Latest Column: The Feds and Fayette County Fight Over Progress
The arranged marriage between America's newest national park and its current residents is out of the honeymoon period, and locals and the NPS are going through some things
My latest column for The Fayette Tribune, where I write about West Virginia issues and help support local newspaper and media. I repost them here with permission since some of our overseas friends can’t read the website due to the EU’s rules. Please do click and read it here to join me in supporting local newspapers and journalism.
Three plus years into the New River Gorge being America’s “newest” national park, the honeymoon period is over and the working relationship between the National Park Service and local residents has some things to work out. The inherent tensions in the arranged marriage between The Feds and Fayette County locals have bubbled up over the NPS’s plan to demolish 35 structures within the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. 21 of those structures are either listed or eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The friction between progress, local passion, and the National Park Service was evident when all parties gathered for a public meeting about the proposal. Held at the historic and NRHP listed Bank of Glen Jean, the public and officials mingled in a preserved historic space to consider the future. The stone walls and wooden floors served both as a reminder of what preservation can do, while contrasting with the dilapidated state of many of the structures up for demolition. Locals who want their story told and history honored trying to mesh with a NPS that understands being Instagram ready is a necessary reality in the modern tourism world.
The local folks have a legitimate beef here. Many of the buildings on the new list, especially the ones in National Park Service owned historic Thurmond, were already purchased by the federal government after the New River Gorge became a national river in 1978. Since those properties and structures were left to deteriorate under the NPS’s watch, the need to destroy those same structures they did not maintain comes off all kinds of wrong. Locals want the new stewards of the land and what's on it to respect and maintain the old history. Breaking out a “demolition list” as one of the first major projects, while explainable and necessary on slide decks in meetings, has the people who’ve lived there for years recoiling.
The NPS’s newfound urgency regarding the structures in the Gorge is motivated by funding from the Great American Outdoors Act. These funds and associated monies gives the NPS an enormous influx of funding within a five year window. To them, such a massive influx is an opportunity to “clean up” some existing issues the new national park inherited. From the NPS point of view, the removal of what could be considered eyesores and dangerous structures would be funded, and in the long term free up money that would have been needed to restore those structures, which can then be used for more significant historic sights.
The fact of the matter is not everything can be preserved forever, no matter how historic or sentimental it might be. While the NPS should take heed of local feelings and attachments, good stewardship of the New River Gorge and the communities and sites therein also means understanding deeming something “historic” isn’t a magic spell, but a physical thing that requires actual money as time and the elements try to destroy it. Locals who are rightly passionate about the history of these places should work with the NPS to emphasize the areas of greatest importance and interest to potential tourists, while understanding those same tourists seeing dilapidated buildings is not putting West Virginia's best foot forward in one of the most naturally beautiful areas anywhere in the world.
That might mean some of the outlying buildings in a special place like Thurmond are removed. But that also means once removed, funding and NPS attention can be paid to keeping the historic and iconic commercial row and railroad depot Instagram ready for millions of visitors for decades to come.
Logical as that is, sound as that reasoning might be, as inevitable as progress must be, it should be arrived at soberly and implemented gently by the NPS. West Virginians are, rightfully, leery of how both government and progress has treated them in the past, especially under the banner of “for visitors.” which comes off as “sacrifice for outsiders.” Still, the folks who love and appreciate the New River Gorge the most must understand that the world coming to see one of the wonders of the world in their backyard is good progress.
That progress will mean change, and some of that change is not everything from the past will get to go into the future. There will be some pain that comes with that for locals who care a great deal for where they came from. But working with the NPS on these early projects while balancing legitimate concerns with not hindering the inevitable changes will set up the permanent marriage between The Feds, Fayette County, and the surrounding area to be a happy and productive one.