Nearly 20 years ago, while visiting one of my very favorite National Parks, Zion, I bought one of those geeky National Park Passport books. Every time you visit a National Park Service (NPS) site – over 400 of them now – you get to stamp your book. I love getting stamps in things (yes, sometimes I flip through my old passports and gaze at stamps from far off places) and I like national parks, so that’s why I now have over 150 stamps in my book.
In some areas of the country you can strategically rack up a ton of stamps. For example, New York City, Boston, and San Francisco each have at least a half dozen urban and near-urban national park sites.
Southern Utah also has quite a few spectacular, “only in the American West” park sites grouped reasonably close together.
Nothing exceeds Washington DC of course. There are dozens of sites and stamps available here. And if you branch out into my hometown northern Virginia and also Maryland, you can scoop up even more. It’s a National Park Passport cornucopia out here in the DC area.
Looking for easy stamp pick-ups, I’d had my eyes on a strip of NPS sites along the Southeast coast with a line of old forts and natural areas. None of them are considered NPS jewels like Yellowstone or Yosemite, but a stamp is a stamp. And even the smaller sites are fun to visit and learn something new.1
The plan was fly to Jacksonville, FL rent a car and drive up to Charleston, SC. Three days, two nights, seven NPS sites.
And not just walk into the visitor center, get a stamp, and walk out That’s lame. I want to actually experience something at each site before I get the stamp.
Finally, all of these sites are worth a visit if you have the time, but some are more worth going out of your way for than others. I will therefore throw in my subjective “worth a visit” 1- 5 star rating for each site.
I love the first day of a trip. You’re fresh, nothing has gone wrong, the excitement of new places and experiences beckons. Fort Matanzas National Monument is not a big deal but it was the first stop of my trip and I loved it. Sigh, I’ll always remember Fort Matanzas fondly . . .
Honestly, most of that fondness was because it was thirty degrees warmer than what I left in Virginia. I could not stop smiling in the sun. So this is why people live here.
As for the site itself, I discovered that the 5 minute ferry ride to the actual fort doesn’t operate on Tuesdays. I didn’t care. I could see the fort well enough from the visitor center where there were also plenty of pictures and diagrams of the fort. I read about the French, Spanish, and British over this New World real estate, walked along a nature trail, and ate my lunch on a perfectly placed picnic table under an ancient Southern live oak.
Did I mention that it was in the 70s and life was good?
Located on the bay next to St. Augustine, Castillo de San Marcos National Monument gets my vote for #1 NPS site on this trip. The fort is the “oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States” and I’d say it looks pretty great for a 350 year old. I enjoyed exploring the fort and especially strolling on the wide ramparts, looking out over the water.
San Marcos’ sturdy looks are in part due to the coquina shell stone the Spanish engineers used to build it. Apparently, coquina had never been used to build a fort before but it was termite proof and plentiful, so they gave it a try, hoping it would stand up to cannon fire. It did. Like a dream. When the British attacked the fort in 1702 and again, in 1740, their cannon balls just bounced off or sunk into the stone a few inches.
Besides the fort, there is lots to see in St. Augustine itself. I enjoyed walking around the town and especially loved the fabulous architecture and ornamentation of Flagler College and the Lightner Museum. Overall, I’d say that this NPS site and surrounding city is a must see Florida stop.
At the opposite end of long lasting forts is Fort Caroline, part of the Timucuan Ecological and HIstoric Preserve. There is no Fort Caroline left. We don’t even know where the French put the fort – maybe its remains are under the meandering St. John’s River – so the NPS built a nice replica of where it could have been along the river.
Remember the Fort Matanzas massacre of French shipwreck survivors noted above? Well, the French got their revenge in this area a few years later and massacred a bunch of Spanish soldiers and settlers.
Forts are fun (though not massacres), but my Timucuan highlight was a nature hike along the marshes in the Theodore Roosevelt area. The trail leads to a viewing platform in the middle of the wetlands where you can pick out birds, watch for crocs, and hear the splashes of fish snaring insects. My hike only scratched the surface of the hiking, kayaking, and beaching available at Timucuan.
My first NPS site in Georgia was a miss. I discovered the night before that the 45 minute ferry to the Cumberland Island National Seashore doesn’t run on Wednesdays. I still wanted to stop by and get a stamp from the mainland NPS ferry departure spot, but I could see that all the action is on the island which I could not get to.
After some wavering, I honorably decided to not get the NPS stamp and instead put Cumberland Island NS on my “come back with Mrs. Anysecondnow and spend the day here” list since the island looks like a fun day trip.
A gorgeous drive over Georgia bridges and then under the Spanish moss-covered oaks of St. Simon’s Island lead to my last Day 2 stop, Fort Frederica National Monument. It will not surprise you that Fort Frederica was a key area for yet more Spanish and British conflict over New World territory (I think the French had scooted out from this area by now).
This is a small site, but pretty enough along the MacKay River and I took a setting-sun walk along shoreline marshes and trees. There is some serious archaeological research going on in the remains of the Frederica settlement and it is interesting to walk the old settlement “streets” and see the brick grid outlines of small homes and other structures.
Skipped! I may not have paid enough attention to ferry schedules in my pre-trip planning, but, fortunately, I did realize that I had already visited Fort Pulaski National Monument nearly 12 years ago on the last afternoon of a work trip. I don’t remember anything specific but the fort is in good condition with a nice moat, so I’m just going to give it an average 2.5 star rating with an extra bonus for being near Savannah, GA, a great town.
