From Wilderness Road, which helps visitors envision living on Virginia’s frontier in the 18th century, to False Cape, between the Back Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, Virginia’s state parks are a marvel to behold.
The newest addition, Machicomoco State Park in Gloucester County, was formally commemorated this month, making it the 40th park in the state system and the first focused on the story of the native people who populated these lands before the arrival of European settlers.
The commonwealth owes a debt to those who created the state park system and who worked over the years to protect and preserve land for public use and enjoyment. And we can repay it by defending these precious spaces so that future generations can similarly come to know their beauty.
Today is Earth Day and there will be plenty of talk about the need to embrace less-intrusive, greener living. That is a valuable message to hear and an even better way to live. The mantra of “reduce, reuse and recycle” helps reduce waste and promote sustainability, which are critically important to protecting the environment.
Personal decisions have the power to improve our community and our commonwealth. Virginians can use less energy at home, utilize mass transit options more frequently and strive to leave a smaller footprint on our natural world.
By working together, however, those efforts are multiplied. And there may be no better example of how to protect the environment in a way that improves our quality of life than our national, state and local parks.
“There is nothing so American as our national parks,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said. “The fundamental idea … is that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.”
The national park system can be traced to the 19th century, when Congress used land from the territories of Montana and Wyoming to establish Yellowstone National Park. An arch that welcomes visitors there, named for President Theodore Roosevelt, declares simply “for the betterment and enjoyment of the people.”
The parks that followed — the National Park Service lists some 423 sites in the United States, encompassing more than 84 million acres — helped bolster and expand the opportunity for betterment and enjoyment. These are American treasures, unspoiled and open to all.
The Virginia park system began more recently, in 1936, when the commonwealth designated six parks for public use. According to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, which manages the land, the goal was to preserve parkland within an hour’s drive for most residents.
In Hampton Roads, those include False Cape and First Landing in Virginia Beach, Chippokes Plantation in Surry, Kiptopeke in Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore, York River in Williamsburg, and now Machicomoco, which was dedicated on Friday.
The new park is a historic accomplishment. It utilizes land that was once an outpost to the home of Pocahontas and her father Chief Powhatan and puts Virginia’s native people front and center, attempting to tell their story accurately and sensitively.
“Never, in its existence, has the commonwealth designated a site so replete with rich native history as Machicomoco,” Chickahominy Tribal Chief Stephen Adkins told the assembled dignitaries, according to Daily Press reporting. “A site to be a venue for providing the public with experiential interpretations of the many historical and cultural aspects of early indigenous life.”
The new park is about 10 miles from the former village of Werowocomoco, which historians say was central to the Powhatan Confederation. When the first Europeans arrived in 1607, between 14,000-21,000 members of the various Algonquian tribes called the area home.
To protect that land and open it to the public is a gift for the future, just as past state parks were gifted to us to enjoy. Virginia should take pride in its park system and treasure it, recognizing that the preservation of these spaces enriches our commonwealth.
