Historic Preservation and Maintenance

Historic Preservation and Maintenance. Prince William Forest Park. , The Great Depression of the 1930s changed America and helped shape many National Park Service sites. Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area, later named Prince William Forest Park, was created under President Roosevelt's New Deal programs in 1936. The federal government purchased land near Dumfries, Virginia, and established five cabin camps for outdoor recreation. Hundreds of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers constructed the camps using local materials and traditional building techniques. Most of the camps and buildings are now listed in the National Register of Historic Places., For the cabin roofs, the CCC applied hand-split pine and cedar shakes. The wood for the shakes was readily available on-site, and the wooden roofs complimented the rustic look of the camps. By the 1940s, these wooden roofs began to show significant deterioration, requiring frequent and costly maintenance. Over the next several decades, the wooden shake roofs were replaced with asphalt shingle roofs, which had a longer life span and required less maintenance. This replacement decision affected the rustic appearance of all 226 buildings in the cabin camps., In 2010, park management began researching other options for roofing material. The park considered reinstalling hand-split wood shakes, which are the most authentic roofing material, but also the most expensive and least hardy. Instead, the park decided to use "shake-like" composite shingles. The composite shingles are less expensive, use sustainable products, last more than 50 years, and appear similar to the original wood shakes, unlike asphalt shingles. The park continues to explore ways to reach the ideal balance between historic integrity and fiscal practicality in the CCC cabin camps.