Nevertheless, as fun as Savannah is (and the location of our 5th wedding anniversary), I was happy to skip the detour into town and save more time for time for Charleston later in the day. But first, a stop in Beaufort, South Carolina at . . .
Just about everything connected to the U.S. Reconstruction era is depressing to me and the Reconstruction Era National Historic Park Visitor Center mostly reinforced that.
My take is that for about 10 years after the Civil War, African Americans were finally able to establish communities, get educated, start businesses, and prosper, even getting elected to local and state positions. Most of all, they could hope and dream of a completely different future. And then it just got ripped away from them. Violently and illegally.
Not only that, things stayed bad for nearly another century until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. Chattel slavery may have been gone but state-sanctioned racism and violence took its place. I applaud the NPS attempts to highlight the inspiring work of so many, black and white, to overcome obstacles, but it is still depressing to think what could have been, what should have been.
Which brings us to the sign I saw at my last NPS stop:
The first two sections are fine. Not a bad idea, in fact, to encourage visitors to report repair or service issues.
But the third section is and always will be an embarrassment to our country. The worst part is the display of un-American cowardliness in trying to cover up or ignore unpleasant facts and history.
But nearly as reprehensible to me is the illogic, the supreme idiocy, of the request. Negative information about Americans? I just came from Reconstruction Era NHP and its detailing of state sanctioned extralegal violence. There is no sugarcoating that. At Fort Necessity NB (see my very long footnote below) George Washington, our #1 American, surrendered to the French. Negative.
Dozens and dozens of NPS sites deal with themes of negative events, wayward policies, ways our country and leaders screwed up. Many of these NPS sites are in the former Confederacy, but plenty are not. Should we get rid of all of them? I am afraid too many Americans in this country might say yes.
I’ll stop there. Back to our regularly scheduled program and my visit to:
Arriving in Charleston, I rented a bike and rode around the mansions, parks, and wee restaurants of the charming downtown. Then I parked my bike at Fort Sumter (and Fort Moultrie) National Historical Park and, finally finding a ferry that operated on the day I was there, enjoyed the foggy, 40 minute boat ride to Fort Sumter at the mouth of Charleston Harbor.
I enjoyed learning more about Fort Sumter to supplement my long ago . For example, when South Carolina militias fired on Fort Sumter, local citizens came out to watch the bombardment and were openly optimistic about defeating the Union. Outgunned and outmanned, the Union forces surrendered after less than 48 hours, so Charlestonians’ optimism was not unwarranted.
What I found even more interesting was that, stung by their initial defeat, the Union tried mightily to take back Fort Sumter throughout the war. Yet the Confederate garrison held out against perpetual bombardment, an attack by ironclad Union ships, and a failed Normandy-style amphibian invasion. For 2 years! Over the years, Union cannons blasted the fort walls into rubble but the Confederates inside never surrendered the Fort.2
That is some serious tenacity.
Positive? For the Confederacy, I suppose. But negative for the Union and its leaders who failed to take the fort back. Maybe I should report it.
Putting silly signs aside, here’s something great that happened at Fort Sumter. At the end of our visit, the park ranger invited anyone who wanted to assist in lowering and folding the 19th century era 33 star U.S. flag flying over the fort. A bunch of Americans and a few non-Americans enthusiastically took the chance to respectfully fold our flag.
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- I would like to say I’ve never been to an NPS site that wasn’t worthwhile and that includes some pretty minor spots that I nevertheless enjoyed and learned something from. But there are a handful where I deem the reason for their existence tenuous indeed. At the top of that small handful I always list Fort Necessity National Battlefield (NB) in rural southwest Pennsylvania.
You haven’t heard of Fort Necessity? Well, shame on you. It marks the site of a 1753 skirmish in the confusingly named and always hard to grasp French and Indian War. The site of course talks the battle up, but it was not a key battle. It was barely a battle. And it wasn’t even a victory. The British forces of mostly Virginia colonials ended up surrendering to the French, who promptly burned the short-lived Fort Necessity down.
There are no traces of the fort or much of anything else today. As a result, a visitor can pretty much see everything there is to see in the visitor center and the re-created stockyard fort – a circle of long sticks in the woods – in like 30 minutes. Maybe an hour if you watch the movie and use the bathroom.
So why does the NPS bother to mark this site? I can only assume it’s because the leader of the defeated British forces happened to be a young, up-and-coming Virginia colonial named George Washington. Though I doubt that future “Father of the Country” Washington would like to be remembered for this event.
Here’s the kicker though, and why I put Fort Necessity at the top of my short “I hate to say it, but this NPS site is only worth a visit if you are literally driving by” list: Most NPS sites, and especially the smaller ones, don’t charge visitor fees. So a minor league NPS site like Fort Necessity NB would normally never charge a fee.
But imagine our surprise as we pulled up to visit – just so I could get a stamp, of course – and the park ranger charged us $15 for our car, just like we would pay at Shenandoah NP, Everglades NP, Olympic NP – large, spectacular pieces of our country you could explore for days, if not weeks, if one so desired.
Of course I complained and (politely!) asked the nice ranger why we had to pay and, if so, why so much? Wouldn’t $5 be plenty?
“Well, it’s a good value because your visitor pass is good for seven days.”
Mrs. Anysecondnow and I still laugh about this. What an experience we passed up! We could have found a motel somewhere in rural southwest PA and then come back tomorrow to spend another half-hour at Fort Necessity NB. And then do it again the next day. What a deal.
↩︎ - Though they never formally surrendered Fort Sumter to the Union, Confederate forces later withdrew from their positions with the approach of Sherman’s army in 1864. ↩︎
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