Two replies to Lyle E. Browning:
* He wrote: "Fortress Monroe is on the National Register of Historic
Places." It's important to distinguish the moated stone fortress from
the entirety of the 570 acres of Old Point Comfort, which is the
entirety of Fort Monroe. And it's vital to note that all of Fort Monroe
has been a national historic landmark for half a century -- as he
rightly noted further down in his message. No one is seeking to ruin the
moated stone fortress, but, as with those casinos that have been chased
away from Gettysburg, plenty of people want to ruin its setting by
blanketing a national historic landmark with upscale, multistory houses.
The fort, not just the fortress, is at risk.
* He wrote: "I find it extremely annoying that the objections boil
down to fiscal expenditure as in: 'Dad-burned Federal Gummint' should
not spend our tax dollars when the private sector should do it." Amen,
but here again there's a vital clarification to be made -- and a deep
irony to be noted. The clarification: Journalists and others, trapped in
master-story bias, can't seem to understand, even after over two years
of civic discussion, that nobody is asking for a traditional national
park. The only serious proposals for any national park have been for an
innovatively structured, self-sustaining, revenue-generating one akin to
San Francisco's Presidio. The irony: Not only would such a hybrid
national park save federal money by reducing cleanup costs, it would
actually boost the local economy in multiple ways. (Push my button to
hear more about that; I'm worried that I'm straying too far into
politics and out of this forum's history topic.) Unfortunately, to look
at it this way requires looking at Fort Monroe strategically, rather
than parochially. It's getting easier to persuade people to do that, but
it's still hard.
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