Webb and Warner back National Park at Monroe

By David Macaulay, dmacaulay@dailypress.com | 247-7838 5:47 p.m. EST, January 6, 2011

HAMPTON - Virginia's U.S. senators have written to the National Park Service asking for assistance in drafting legislation that would create a national park at Fort Monroe.

Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb sent a letter to National Parks Service Director Jonathan Jarvis on Wednesday. They expressed "strong interest in the Fort Monroe site."

They referred to a study in 2008 that "concluded that resources associated with Fort Monroe are nationally significant and likely to be found suitable for potential designation as a unit of the national park system."

They asked that any proposed bill would be based on the comments provided in a Sep. 20 letter from Dennis Redenbacher, the NPS's regional director.

In the letter Redenbacher suggested the NPS would only be interested in a limited National Park around the perimeter of the stone fort.

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