The C& O Canal Needs Help, Too

The Mall, home to America's most revered monuments and memorials, needs some serious sprucing up, as The Post has reported ["America's Unkempt Front Yard," front page, June 18]. But we shouldn't forget another national treasure that is also under threat from neglect and disrepair: the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. Given its contribution to the Washington region's quality of life, perhaps it's time we recognize it as "Washington's Back Yard" and treat it with the attention and care that such real estate deserves.

Surprisingly few Washingtonians realize that the C&O is a national park, let alone one of America's most heavily used recreation areas. In fact, it receives more visitors every year than Acadia, Everglades, Mount Rushmore, Rocky Mountain, Shenandoah, Yellowstone or Zion national parks. Its enormous popularity -- both with out-of-town visitors and local residents -- is due in large part to the accessibility afforded by its distinctive, ribbon-like configuration. The park stretches for 184.5 miles along the eastern bank of the Potomac River, from Georgetown in Washington to Cumberland, Md., yet in many places it is no more than 50 yards wide.

Most of its 3 million visitors come to enjoy recreational opportunities such as hiking, birdwatching, fishing, cycling, etc. But to view the canal as merely a place to exercise is to miss so much of what makes it unique. From an ecological standpoint, the park is of incalculable value to the health of the Potomac River (the source of most of the region's drinking water) and, by extension, the Chesapeake Bay. After all, the best way to protect the water quality of a river is to protect the land around it, and the park provides a natural buffer along more than half of the entire length of the Maryland side of the Potomac. The park is also home to one of the East Coast's biodiversity hotspots: the Potomac Gorge, which provides habitat to more than 1,500 species, including nearly 200 that are listed as rare, threatened or endangered. The park also has more than 1,300 historic structures in various states of repair. To put this into context, they account for fully 5 percent of all historic structures within the entire national park system.

Sadly, like the Mall and the 390 other units of the national park system, the C&O Canal has been chronically underfunded and -- despite the best efforts of the hard-working and dedicated professionals in the National Park Service -- it often shows. While we applaud the Bush administration's efforts to ramp up funding in advance of the National Park Service's 100th anniversary in 2016, the future of the C&O Canal is ultimately going to be determined by the community of people who depend on the park for their well-being and quality of life.

We all have an obligation to ensure that the C&O Canal's natural, historic and recreational qualities are available for future generations to enjoy. As Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, whose famous hike of the canal in 1954 with editors of The Washington Post helped lead to the establishment of the national park in 1971, said of the C&O, "Our great-grandchildren will bless us if we keep it this way." If we work together, there's no reason we won't be successful. After all, this is our back yard.

-- Matthew Logan

Takoma Park

The writer is president of the C&O Canal Trust.