Calvert, Park Service Deal To Help Promote Smith Trail

Calvert County has joined with the National Park Service to help support the Capt. John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail to promote the area's history while helping to protect the Chesapeake Bay.

The trail, which Congress established in 2006, follows Smith's voyages from 1607 to 1609 along 3,000 miles in the bay and its tributaries.

The Calvert Board of County Commissioners signed agreements to allow water access and support services at six locations, including the Calvert Marine Museum, Battle Creek Cypress Swamp Sanctuary and Flag Ponds Nature Park. The agreements include the possibility for future grant funding through the first nationally designated water trail.

"It sounds like a win-win to me," Commissioner Susan Shaw (R-Huntingtown) said at the board's regular Tuesday meeting.

The National Park Service aims to educate the public on what Smith and his crew might have seen, the Native American cultures he met and the history of the Chesapeake Bay, said Jeff Winstel, the water trail's program manager with the agency.

The water trail will mark a "seminal event in history," the creation of Jamestown and its residents' survival, Winstel told commissioners. The trail should tell the natural and ecological history of the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary, he said.

The trail has 96 agreements in place, not including those being signed by Calvert, Winstel said. Many of them are with members of the Chesapeake Gateway Program, which focuses on assisting local efforts to promote water activities and education. Some partners are featured along the Star-Spangled Banner Trail, which focuses on War of 1812 sites, such as Jefferson Patterson Park. In addition, about 17 Native American tribes and organizations are participating in the development of the water trail.

"We rely on these agreements . . . to help us implement and manage the trail," Winstel said.

As the trail and its programming develop, grant funding is being sought.

"There is money coming through Congress now, but it isn't appropriated," commissioners President Wilson H. Parran (D-Huntingtown) said. The county has received thousands of dollars for participating in the Gateway Program, he said.

One opportunity is the Chesapeake Bay Executive Order that President Obama signed in May, recognizing the bay as a national treasure. The order asks several federal organizations, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Park Service, "to look at ways that they could advance cleaning up the bay and increase resource protection and public access," Winstel said. The order specifically references the Smith trail, the Star-Spangled Banner trail and the Gateways network, he said.

"There are a lot of activities going on that could help advance these trail initiatives and could potentially help us get funding to work with partners to fully develop the trails and protect the bay," he said.

The Park Service is creating a management plan and environmental assessment, both are requirements of the National Trails System Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, respectively. The plans would explain the purpose of the trail while identifying the significant places and stories that should be included in the entire experience.

The Park Service is exploring land-based tours, boat tours and kayaking routes. The developing plan includes how the trail will be marked, such as by an informational buoy system and online mapping, and where boat launch sites are.

"We want people to come to the workshops to tell us what they want the trail to be," Winstel said.

The plan for the trail is to be completed by May, with a public comment period in January. The next public workshop to help define the trail and its purpose will be Oct. 14 in Annapolis.