NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                               MORNING REPORT

To:         All National Park Service Areas and Offices

From:       Division of Ranger Activities, Washington Office

Day/Date:   Wednesday, February 24, 1999

INCIDENTS

99-55 - Big Bend NP (TX) - Rescue

Rangers received a report that a concession employee was overdue from a hike
late on the evening of Sunday, February 21st.  J.B., 19, had failed to
show up for work that morning.  According to his roommate, J.B. had departed
from his residence in Panther Junction on the 19th for an overnight trip to
Panther Peak, a prominent point overlooking the Panther Junction housing
area.  A search was begun at first light on Monday morning.  At 8:30 a.m.,
ranger/pilot Jim Unruh spotted J.B. a short distance from the mountain's
summit.  Ranger Gary Carver was flown to J.B.'s location by a Border Patrol
helicopter.  J.B. had fractured his ankle while hiking down from the peak on
Saturday, then had crawled to a high spot and waited for rescuers to find
him.  Except for his injury, he was in good condition.  J.B. was evacuated by
helicopter, then taken to a hospital by his parents.  The IC for the incident
was Dave Horne.  [Bill Wright, CR, BIBE, 2/22]

99-56 - Organ Pipe Cactus NM (AZ) - Drug Seizure, Arrest

On February 18th, a county deputy working with a ranger discovered 23.5
pounds of marijuana hidden in the door panel of a vehicle during a traffic
stop associated with an inter-agency narcotics operation.  The driver was
arrested and the vehicle seized.  The vehicle had entered the United States
from Mexico.  Thirteen illegal aliens were also apprehended during the
operation and turned over to the Border Patrol.  [Aniceto L. Olais, CR, ORPI,
2/20]

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND PROTECTION

No entries.

PARK DISPATCHES

No entries.

OPERATIONAL NOTES

National Historic Landmarks - Secretary Babbitt announced the designation of
15 new National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) in nine states last month.  These
newly designated landmarks encompass architectural, Native American, labor,
cultural, community development, geological and archeological sites:

o     Mission Santa Ines, Solvang, California - One of the best preserved
      Spanish mission complexes in the United States, containing an unrivaled
      combination of landscape setting, original buildings, extant
      collections of art and interior furnishings, water-related industrial
      structures and archaeological remains.  

o     F.F. Tomek House, Riverside, Illinois - Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie
      house, constructed in 1907, is recognized by architects and scholars as
      "Wright's greatest invention in this first phase of a long career." 

o     Grosse Point Light Station, Evanston, Illinois - A coastal brick tower
      built on the Great Lakes, Grosse Point Light Station was the lead
      navigational marker in the waters of Lake Michigan just north of
      Chicago Harbor.  The light safely guided lakeborne traffic through one
      of America's most commercially important and highly traveled corridors,
      a shipping route which connected the East Coast, Great Lakes, and Gulf
      Coast shipping interests.  

o     Thomas Point Shoal Light Station, Anne Arundel County, Maryland - The
      last unaltered screwpile, cottage-type lighthouse on its original
      foundation in the United States.  As many as 100 spider-like screwpile
      lighthouses were built throughout the Carolina sounds, the Chesapeake
      Bay, Delaware Bay, along the Gulf of Mexico, and elsewhere. 

o     Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts -Symphony Hall was completed in
      1900 by the nationally celebrated architectural firm of McKim, Mead &
      White as the permanent home for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. 
      Symphony Hall remains, acoustically, among the top three concert halls
      in the world and is considered the finest in the United States.  

o     Chief Plenty Coups (Alek-Chea-Ahoosh) Home, Big Horn County, Montana -
      The homestead of Chief Plenty Coups, one of the last and most
      celebrated traditional chiefs of the Crow Indians, includes his house,
      an adjacent log store operated by the chief, and the Plenty Coups
      Spring, a site of historic and cultural significance to the Crow
      people.  One of the most important Native American leaders of the
      transitional period and an ambassador and negotiator for the Crow,
      Chief Plenty Coups advocated the adoption of those aspects of American
      culture necessary to succeed on the reservation while maintaining
      traditional Crow religious beliefs and cultural values.

o     Fort Corchaug, Cutchogue, New York - Fort Corchaug archeological site
      resources shed light upon historic contact period occupations in an
      area encompassing the whole of eastern Long Island within present-day
      Suffolk County, New York.  One of the best preserved archeological
      locales associated with seventeenth-century Indian life in the North
      Atlantic region, the site has yielded and continues to possess the
      potential to yield significant information capable of providing new
      insights into the initial phases of historic contact on the North
      Atlantic coast.

o     Harmony Mills, Cohoes, New York - From the late 1860s through the
      1880s, the Harmony Mills Company was one of the largest American
      producers of cotton fabric for printed calicoes and fine cotton
      muslins.  Harmony Mill No. 3 was the largest individual cotton factory
      in the world when it was completed in 1872, and was acknowledged as
      representing the state of the art at that time.  

o     Petrified Sea Gardens, Saratoga Springs, New York - Petrified Sea
      Gardens is significant in the history of geology as the area where
      stromatolites were first recognized, described, and interpreted in
      North America, resolving questions about the origin of these organisms
      that puzzled geologists for more than a century.  The property is also
      significant for its association with Winifred Goldring, a pioneering
      woman geologist, who conducted the most exhaustive study of the site.  

