Valley Forge Facing 'Desecration', NPS Retirees Urge an Immediate Stop to Development Plan
WASHINGTON, D.C.///May 15, 2008/// With plans advancing for a controversial development on 78 privately held acres inside Valley Forge National Historical Park, the 640-member Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR) today are applauding U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne for what he has done so far to avoid endorsing the planned Disney-style private hotel-tavern-restaurant-convention-center-museum complex. But CNPSR officials also say that the time is now for Secretary Kempthorne to do more to prevent “a national outrage” that would result from the “desecration of the cultural resources” of “this iconic national treasure” in the heart of the Continental Army’s successful winter encampment of 1777-1778.
CNPSR officials note that Kempthorne has the power under a 1916 federal law to intervene and stop the Valley Forge project put forward by a group called the “American Revolution Center (ARC).”
In a letter to Kempthorne, CNPSR Executive Council Chair Bill Wade said: “We are concerned that to date the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior have not taken more pro-active steps to stop this project. We know the NPS expressed its concerns to ARC both privately, then publicly when its concerns remained unaddressed, and to the local township authorities who have the power to stop this project. But we also understand that the ARC and the local township majority have ignored those concerns and are moving ahead. We know that the NPS has the authority, under the NPS Organic Act and the ‘property clause’ of the U.S. Constitution to stop the development, if it comes to that. We believe you have the responsibility to protect Valley Forge National Historical Park.”
In the communication to Secretary Kempthorne, Wade points out that Professor Wayne Bodle, a scholar reported to have spent 10 years studying original historical documents in the possession of the park, has examined “the history of the part of Valley Forge National Historical Park where ARC intends to build its museum, conference center and hotel complex. Bodle’s studies clearly dispute ARC’s claim that there are no significant cultural resources on the parcel they propose to develop. In the face of this evidence and that in the General Management Plan for [Valley Forge], we are stunned that ARC continues plans to build on such a historically significant site. The site plans show that construction would entail major earth movements, retaining walls, water collection basins, and major areas set aside for bus and automobile parking lots. Desecration of the cultural resources and context of this parcel would be a national outrage.”
Given the direct threat to the integrity of Valley Forge, Kempthorne must act to protect the national park, according to CNPSR. As Wade explains: “We believe you have the responsibility to protect Valley Forge National Historical Park. Congress made that responsibility clear in the 1916 Organic Act, directing the Secretary of the Interior to prevent the impairment of units of the National Park System: ‘The Secretary has an absolute duty, which is not to be compromised, to fulfill the mandate of the 1916 Act to take whatever action and seek whatever relief as will safeguard the units of the National Park System.’ We would appreciate your advising us what steps you and the National Park Service plan to take to prevent the major adverse impacts this project will cause to this iconic national treasure.”
The ARC purchased the site inside the Valley Forge National Historical Park – what is called an “inholding” – after it broke off negotiations with the NPS to place a museum in conjunction with the park’s existing Welcome Center because it failed to accept the NPS’s requirements for the museum.
On May 5, 2008, the local township gave ARC preliminary approval of its development plans, and the township is now being asked to give final approval to part of the building plans, a process likely to be completed in the next two months or so.