Obama designates Fort Monroe as national monument

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama signed an executive order Tuesday granting national monument status to Fort Monroe, ending a five-year, grassroots effort to protect a storied spit of land that witnessed the beginning and end of slavery in the United States - and lots of military history in between.

Obama's proclamation on Hampton's Fort Monroe, which he signed in the Oval Office before more than a dozen witnesses, signals the start of a new chapter for the former Army base, built between 1819 and 1834. The National Park Service will manage more than half the land, including hundreds of acres of undeveloped waterfront property and the moated stone fortress itself.

Tuesday marked Obama's first use of the Antiquities Act of 1906, which empowers presidents to designate federally owned land of significant historical value as a national monument. Politicians from both parties supported the idea, which was first suggested and long advocated for by a local group of history buffs that formed an alliance called Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park.

"This is going to give an opportunity for people from all across the country to travel to Fort Monroe and trace the history that has been so important to making America what it is," Obama said before signing the proclamation. "I am looking forward to not only visiting myself, but also taking Malia and Sasha down there so they can get a little bit of a sense of their history."

Obama noted that the first slave ship to arrive in the Colonies landed at an early fort on the site in 1619. More than two centuries later, Fort Monroe became a refuge for slaves during the Civil War and "helped to create the environment in which Abraham Lincoln was able to sign that document up there," he said, pointing to a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Work on the stone fortress began in 1819 under President James Monroe, who sought to protect the fledgling democracy from invasion after the British navy sailed up the Chesapeake Bay and burned Washington during the War of 1812. When it was completed in the 1830s, the "Gibraltar of the Chesapeake," surrounded by an 8-foot-deep moat, enclosed 63 acres.

Fort Monroe was a military base until mid-September, when the Army moved its personnel to comply with a 2005 base realignment and closure decision. A little over half of its 570 acres will be managed by the park service. A state entity, the Fort Monroe Authority, will oversee the reuse of the rest of the property, including limited development in certain sections.

"This national monument designation is going to give us the credibility, name recognition and national status that will help us encourage people to visit and jobs to relocate here," Glenn Oder, the authority's executive director, said after watching Obama sign the proclamation.

According to a 2009 study commissioned by the authority and cited by the White House, the reuse and development of the fort could create nearly 3,000 jobs over the next 15 years.

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, who was governor of Virginia in 2005 when a federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission announced it would close Fort Monroe, said he didn't fully understand or appreciate the fort's history at the time. He praised community efforts since then that have been "unearthing the history and better telling its story."

Obama also noted the grassroots effort. After the signing, he thanked "the private citizens who put their time and money and effort into making this day possible."

One of those people is Mark Perreault, a Norfolk resident.

Perreault, an attorney with Norfolk Southern Corp., joked that the witnesses to Tuesday's signing entered the Oval Office in reverse order of importance, because he was first. When he introduced himself to Obama as president of Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park, Perreault said, Obama shook his hand and said, "The work of citizens like you is necessary to make great things happen."

Warner, who co-sponsored a bill to make Fort Monroe a national park, said he doubted that effort would have succeeded in a tough budget environment.

"There's a whole lot of sites across the country that are trying to get National Park Service designation," Warner said. "This would have been virtually impossible to push through Congress."

Now that it has happened, the park service is moving quickly.

"We're hoping someone carries a park service arrowhead down there this week," spokesman David Barna said Tuesday, referring to the iconic brown and green logo inscribed with images of a mountain, tree and buffalo.

A yet-to-be-announced park superintendent will begin working at Fort Monroe this week, Barna said, with the rest of the staff assembled in the coming months. In the meantime, he said, rangers and staff from other sites will be temporarily assigned to the fort.

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

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564,julian.walker@pilotonline.com