Fort Monroe national park to be led by a longtime fan

It's just days old, but the nation's newest national park - Fort Monroe National Monument - already has a website, a phone number and a superintendent who will report to work there today.

Wednesday, the day after President Barack Obama created the national monument, the National Park Service announced that Kirsten Talken-Spaulding will serve as the site's first superintendent.

It will be something of a homecoming for Talken-Spaulding, a 20-year park service veteran who grew up in Williamsburg and has a biology degree from the College of William and Mary.

"Going to Fort Monroe was always a treat when we got to go as kids," Talken-Spaulding said in a phone interview from Washington. "Being able to serve in this way, and being able to come home to Fort Monroe, is really incredibly special to me."

Talken-Spaulding has spent the past few years in Washington, first as chief ranger at National Capital Parks-East and then as a congressional fellow. In that role, she helped draft legislation to establish a national park at Fort Monroe. Because Obama used his executive authority under the Antiquities Act to protect the site, that legislation is no longer needed.

This won't be the first time she reports to work at a new national park. Talken-Spaulding was the first ranger assigned to Mojave National Preserve in California after its establishment in 1994, she said. Other assignments include stints at Prince William Forest Park in Northern Virginia and Haleakala National Park in Hawaii.

Talken-Spaulding said she remembered learning in 2005 that the Army would leave Fort Monroe as part of a round of federal base closings, then heard about a grassroots effort to get the National Park Service involved.

"I thought, boy, wouldn't it be something to be able to come home and serve the nation in a national park in my own backyard?" Talken-Spaulding said. "Little did I know, lo those many years ago, the potential truth of that."

In coming months, Talken-Spaulding said, the park service will ask for public input on what types of services and programming people want offered at Fort Monroe. The park service will manage 325 acres of the 565-acre property, including the largest moated stone fort ever built in the United States. A state entity, Fort Monroe Authority, will oversee the rest.

The park service is already in touch with Civil War historians and interpretive rangers who can engage visitors in the near future.

"We're hoping to use nearby park staff to provide some level of public programming as quickly as possible," Talken-Spaulding said. "We're moving fast, but we also don't want to sacrifice quality for speed."

The fort's role in the collapse of slavery during the Civil War will certainly be a focus, but Talken-Spaulding said the north beach area, comprising more than 200 acres of undeveloped land at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, is also important in telling the site's story.

Like the fort, its superintendent has a military history. Talken-Spaulding, 45, was just a few years old when her father, a Navy pilot, was killed in the Vietnam War. While working in Washington, she would often pass the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where his name - George Francis Talken - is one of 58,000 engraved on the black granite.

"It's something to serve in a spot where you're walking past your father's name every day," she said.

She spent a few years in uniform herself - in the Naval Reserve in California in the early 1990s.

Talken-Spaulding said one of her first tasks will be arranging for a U.S. flag to return to a prominent position atop the stone fortress - long a landmark for commuters passing on Interstate 64.

She looks forward to the task ahead, and to continued community involvement.

"You don't open up a magic box and get a national park, because every national park is unique, and reflects its history and where it's from and where it is," she said. "We really need to hear from the people in the area."

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com