Managing a water trail of some 3,000 miles requires a lot of coordination and a wide range of partnership activities. Under the National Trails System Act, the National Park Service has trail-wide responsibilities for administering the Captain John Smith Chesapeake NHT, including overall coordination for its planning, development, and management. After an extensive public planning process, NPS completed a comprehensive management plan (CMP) for the trail on February 19, 2011. The CMP outlines a collaborative, partnership-based approach to trail development and management.
Trail Management Framework
The comprehensive management plan determined that—given the trail’s scope, diverse resources, and numerous opportunities—the trail should be developed and managed in smaller segments. The National Park Service owns and manages only a few sites along the entire 3,000-mile trail. So, developing the trail segments will require partnerships with the many citizens, agencies, organizations, jurisdictions, businesses, and groups who have an interest in the trail and its related resources.
Local knowledge of resources and opportunities is a key ingredient of the management plan. The segment approach focuses efforts at a scale where local partners and the National Park Service can collaborate on:
- Researching and assessing the condition of significant trail-related resources
- Better ensuring that significant trail-related resources are protected
- Developing a coherent trail experience that meets the interests and needs of trail users
- Promoting heritage tourism
The trail encompasses four states, dozens of county and local government jurisdictions, and different geographic areas of interest to numerous nonprofit organizations, so it requires a flexible management approach that suits varying circumstances. Most segments of the trail have many potential partners. Some may be local partners involved in only one portion of the trail segment, while others may be regional or state partners with broader potential involvement.
The National Park Service is now engaged in the segment planning process, working with a variety of partners to create segment management plans and to identify a lead partner to coordinate long-term management and development of each of the segments that make up the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail.