Perry Wheeler, the Media Relations Coordinator for the National Parks Conservation Association, recently passed along the following information:
Hello all,
I hope you’re doing well! My name is Perry Wheeler with the National Parks Conservation Association. I thought you might be interested in our new resource assessment of Vicksburg National Military Park.
Today, NPCA’s Center for the State of the Parks released the first of ten Civil War park assessments, which will be released over the next twelve months. The Vicksburg assessment finds that overall conditions of the park’s known cultural resources rated a score of 67 out of 100, indicating fair conditions. This score includes ratings for the park’s historic structures, cultural landscapes, archaeology sites, and extensive museum collection.
As you might know, tomorrow [ed. note: October 30, 2008], the park will celebrate a $142,000 grant received as part of the National Park Centennial Challenge program. While the grant is an incredible step in the right direction, the park still faces additional maintenance funding and staff needs. NPCA’s assessment found that the park is in need of an additional 9.4 full-time employees and roughly $716,000 in funding, which obviously the grant will help with. The park currently has only two full-time cultural resource staff: a historian and a museum curator.
Furthermore, Vicksburg’s interpretive staff consists of only two interpreters, two guides, and one supervisory park ranger — not enough to serve the 700,000 people who visit the park each year. Current staff levels equal 140,000 visitors per ranger each year!!
NPCA works daily to protect historic places like Vicksburg for our children and grandchildren.
It’s critical that we all continue to do everything we can to be sure these places are fully funded and staffed. To view a supportive press statement from the Civil War Preservation Trust, please click here:
http://www.civilwar.org/news/PressDetail.php?releaseID=176
To view the full report, please click here:
http://www.npca.org/stateoftheparks/vicksburg/VICK-web.pdf
To view a 2-page fact sheet, please click here:
http://www.npca.org/stateoftheparks/vicksburg/VICK-onepager-WEB.pdf
For photos, please click here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30346074@N04/sets/72157608099093245/
To download a photo, click on the picture, then click the “all sizes” icon above the picture, then click the download link.
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