National Park Service

NEW YORK - It was known as "the sad side" of Ellis Island. Just south of the exactingly restored main immigration building, beyond the ferry slip, a chain-link fence and a "Danger" sign, lies a crumbling, abandoned hospital campus where immigrants too sick to be allowed entry were sent to recover, or to die.Decades after the last patient was treated, the sealed-off cluster of 27 buildings is decaying into rubble, according to preservationists in New York,...

WEST ORANGE, N.J. -- If Thomas Edison could have foreseen the future, he might have invented a way to preserve his legacy.As it is, historians and archivists are trying to protect the works of America's greatest inventor from time and the elements.The Edison National Historic Site in West Orange holds the largest collection of the inventor's materials: 5.4 million artifacts, from the first phonograph to the patent for the incandescent light bulb. Edison consolidated his operations here in 1887 after he outgrew his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J., and tired of commuting to his New York City headquarters.

BISCAYNE BAY, Fla. -- It's just after 6 p.m. on a Thursday, and while the rest of Miami descends into traffic hell on U.S. 1 or the Palmetto Expressway, Chris Knight glides toward his little yellow house in the bay.Above him, the sky glows orange, on the edge of twilight.Underneath, the sea goes from green to blue to where you can see the stingrays flapping their wings and sharks grazing the sea grass. Pelicans and cormorants skim the water. Suddenly, on the horizon, a stand of old fishing cabins rises on stilts out of Biscayne Bay. Knight points.

The National Park Service has announced that it no longer needs to furlough U.S. Park Police. The announcement came after Park Police officers — who patrol the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and several sites in Maryland — had served three of 14 planned furlough days. The National Park Service said savings from those three unpaid days off, combined with other cost-cutting measures and a thorough review of the budget, have "significantly improved" the agency's financial situation and made it possible to end the furloughs for the rest of the fiscal year.

After reading this week's criticism of how the National Park Service and the Fort McHenry administration have been dealing with the constraints of sequestration, I would remind critics that despite the site's obvious attraction to runners, walkers and others, Fort McHenry is not primarily a recreational site ("Fort McHenry bungles the sequester," June 5). It is instead one of the most important historical and educational centers in the nation, and those charged with its stewardship work very hard to provide living history at the only officially designated Historic Shrine among the nation's 401 national parks and monuments.

1913: Harriet Tubman dies1916: National Park Service born1918: Daily airmail, D.C.-N.Y1919: WWI death toll: 14 million

Couple convicted of taking artifactsFREDERICK -- A Virginia couple has been convicted of removing relics from the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park in southern Frederick County.Brian R. Bader, 37, and Christine A. Bader, 42, of Banco, Va., both pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Donald Beachley to one count each of violating the Architectural Resources Protection Act.The couple has been fined $200, placed on one year of unsupervised probation, ordered to pay $1,400 restitution to the National Park Service and ordered to forfeit several pieces of equipment they used to find artifacts in November 1993.

It's summer again and the new hours for Fort McHenry were posted on the fort's gate, and guess what? The hours are from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Does that surprise anyone? It does me. Last year's hours were from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. I inquired why the significant change, and I got the infamous word, "sequestration. " That answer is nonsense. This is the National Park Service's way of attempting to show the public how hard it is living with slightly less money. A 5 percent cut in the budget shouldn't mean a reduction of three out of 12 hours, or one-quarter less public access to Fort McHenry.

Mary Pat will set a nonstop running pace that will test Kurt's claims to have been an athlete.Dole plans to be funnier in his next presidential campaign, and younger.As part of down-sizing, the National Park Service proposes to build a major museum at Gettysburg.Israel and the PLO agree to agree, but can't agree.

It was not exactly a groundbreaking decision. In fact, forensic scientist James Starrs calls it "buncombe."Yesterday, Starrs had his long-standing request to dig up the remains of the 19th-century explorer Meriwether Lewis turned down by the National Park Service.Starrs, a George Washington University professor who has exhumed historical figures from Jesse James to Alferd Packer, the Colorado cannibal, believes the remains can resolve the question of whether the 1809 death of Lewis on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee was murder or suicide.