NATIONAL MONUMENT AND NATIONAL SEASHORE

A recent letter of Associate Director A. E. Demaray to Marion T. Gaines, editor of The Pensacola (Florida) News-Journal, points out the principal difference between a national seashore and a national monument and explains the opportunities for public service which are afforded by the establishment in May of Santa Rosa Island National Monument (see The Regional Review, Vol. II, No. 6, p. 20). The letter said, in part:

The difference between a national monument, such as Santa Rosa Island, and a national seashore, such as we have in project status at Cape Hatteras, is largely a matter of size. They will both be administered under the same laws, rules and regulations. In Santa Rosa Island National Monument, the public has the smallest area acceptable for administration by this Service in that vicinity, it being just large enough to represent the barrier reef type of land building on a scale of national geological importance. It fits the national monument classification exactly under the law providing for national monument establishment. If a considerably larger section of the coastal region were offered, however, a correspondingly greater development for public benefit and enjoyment could be made, because the area would then be large enough to cover a greater variety of recreational and scientific interests. Such a project would fit the national seashore classification, just as the Cape Hatteras National Seashore project does. It would, we feel, prove a distinct advantage to Florida and the Nation as a whole in the same sense that the Cape Hatteras area, and the Grand Canyon National Park, the Yellowstone, Great Smoky Mountains and all the other national park system areas are advantageous to the local people and the Nation as a whole.

KENNESAW MOUNTAIN AREA DEDICATED

Dual exercises which commemorated the 75th Anniversary of the battle of Kennesaw Mountain, near Marietta, Georgia, and dedicated formally the National Battlefield Park as a new unit of the Service system, were held June 25 in the presence of distinguished visitors. The principal address was made by Ralph McGill, executive editor of The Atlanta Constitution.

Dedication of the park followed acquisition of all land required to comprise minimum boundaries. Owners and tenants already have vacated the property and all save one undesirable structure has been razed. With preliminary operations thus completed, the major development program now will be undertaken. Bollig C. Yates is the superintendent.

OCMULGEE TO BE HOST TO ARCHEOLOGISTS

About 40 members of the Southeastern Archeological Conference, at a meeting held in Birmingham late in June, voted to gather for its next session, sometime between November 1 and December 15, at Ocmulgee National Monument, notable prehistoric area at Macon, Georgia. An outstanding result of the recent meeting is a plan to correlate the relative chronological relationships of the various culture sequences already determined for restricted areas of the southeast. A tentative correlation sheet will be issued soon.

Field Curator John C. Ewers, the acting Superintendent of Ocmulgee, has reported meanwhile that 48,900 sherds and artifacts from 10 monument sites were catalogued during the fiscal year just ended. "This virtually completed the numbering of the nearly one million sherds in the monument collections," he pointed out. "With this work completed it is expected to begin large scale analysis in the near future."

FORT McHENRY AGAIN BOMBARDED

While the cruiser Vincennes looked on, the destroyers Leahy, Schenck, and Truxton fired a spectacular barrage of six-foot rockets on old Fort McHenry on the night of June 25 while that national park was being "defended" by the 110th U. S. Field Artillery. The informal celebration, sponsored by the Maryland Yacht Club, reached a climax with the raising of a spot-lighted flag while a band played The Star Spangled Banner, the song composed 125 years ago at nearly Old Roads Bay by Francis Scott Key.

Meanwhile, Congress had not taken final action on a proposal to change the name of the famous Baltimore area from Fort McHenry National Military Park to Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, a redesignation requested as one feature in the standardization of the Service's classification nomenclature.