Valley Forge National Historical Park Natural resource condition assessment

Sherwin, Lysle; Brubaker, Kristen; Sharpe, Peter; Kozak, Justin; May, Melissa; Lashaway, Aubrey; Jensen, Kevin; Gordon, Katherine

Valley Forge National Historical Park is nationally significant as the site of the 1777-78 winter encampment of General George Washington and the Continental Army. The park protects and preserves many significant cultural resources, including cultural landscapes, historic buildings and structures, archeological sites, and archives and collections. The park’s proximity to numerous revolutionary war sites and to Philadelphia, places it at the center of some of the most culturally and historically rich areas in the eastern United States. As development in the area has increased, the park has also gained significance as a refuge for many species of plants and animals, a destination for renewal and recreation, and a place of outstanding natural scenic beauty. The park boundary was established in 1976 by enabling legislation transferring ownership of Valley Forge State Park (the first Pennsylvania State Park created in 1893) from the Commonwealth to the National Park Service. The national park comprises 3,452 acres, including 270 acres of non-federal ownership such as in-holdings, utilities, and roads. Natural resource conditions in Valley Forge National Historical Park (NHP) must be considered within the context of its physiographic location, legislative mission, history, and current management objectives. The park’s mission is to educate the American people about a defining moment in our nation’s history and to preserve the natural and cultural resources that commemorate the Continental Army encampment at Valley Forge in 1777-1778. The park spans portions of Chester and Montgomery Counties and five townships: Schuylkill and Tredyffrin Townships to the west and south in Chester County; and Lower Providence, West Norriton, and Upper Merion Townships to the north and east in Montgomery County. The historic character of the landscape surrounding Valley Forge NHP was a predominant mixture of forest and agricultural lands. However, these lands have been gradually converted to residential, commercial, and industrial uses to meet the needs of the city of Philadelphia and neighboring communities. These landscape scale changes place a greater importance on Valley Forge NHP as a vital nesting, resting, breeding, and/or escape location for many species of plants and animals within Chester and Montgomery Counties. These land use changes also create additional stressors on the park ecosystems by adversely impacting the soundscape, lightscape, water quality/quantity of park waterways, introducing invasive exotic pests, pathogens, and species, and affecting the overall air quality within the park. Valley Forge NHP is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Inventory and Monitoring Network, one of 32 such networks developed and operated by the National Park Service throughout the country. These networks are charged with coordinating the inventory and long-term monitoring of various habitats and biota within the parks under their charge. Through this program and the efforts of the park staff at Valley Forge NHP, numerous long term studies have been conducted on habitat quality and species populations within the park, thus creating a rich data set that can be mined for the purposes of determining the condition and trends in the natural resources of Valley Forge NHP. This assessment provides a broad overview of the critical processes, habitats, and species of management importance within Valley Forge NHP and attempts to provide where possible a quantitative assessment of those resources using the vital signs and their associated metrics developed by the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program and a suite of additional metrics covering natural resources of park significance developed in consultation with the Penn State NRCA team, park biologists, and regional NPS scientists.

Valley Forge National Historical Park Natural resource condition assessment

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