National Park Service

Eric Melby lost a good friend Feb. 2. The saddest thing is, the friend didn't have to die. Eric's office overlooks Farragut Square, and for the 15 years he's worked at the Scowcroft Group, a consulting company, he's gazed down upon a majestic ginkgo tree. An oasis of shade in the summertime, adorned with brilliant yellow leaves in the fall, the ginkgo — at least 140 years old, possibly older — was a familiar sight to all who passed through the downtown park. Then, a little more than a week ago,...

Thursday, MAY 30 Historic books lecture, Kluge Fellow Ilaria Andreoli discusses illustrated books of the 15th and 16th centuries. Noon, Library of Congress, Jefferson Building, 10 First St. SE. Free. 202-707-3302. Overtures Chamber Music Project, "Tamaki Kawakubo and Friends" perform. 6 p.m., Kennedy Center, Millennium Stage, 2700 F St. NW. Free. 202-467-4600. Cathedral gargoyle tour, a docent shows slides of the building's whimsical stone gargoyles and grotesques, followed by an outdoor tour; binoculars and...

With a silky afternoon mist falling on Fort Dupont Park in Southeast Washington, the band takes the Summer Theatre stage for sound check. The procedural thump of the kick drum seems to flush dragonflies out from the neighboring tree line, oaks and maples. Up the hill, different sounds. Ice sloshing around Igloo coolers. Two-liter bottles of Pepsi hissing open. Plastic forks rattling out of their boxes. It's 3 p.m. and a dozen or so have arrived early enough to claim their spots on the sloping lawn.

Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Independence Day and other national holidays remind us of the great sacrifices made for our nation. Year-round, but especially during the holidays and summer, many people visit monuments, memorials and cemeteries to pay their respects. Of course, someone has to be responsible for maintaining these beautiful and inspiring testaments to service. Here are some of the dedicated agencies that keep our memorials, monuments and cemeteries operating. If you are passionate about our nation's...

Occupy D.C. protesters spent Monday night huddled under the celestial sweep of a blue tarp they had erected in McPherson Square, talking, singing and, yes, sleeping — in defiance of rules that prohibit overnight camping in the park. As morning dawned Tuesday, a contingent of Park Police arrived to ask the protesters to remove the "Tent of Dreams" they had draped over the park's statue of Civil War Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson in an act of civil disobedience, marking their displeasure over...

The front door of the old rowhouse on Ninth Street NW needs a shove to get it free, and it creaks as Joy G. Kinard slowly pushes it open. Except for its ghosts, it's empty inside. Part of the hallway ceiling has come down, and the paint on the spiral staircase is flaking off. A rear wall is held up with steel girders, and, out front, the "National Historic Landmark" plaque is dirty and faded. But as Kinard, of the National Park Service, enters, the story of Carter G. Woodson's...

Summer's in full swing, and unless your family is rather Romney -esque , there's a chance you'll be spending some time in one of the country's hundreds of national parks. Which makes it a good time to chat with Jonathan Jarvis , the head of the National Park Service . The Park Service oversees about 84 million acres of land, from Alaska to the Virgin Islands. The former ranger tells the Loop about his secret talents (the man knows his way around a dovetail joint)

THE DEDICATION OF the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial was a beautiful and proud moment for the United States. Now Americans will begin the process of getting to know their newest monument, visiting by day and night, meditating on the words carved in stone. We hope before that process goes much further, though, a meaningful flaw in the monument will be fixed. As we've noted before , one King quotation has been paraphrased to the point of total distortion. A spokesman for the...

I can tell you where almost every monument is. There's over 200. It's kind of all in my head, but we also have a database. It includes all of the structures, both monuments and architectural features, buildings — anything that's a built feature. That gets reviewed every five or six years to determine the condition of something. And if we find that the condition is fair, that becomes a priority to work on it to make it good. After having been in the field...

