NATIONAL PARK SERVICE THAT THE PAST SHALL LIVE... the history program of the National Park Service

WITH preservation of the Union assured, Americans could again turn their energies to the building of a great and powerful nation.

The story of the years after the Civil War through the balance of the 19th century and continuing up until the present day is one of the rugged and determined growth of commerce and industry; of science and invention; of the continued development of the arts and sciences.

Each facet of this growth, as all other phases of the colorful history of America, is commemorated and kept alive in units of the National Park System.

At Hopewell Village National Historic Site near Reading, Pennsylvania, one can visit an early American iron-making community which was established about 1770 and survived bitter competition for more than a century. Although some of the buildings have disappeared, Hopewell Furnace, standing almost in the center of the village, remains, together with the Big House or ironmaster's residence, the spring house, the blacksmith shop, the charcoal storage house, and several tenant houses. These structures give an excellent picture of a compact semi-feudal industrial village, more or less self-sufficient, where the people lived at their place of employment.

The Vanderbilt Mansion at Hyde Park, New York, one of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance architecture in the United States, typifies the great estates built by wealthy industrialists, merchants, and financiers in the period of rapid accumulation of huge fortunes between 1865 and 1900. As such, it illustrates an important phase of social history, and has been aptly called a "monument to an era."

Great moments in American architecture are commemorated, too, in other sites throughout the System, paying fitting tribute to the men who left behind unforgettable monuments to their creative genius in our public buildings and our private dwelling places. There is, for instance, the Old Philadelphia Custom House which preserves in its historic mass a remarkable example of Greek revival architecture in a public structure. And another of the nation's monuments to architecture is Hampton, one of the great post-Revolution mansions of America. Erected in the period between 1783 and 1790 on the outskirts of what is now the city of Baltimore, this great residence, which served for 158 years as the home of the prominent Ridgely family of Maryland, portrays as well as any other structure known the qualities of formal charm and elegance typical of the late Georgian style of architecture.

Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Kill Devil Hill National Memorial marks the site where Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first successful power-driven airplane flight; and at Edison Laboratory National Monument in West Orange, New Jersey, are preserved the original buildings which Thomas Alva Edison erected in the summer of 1887 to prove that organized inventive research is practicable, thus establishing a prototype for the great industrial laboratories that serve the world today.

Great events—political, military, religious, scientific, economic—are woven together into the history of America.

But equally important in the story of this nation are the great men who shaped its destiny.

In the historical units of the National Park System, these men are not left unnoticed and unsung.

An inspiring list of sites and shrines keeps the memory of the nation's great heroes permanently illuminated in our minds and hearts, reminding us forever of the courage, the wisdom, the valor, and the superb qualities of human understanding and compassion which set these men apart from others in the building and preserving of our sacred heritage.

Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson—known to every schoolchild are the imposing monuments to these immortals in the nation's capital. Almost equally familiar are the George Washington Birthplace National Monument, commemorating this incomparable leader with a memorial mansion at his birthplace in Virginia; Abraham Lincoln National Historical Park in Kentucky, including a memorial building which houses at the birthplace site the traditional log cabin in which Lincoln was born; the Lincoln Museum (Ford's Theater), Washington, D. C., where Lincoln was assassinated; the House Where Lincoln Died, also in the capital; and the Lee Mansion, the stately home of the great Confederate general, on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, overlooking the city of Washington.

Here—at the solemn shrines to the men whose names have come ringing down through the centuries—we conclude our brief journey through the stirring pages of American history.

We have glimpsed some of the highlights of our past and been caught up in the exciting events of other days and other times—sharing in the victories and tragedies, the bitter hardships and the glorious triumphs of the men who created America and made it great.

This, then, is the story of America as told in the historical areas of the National Park System. Actually, only a part of it, as we did not begin to visit all of the hallowed sites and shrines.

But those who make the journey cannot escape experiencing a sense of having been renewed; a sense of rightness—and of indestructible permanence; a sense of having seen and touched and drawn strength from the unshakeable foundations of our way of life.

Our historic sites and shrines represent a rich portion of the heritage of every American. They are as much a part of the fabric of America as our nation's great scenic places, its wilderness areas, its factories, mineral resources, schools, libraries, forests—and even democracy itself.

The appreciation and preservation of this heritage is the opportunity and the privilege of every citizen.