o     Bethabara, Winston-Salem, North Carolina - Bethabara was the first
      colonial townsite established in the Carolina Piedmont.  The town was
      intended to be a temporary town from which the central Moravian town of
      Salem and outlying farming communities would be developed within the
      Moravian lands of Wachovia.  However, Bethabara continued in operation
      as a Moravian community long after Salem was established.  Bethabara
      was the only "House of Passage" built by the Moravians at any of their
      colonial settlements in the New World. 

o     Boston Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, Tulsa, Oklahoma - The Boston
      Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church is architecturally significant for
      several reasons - its style, the building materials used, its
      exemplification of a new trend in church design, and its use of
      artistic productions.

o     Guthrie Historic District, Guthrie, Oklahoma - This outstanding
      collection of late nineteen and early twentieth century commercial
      architecture displays the aspirations of the city's founders to create
      a city worthy of the distinction as the first and only territorial
      capital of Oklahoma (from 1890 to 1907) and then as the first state
      capital (from 1907 to 1910).  

o     Bost Building, Homestead, Pennsylvania - During the 1892 strike at the
      Homestead Steel Works, the Bost Building served as the local
      headquarters for the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers
      and as the base for American and British newspaper correspondents
      reporting the events.  The confrontation turned bloody when Pinkerton
      guards approached Homestead on barges in a failed attempt to reclaim
      the Steel Works from the striking workers and their supporters.  The
      Bost Building is the best surviving structure associated with this
      important strike.

o     Friends Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Friends Hospital was the
      first private, nonprofit, exclusively mental hospital in the United
      States and is the oldest continuing such institution.  The hospital's
      design became a model for other American mental facilities

o     John Coltrane House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - This house was the
      home of tenor saxophonist and American jazz pioneer John Coltrane from
      1952 until his death in 1967, including the critical years during which
      he developed his characteristic musical language.  A musician and
      composer, Coltrane is a principle figure in twentieth-century American
      music who played a central role in the development of jazz during the
      1950s and 1960s.  He is also, along with Louis Armstrong and Charlie
      Parker, one of the most influential performing soloists in the history
      of jazz.

If you are interested in further information on any of these sites, contact
historian Patty Henry from WASO National Register, History and Education
(NRHE).  You can also log on to www.nps.gov and click on "Links to the Past."

MEMORANDA

"Servicewide Recruitment Notice - Fire Management Mentoring," signed by the
director on January 14th and mailed to all regions and parks last weekend. 
The full text follows:

"It is acknowledged by the federal wildland firefighting agencies that over
the next 3-7 years there will be a dramatic loss of firefighting personnel,
both within the fire management organizations and within the ranks of those
available for incident response.   In the National Park Service alone, we are
approaching a 50% loss of our mid-to-upper level fire management personnel.  
Within the Department of the Interior, this loss ranges from 22-57% for
Command and General Staff members and Unit Leaders. 

"I am committed to developing our personnel to levels that will provide the
professional capability required to manage our wildland fire management
program, meet our obligations to the interagency community, and provide our
direct involvement with incident management teams.  To accomplish this we are
implementing a Fire Management Mentoring Program.  For your review, the
National Park Service Fire Management Mentoring Program Concept Paper and
Program Brochures are attached [Editor's note: Attached to the memo, but not
to the Morning Report]

"The purpose of the Fire Management Mentoring Program is to facilitate the
development of all our employees, by tapping the knowledge and experience
within the service in a personal, interactive manner.  We will use this
voluntary program to mitigate the loss of organizational knowledge and
institutional memory and to help our employees achieve their fullest
potential.  Although in the long term the program is likely to enhance some
careers, it is explicitly not a career placement program.  As we move into
the 21st century, the mentoring program will help address the issues that the
National Park Service and its employee's face as new generations move into
the work force.

"The basis of this program is to foster mentoring relationships among all NPS
personnel.  There are three types of mentoring: informal, formal, and
supervisory.  Informal and supervisory mentoring occurs constantly throughout
the Service a result of personal and professional relationships.  The program
that we are implementing is formal and voluntary.  It focuses on 
fostering a relationship between two people, one of whom is senior in
experience and skill (the mentor), with the purpose of promoting the growth
and development of the other (the prot,g,) according to a mutually understood
set of goals.  It is a long-term learning process that focuses on more than a
particular professional skill or discipline.  The program capitalizes on
career life experience gained throughout a professional career and passing
that knowledge on to others.

"This program will commence the winter of 1999 with 10 mentors and 10
proteges.  The expected timelines for this program are as follows:

      Application deadline                      March 31, 1999
      Prot,g,/mentor pool match                 April 29, 1999
      Letter to prot,g, with mentor profiles    May 3, 1999
      Prot,g, selection of mentor               May 28, 1999
      Agreements signed/to coordinator          June 11, 1999
      Formal training for prot,g,s/mentors      To be announced
      (2-3 day session)
   
"This program will directly benefit both the Service and the participating
employees. Costs of the Program will be borne by Fire Management. 

"I am committing the Service to this program, and urge all supervisors and
managers to make a similar commitment. 

"For information on the NPS Fire Management Mentoring Program contact:
Bill Adams, Fire Management Mentoring Coordinator, National Park Service,
National Interagency Fire Center, 3833 S. Development Ave., Boise, Idaho
83705-5354, (208) 387-5219."

INTERCHANGE

No entries.

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Prepared by the Division of Ranger Activities, WASO, with the cooperation and
support of Delaware Water Gap NRA.

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