National Park Service staff and Mather High School interns take a break from work. NPS photo by Mikayla Rovenolt
In August 2022, a crew of students, recent graduates and National Park Service staff finished restoring a horse and footbridge on the Old Camp Trail at Morristown National Historical Park in New Jersey. A ribbon cutting at the bridge on August 19 drew the park's rangers and trail volunteers to congratulate them.
Why it needed doing
The bridge had been built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1939, and last repaired in 1993. Erosion had washed away the soil and stones holding it up, making it unsafe for visitors. The work was part of the Park Service's ongoing effort to preserve and restore its parks and facilities.
Who did it
| Group | Role |
|---|---|
| NPS Historic Architecture, Conservation, and Engineering (HACE) team | led the project |
| Maximilian McKinley and Adam Richardson, graduates of the Stephen T. Mather Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School | placed through the American Conservation Experience's Emerging Professionals in Conservation (ACE EPIC) program, which gives recent graduates hands-on work alongside mentors to prepare them as "the next generation of resource and land managers" |
| Joshua Rivera, Mather class of 2018 | training to become a career technical educator at Mather, placed through the school's Success Via Apprenticeship (SVA) program |
| Student Conservation Association (SCA) interns, with group leader Docker Clark | helped take out the old bridge and fill in the dug-up trail for the new, longer bridge |
Tim Henderson of the New York HACE team explained that the team was doing incremental projects for the smaller parks around Morristown — the kind of work HACE can take on with a small staff.
Rivera described the arrangement: having finished his internship at Mather, he was spending a summer rotation at a worksite — the Park Service — until September, before returning to the school.
For the SCA students, the project was also a chance to meet other students and learn about public service. Clark said the group had worked in other places as well, hiked over most of the park, and stopped along the way to talk through environmental concepts alongside the trail work.
Matthew Jacobs, the student liaison between Mather High School and the Park Service, stressed how much student work like this matters to communities and to public service: in 2022, he said, these students were carrying on the CCC's legacy, and young people do meaningful work for the parks and their visitors.
Mather interns Max and Adam restore the historic wooden bridge. NPS photo by Mikayla Rovenolt
Sources
Based on "Historic Horse and Footbridge Restored by Student Interns and NPS Staff," by Mikayla Rovenolt, National Park Service, Morristown National Historical Park and National Parks of New York Harbor; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The interns' and partners' words are summarized; rewritten in hubnx's own words.
In these publicationsNational Parks of New York Harbor
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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