[Talk-us] Washington, DC parks - boundary=national_park or not?

[Bill Ricker]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 10:34 AM Brian M. Sperlongano <zelonewolf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> That said, I would tend to think that the NPS description of "the
> President lives in a National Park" to be a case of marketing rather than
> true NP nomenclature.
>

Heh, yeah.

>   If you look at the listing at (https://www.nps.gov/state/dc/index.htm),
> it does not give a "National Park" heading to President's Park (nor other
> properties in DC) which seem to confirm this to be marketing rather than a
> deliberate categorization.  Whereas, if you look at the list for Arizona (
> https://www.nps.gov/state/az/index.htm), it gives a "National Park"
> header to Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, etc.
>



> Note that I would consider the NPS listing to be the authoritative source
> on this and not 3rd party websites.
>

And alas the cited blog "*How Many National Parks are There*?" [
https://www.nationalparks.org/connect/blog/how-many-national-parks-are-there]
is a third party, the National Park Foundation, which provides voluntary
non-tax additional support to the parks (a crying shame that it's
necessary, but here we are). Their classification of the White House into
Other etc will be accurate as they're a hands-in-pockets third-party only
officially arms-length!, but their website can at best be considered
deuterocanonical.
The NPS canonical source 2017-01-31 was
https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/upload/Site-Designations-01-13-17.pdf (but only
59 National Parks, so 4 new since then?)listed "White House", "National
Capital Parks", and "National Mall" all as "Other" (3 of 11).

Regarding the "The Civil War Defences of Washington", which has no NPS
> nomenclature assigned to them, to me, these are similar to and should be
> tagged in a way that's similar to National Historic Sites, which we do not
> tag as National Parks (as presently described in the US Public Lands
> article).
>

That seems pretty sensible. The NPS.gov website does not indicate any
particular nomenclature for what the Unit is within their hierarchy; CWDW
office is in a Dept Interior office building, not in any of the parklets,
and no place where its address is posted do i see a descriptor. (*It may be
that as a new development unit, CWDW hasn't been officially classed yet? Or
is it a thematic subset within National Capital Parks? Maybe both ... a
thematic subset incubating in a DC "Other" that may blossom into a National
Battlefield or Historic Site in the fullness of time and bureaucracy?*)
   However, there is conflicting, internal evidence that CWDW *may* rank as
a National Monument - there are NPS Passport Stamps at several of the CWDW
sites, and those are advertised as being at National Parks and Monuments.
(Whether that is an official determination or a local exception made by the
gift-shop dot.org that sponsors the passports is unclear, however. And this
doesn't prevent stamps being located at popular National Historic Sites
etc.)
https://home.nps.gov/cwdw/faqs.htm
https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/park-passport-stamps.htm
https://shop.americasnationalparks.org/store/department/30/Passport-Program/
<https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/park-passport-stamps.htm>

(Legislatively, all NPS managed units rank equally ... but in reality, the
National Parks are the gems.)

( Is this one of the few cases where OSM accepts local definitions instead
of applying UK definitions world-wide? :-D  )

> In summary, it seems clear to me that the collection of parks formerly
> known as the "National Capital Parks", are not equivalent in form, fit, and
> function to places like Yosemite NP, Glacier NP, Grand Canyon NP, etc, so
> I'd tend to agree with the sentiment that these should not be tagged as
> national parks, but rather as parks and/or historic sites as appropriate
> for each property.
>

Fair.

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
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