National Park Service

The solid wood beams supporting the new pale green metal roof over the late Nancy Smith's 19th-century Blandair mansion in east Columbia are better than new. "White oak will just last forever, if it's old timber," said Chris McGuigan, the National Park Service's project manager on the $1.6 million restoration project - the first phase of a $14 million project to convert the overgrown farm into a park. That's why the Park Service used wood from old barns - white oak and pine that came from old-growth trees.

VIENNA -- For Mayor Russell Brinsfield and Chief Sewell Fitzhugh, the event yesterday was more than a celebration of the history of this little village along the Nanticoke River. If things go as the pair plans, the daylong commemoration of Capt. John Smith's 1,500-mile trek around the bay in 1608 could be a first step toward making Vienna a tourist stop along the National Park Service's first water trail. "We're looking for ways to make the town a destination," Brinsfield said. "We don't want our town turning into some huge tourist thing, but we're testing the waters to see what's possible in terms of some sort of historical and environmental center, something that would include a Native American heritage center.

Orange construction netting surrounds the 18th-century mansion. Plaster dust has crumbled to the floors in the once-stately rooms. Paint is peeling on the grand exterior doors and along the handcrafted moldings. But still, Greg McGuire has something to show off. The crews are more than half-done with the renovations to the Georgian mansion at the Hampton National Historic Site, says McGuire, the facilities manager, as he surveys the drilling through a second-floor ceiling. A new air conditioning and heating system is being installed, and cosmetic repairs are to follow, as part of the $1.6 million project.

Maryland's most legendary woman was admired by presidents and poets, had her image on two postage stamps and her life story celebrated in song by Woody Guthrie, but she never received the respect she deserves in her native state. Finally, more than 150 years after the self-emancipated Eastern Shore-born Harriet Tubman helped lead hundreds of slaves out of bondage on the Underground Railroad, efforts are under way to see that the woman known as the African-American Moses receives her due. It's been a long time in coming.

Assateague State Park, famous for its wild ponies, is being overrun by another small, hoofed animal that is eating the plants that hold back beach erosion: sika deer. To save vegetation, state wildlife managers want to whittle the population through an archery-only hunting season from Nov. 13 to Jan. 31. "We've got to do something out there," said Paul Peditto, director of the Wildlife and Heritage Service of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. "Assateague is a unique and valuable resource, and it would be irresponsible to stand by and let it be eaten alive."

A friend called to report that the Nobska, the venerable New England coastal steamer that for a time was an Inner Harbor restaurant during the 1970s, was broken up last month at the old Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. The ship's scrapping marked an end to the more than 30-year preservation effort of the New England Steamship Foundation - originally founded in 1975 as the Friends of the Nobska - to save the historic ship. For 48 years, the classic white-and-black vessel with its straight bows, tall buff-colored funnel and ear-piercing steam whistle, steamed back and forth across Nantucket Sound, transporting freight, automobiles and generations of vacation-bound passengers to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard from the mainland.

Rene Laya, Dale Lupton and Scott Jones sat on scaffolding in the steamy sunshine dozens of feet above the ground, carefully removing bricks from a roof cornice built a century and a half ago for a place called Blandair. It is careful, tedious, sweaty work, peeling back the layers of history to prepare for a $1.8 million restoration of the late Elizabeth Smith's once jealously guarded home. The men work for the National Park Service's Historic Preservation Training Center, based in Frederick, and their efforts have begun the transformation of a secluded, rundown farm into a 300-acre park intended to be a new jewel in Columbia.

A survey conducted by a group of retired National Park Service employees concludes that strained budgets have made the national parks less safe for visitors and have left wildlife, historic and cultural resources less protected. The survey found that staffing reductions have eliminated back-country patrols, lengthened emergency response times and decreased monitoring of protected species and park resources. "This is not just about some more litter and some outhouses being locked. This has now escalated to visitor safety," said Bill Wade, a former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park and now an official with the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, which conducted the survey of 37 of the largest parks.

CUMBERLAND -- Water will soon flow again in a section of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal here, decades after the industrial age tromped through and the big trench was filled with dirt and vanished altogether. Progress lately marches in Teva sandals and Reeboks in a city hoping to lure tourists to the waterside. The brand name for this end of the historic 184 1/2 -mile C&O course is "Canal Place," the sort of urban reclamation project familiar to anyone who knows Camden Yards, Harborplace or Faneuil Hall.

In 1608, Capt. John Smith and a couple dozen hardy souls left Jamestown in an open shallop and paddled up the Chesapeake Bay. Though they never found a river route to the Pacific, they did discover a waterway flush with vibrant native peoples and packed with enough crabs and oysters to erase memories of a starving colony back home. Nearly 400 years later, Smith's route -- all 3,000 miles of it -- could be on its way to becoming the nation's first national water trail. The U.S. senators from Maryland, Virginia and Delaware have introduced legislation to create the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes announced yesterday.