It was the biggest battle of the war, unequaled in scale and violence by anything seen before or since on this continent. Two immense armies collided in the fields and orchards and woods around Gettysburg, Pa., on July 1, 1863, and fought for three days, full-bore, no quarter given, a massive smash-up that was arguably the pivotal moment of the great conflict that sits at the heart of American history. Abraham Lincoln called what happened in Gettysburg "a new birth of freedom," a phrase that chiseled its way into our...

If anyone was likely to end up on the losing end of Washington's budget-cutting sequester, it was the U.S. Park Police. The tiny force of 641 sworn officers, who patrol national parkland and monuments in the Washington area, New York City and San Francisco, has a part-time lobbyist. The only member of Congress inclined to fight for their interests doesn't have a vote. The police are resigned to being mistaken for park rangers and District cops. So when everyone from the mounted unit to the chief was...

Furloughs for the U.S. Park Police forced by the budget cuts known as sequestration will end June 1, the National Park Service announced Friday, because the agency was able to find other savings. "We're ending the furloughs," Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said in an interview, a month after the force of 747 sworn officers and support staff members in three cities began staying home one day per pay period in order to take 12 to 14 unpaid days off by Sept. 30. "We have resolved this within the Park Police budget.

Historic Civil War parkland slotted for a controversial new parkway that would connect the counties of Prince William and Loudoun has made the "endangered" list of one of the oldest non-profit preservation organizations in the country. Preservation Virginia , founded in 1889, focuses on the preservation of historic sites around the state, including Jamestown and the Cape Henry Lighthouse in Virginia Beach. For the first time, the group included land slated for the proposed...

The front door of the old rowhouse on Ninth Street NW needs a shove to get it free, and it creaks as Joy G. Kinard slowly pushes it open. Except for its ghosts, it's empty inside. Part of the hallway ceiling has come down, and the paint on the spiral staircase is flaking off. A rear wall is held up with steel girders, and, out front, the "National Historic Landmark" plaque is dirty and faded. But as Kinard, of the National Park Service, enters, the story of Carter G. Woodson's...

It was the biggest battle of the war, unequaled in scale and violence by anything seen before or since on this continent. Two immense armies collided in the fields and orchards and woods around Gettysburg, Pa., on July 1, 1863, and fought for three days, full-bore, no quarter given, a massive smash-up that was arguably the pivotal moment of the great conflict that sits at the heart of American history. Abraham Lincoln called what happened in Gettysburg "a new birth of freedom," a phrase that chiseled its way into our...

In 1988, Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas pleaded with his colleagues to pass legislation that would prevent a new shopping mall on land integral to the Second Battle of Manassas. He imagined a future in which ever more commercial development encroached on land preserved by the National Park Service, eating up the fragile buffer between the modern world and the carefully preserved 19th-century landscape that memorializes two bloody battles. "I can see a big, granite monument inside...

Repair of the earthquake-damaged Washington Monument will be a complex project that could require some kind of external scaffolding as well as months of work that will probably keep the monument closed until 2013. National Park Service officials detailed some preliminary work plans Thursday as they announced a private donation of $7.5 million toward the project. The federal government is paying the rest of the estimated $15 million tab . The 555-foot-tall monument, which is entered by about 600,000 visitors each...

Historic Civil War parkland slotted for a controversial new parkway that would connect the counties of Prince William and Loudoun has made the "endangered" list of one of the oldest non-profit preservation organizations in the country. Preservation Virginia , founded in 1889, focuses on the preservation of historic sites around the state, including Jamestown and the Cape Henry Lighthouse in Virginia Beach. For the first time, the group included land slated for the...

Bob Sonderman Acting regional curator/director, Museum Resource Center, ­National Park Service Best known for: Sonderman is the steward of treasures from Civil War battlefields, historic homes and other sites administered by the National Park Service in the Washington area. At the Museum Resource Center in Landover, Sonderman catalogues and protects about 2.5 million artifacts not on public display because a particular site may have rotated its exhibits, has more objects than it can put on view, has no place to store them properly or is...