Historic Preservation and Maintenance

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration Area, later named Prince William Forest Park, was created in 1936 under President Roosevelt's New Deal programs on federally purchased land near Dumfries, Virginia. Hundreds of Civilian Conservation Corps workers built five cabin camps for outdoor recreation using local materials and traditional building techniques, and most of those camps and buildings are now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Civilian Conservation Corps used hand-split pine and cedar shakes for the cabin roofs because the wood was available on-site and fit the camps' rustic appearance, but by the 1940s the wooden roofs had deteriorated enough to require frequent and costly maintenance. Over the following decades, the wooden shake roofs were replaced with longer-lasting asphalt shingle roofs, a change that altered the rustic appearance of all 226 buildings in the cabin camps. In 2010, park management began researching other roofing options and, rather than reinstalling hand-split wood shakes, chose shake-like composite shingles because they were less expensive, made from sustainable products, lasted more than 50 years, and looked more like the original wood shakes than asphalt shingles. The park continues to seek a balance between historic integrity and fiscal practicality in the Civilian Conservation Corps cabin camps.

Dumfries, Virginia · United States