...pause for a moment to drink in the beauty of the Schuylkill River, where hungry soldiers caught American shad swimming upriver in spring. Engrossed in thought, you come to the top of a small hill, look up, and find yourself facing the brick walls and insulated windows of a ... conference center. And a hotel. And a massive parking lot.

Ridiculous, right? Think again. Barring a successful lawsuit to stop it, a development just like that will be built on a 78-acre parcel of land at Valley Forge National Historical Park that was sold to developers last year.

"You'll see this big, huge parking lot from many points in the park," says Deirdre Gibson, chief of planning and resource management at Valley Forge. "From the land that adjoins it and from the area around the Schuylkill River, you'll be looking down at it. You'll see buildings, you'll see all the lights at night. You'll look at this and wonder how anyone could have ever supported it."

It's precisely the scenario that park rangers and protection groups have worried about for decades, just as funding to acquire private plots or "inholdings" has dried up. Park advocates say more congressional funding of the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is crucial to their preservation efforts. The principal source of funding for parkland acquisition, LWCF has seen a significant decline in congressional appropriations since 2002 and is now little more than a trickle (see chart, page 47). Park preservationists say that boosting funding in the next few years could help save historically critical sections of parks currently threatened by development and help preserve parkland that is vital to wildlife habitat and crucial to its historic character.

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"Most people are surprised...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.




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