A Brief History: Prince William Forest Park & NatureBridge

In 1935 the Resettlement Administration went to work to relocate struggling farmers on the arid Chopawamsic land. The Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA), programs supplying unemployed men with work, transformed the farmland for recreational use and set to work building five cabin camps by hand from the local timber. In 1936, their labor came to fruition as Chopawamsic accepted its first campers from Washington, DC. 
 
During Chopawamsic’s inception, National Park Service Associate Director Conrad Wirth advocated for the camps to be unsegregated, in line with both the National Park Service’s non-discrimination policy of the time and Secretary of the Interior Harold Icke’s declaration that:

Chopawamsic, however, was part of NPS Region I headed by Minor Tillotson who argued that:
 
"Long-standing attitudes and customs of the people, which require, as a fundamental, that recreational areas and facilities for the two races be kept entirely separated."
 
Deference was paid to local Virginian custom and the camps were segregated—Camps One and Four became known as African American camps and Camps Two, Three and Five as white camps. 
 
In 1938, Cabin Camp One became the home of the Twelfth Street YMCA summer camp. Founded in 1853, the Twelfth Street YMCA, also known for its founder as the Anthony Bowen YMCA, was the oldest African American YMCA in the country. The photo above on the left captures those African American campers saluting a flag under which their rights were considered separate but not equal. 
 
Seventy-four years later students from Rippon Middle School visting the park on a NatureBridge environmental science program noticed the 1938 photograph hanging in the Cabin One dining hall. Curious about its history and encouraged to explore its meaning, the students endeavored to recreate it, this time integrated. The photograph above captures them standing proudly side-by-side beneath the same flagpole with Jon Jarvis, the Director of the National Park Service.
 
NatureBridge opened its doors at Cabin Camp One in Prince William Forest Park in 2012, its 6th national park campus. Today, through outdoor environmental science education programs, NatureBridge serves 1,500 Washington, DC area public school students in Prince William Forest annually. 100% of schools that attend receive scholarship support.
 
Roosevelt set out to provide inner city youth with the opportunity to explore the natural world. Today NatureBridge continues and grows that vision in service of the health of our youth and of the natural world.