Landscape Management Plan: Fort Smith
Gaines D. 1984. Landscape Management Plan: Fort Smith. Cultural Landscape Management Plans. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
From the establishment of the first Fort Smith on December 25, 1817, to the final days of Judge Isaac C. Parker's jurisdiction over Indian Territory in 1896, Fort Smith National Historic Site preserves almost 80 years of history. Fort Smith displays life on the edge of Indian Territory through the stories of soldiers, the Trail of Tears, outlaws, and the lawmen who pursued them. The Landscape Management Plan (LMP) for Fort Smith National Historic Site is a detailed, comprehensive, and integrated action plan or design blueprint for implementation of the landscape-related elements of the General Management Plan/Development Concept Plan/Interpretive Plan. The LMP will use historic data presented in the 1984 historic landscape study undertaken by contract archeologists Roger Coleman and the late Clyde Dollar. Fort Smith NHS was conceived in 1961 to preserve the original 1817-1824 site of the first Fort Smith on La Belle Point, together with appropriate adjoining property including the Second Fort period’s (1838-1871) Commissary and Barracks. The 1961 park boundary did not include lands where the Second Fort’s five-sided, 12-ft high stone wall once stood and where other outlying fort-related archeological structures are located. Beginning near the end of the Judge Isaac Parker Judicial period (1875-1896) and continuing through the 20th century, urban development, mostly in the form of grid street, railroad lines, and commercial, manufacturing buildings were superimposed, to varying degrees, on what had been the original sites of the First Fort, Second Fort, and Judge Parker Court. The LMP provides a coordinated action plan for implementation of landscape-related GMP/DCP/IP goals and objectives. This plan has been formulated with special attention to National Park Service cultural resources management policies and guidelines, natural resources management practices, principles of landscape architecture, and NPS field management practices and needs. Where problems cannot be dealt with immediately, short-term interim solutions will be provided until long-term measures can be enacted.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Gaines, David
- Date of Issue
- 1984
- Publisher
- U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
- Units
- FOSM , SER
- Keywords
- Arkansas, barracks, commissary, Courtroom, First Fort, flagpoles, fort, Judge Parker Court, La Belle Point, landscape management, military, mixed grasses, plaques, Second Fort, Stone Wall, Topography
- Subjects
- CRIS-CL: 500389: Fort Smith