| Project Background | |
| The Appalachian National Scenic Trail (AT) is, at roughly 2200 miles long by about 1000 feet wide, one of the largest units in the National Park System, and it is, at last count, served by a total of just seven National Park Service staff. This remarkable arrangement is possible through a unique cooperative management partnership that includes the Park Service, a number of Federal and State land management agencies, the Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC), and the over 30 regionally-based volunteer trail clubs. While NPS maintains overall responsibility for the management of the AT and provides the necessary funding for land acquisition, resource protection, and some specific undertakings, the partnership divides the innumerable tasks and responsibilities |  |
| inherent in the day-to-day care of the AT corridor among the
partners. This partnership has successfully built and maintained one of
the world’s longest and most scenic footpaths, acquired a protective
corridor for all but a very few miles of the Trail, and has successfully
met every challenge inherent in the construction, protection, and
maintenance of the nation’s oldest National Scenic Trail. As the new
millennium begins, so does a new chapter in the history of the Appalachian
Trail. While trail maintenance and relocation is an endless and on-going
part of the partnership’s mission, and new protective easements and
buffers are still a high priority, the era of trail construction and
corridor acquisition that gave us the modern footpath is winding down.
Increasingly, the Trail community finds itself turning toward the issue of
how best to conserve, protect, and interpret the innumerable and important
natural and historic resources of the AT corridor. |
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| While formal efforts to inventory, study, and interpret the resources of the corridor are just beginning, there’s a lot to work with. The AT’s 2000 mile corridor can be thought of as a long representative sample of Appalachia. Much of the biology, geology, and history of the mountains is preserved there. Within the corridor are populations of endangered plants and animals, significant and sometimes threatened or unique examples of mountain ecosystems, rare and important geologic and scenic features, and sites of considerable historic importance. |
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This historic legacy is especially rich. A record of the peopling and land use of the Appalachian Mountains is preserved in AT sites that range from millennia-old prehistoric encampments through 18th and 19th century farmsteads, mills, and iron works, to the now historic footpath of the Appalachian Trail itself. While these remnants of the past can be found in many locations along the AT, there are very few places along the entire length of the Trail where history is quite as compelling as in the quiet sag in the Maryland reach of the Blue Ridge known as Fox Gap. The Gap has a significant history as a link in the web of Native American footpaths over the mountain, as a route employed by General Braddock’s forces in 1755, as a site of very early Euro-American settlement of the mountains, and as a Civil War battlefield. It’s one of the most historic points on the entire AT, and the management, preservation and interpretation of the gap’s rich historic legacy presents the trail community with some significant challenges. Some of those challenges include protecting sensitive areas from artifact looters, providing for trailhead parking without damaging important archaeological deposits, decisions about the possible reconstruction of the historic landscape or the maintenance and relocation of the footpath, and the balance between interpreting the site for the public and protecting it from being loved to death. |
The battlefield at Fox's Gap. The Wise cabin is to the right, and a horse-drawn carriage sits in front.
The Fox Gap Archaeological Project, funded through a grant from Preservation Maryland and co-sponsored by the National Park Service, The Appalachian Trail Conference, the Central Maryland Heritage League, and Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Archaeological Services Program, has two important goals. In part, it’s intended to gather enough information about the above and below ground historic and prehistoric resources of the Fox Gap area, particularly in the area of the Wise Farm, to produce a plan for their future management. The project is also intended to help train Appalachian Trail volunteers and ATC and NPS Trail Project Office staff in the rudiments of identifying, monitoring and caring for the buried past; skills they can employ from Maine to Georgia to make better resource management decisions. The Fox Gap project combines a fabulous archaeological and historic resource in a beautiful setting with a management philosophy and project mission that’s unique in the entire National Park System.