GPRA, GMP, CMR and PMIS

Brown Bay Ruins
Although September is usually a quiet time for the Virgin Island, we've been very busy under the new directives of Superintendent Mark Hardgrove. Mark brings a wealth of experience and expertise of NPS Cultural Resources and is already making the preservation of historic ruins a high priority. It is a breath of fresh air and all the hard work that has been accomplished by Ken and his interns in the past will hopefully be rewarded with increased funding. It is a very exciting time to be working here and we will surely be reporting on many important developments, so stay tuned....

Josie's Gut Ruins

The first thing that happened was a visit by NPS Contractors. Last week, the Cultural Resource team completed a monumental survey of the historic resources. Ken, Katie, Susanna and Jackie, the contractor, managed to do site surveys of Annaberg, PeaceHill, Denise Bay, Caneel Bay, Catherineberg, Rustenberg, Trunk, Cinnamon, Leinster, Lameshur, Yawzi, Reef Bay, Genti, Josie's Gut, Brown Bay, Betty's Hope, Mary's Point, several cemeteries, and Hassel Island. All of this effort was to document structures in order to hopefully obtain funding for preservation. There was so much to do that the team did not finish their work until 7 pm, Friday night and Jackie found out just how hard it is to get into some of these ruins. Like all interns, she was a good sport about all the catch and keep, acacia, mosquitos and the long swim between the boat and Reef Bay Beach. We hope she has some wonderful memories of her time on St. John while writing her reports up in the mainland. Thank you Jackie.

Par Force Village

Lameshur

This week, a little more time was spent in the office working on the annual goal reporting(GRPA), the project management information system(PMIS) and writing documents for the General Management Plan(GMP). In addition, the park submitted the annual collection management report(CMR) to Washington and reported that it had cataloged over 3585 objects in FY 2007. Thanks to all the volunteers and interns who helped to get that done!

We've often discussed the idea of featuring a object from the collection with each blog. Susanna picked the one for this week, Sadly, the island lost one of it's world famous residents this week, Miss Lucy. Many locals and visitors knew her through her restaurant in Coral Bay and as the St. John taxi driver who "wore a hibiscus in her hair and drove a taxi decorated with a set of goat horns dripping flowers." Our condolences go out to her family and the NPS is proud to have in their archives, this picture taken of Miss Lucy and her taxi in 1962. Her full obituary may be found at http://www.onepaper.com/stjohnvi/?v=d&i=&s=News:Local&p=1201842501