share of its mature hemlock trees.
The culprit: a non-native, invasive beetle called the hemlock wooly adelgid, capable of killing trees within just four years of infestation.
In addition, NPCA policy analyst Quinn McKew noted that while fees collected at the park now can be used to fund projects like Rapidan Camp restoration, they are wasted if new funds aren't budgeted to show, interpret and maintain the new sites.
She explained that while Shenandoah's funding has increased 24 percent over the past 10 years, park costs and inflation have gone up more than 30 percent.
In their report's recommendations, the NPCA called for a moratorium on new power plants in Virginia and enforcement of existing air quality standards; urged increased funding for new personnel and programs to protect and interpret natural and historical resources; and underscored the need for continued plant and animal research and a plan to combat the invasive non-native species that are harming those native to Shenandoah.
ROB HEDELT can be reached at The Free Lance-Star, 616 Amelia St., Fredericksburg, Va. 22401; by fax at 373-8455; by phone at 374-5415; or by e-mail at rhedelt@freelancestar.com.
