Everything Under The Sun: Restoring Shepherd Parkway

Monday, May 18, 2015

Restoring Shepherd Parkway

Some of the volunteers cleaning up the park.

In the Congress Heights area of our nation's capitol sits an urban park, which contains the remains of the earthwork fortifications of two forts, which were built as defensive bulwarks during the Civil War. Although it is home to a variety of wildlife, this park has the distinction of being the most polluted in DC, since it is littered with garbage and has become home to many invasive species.

The Congress Heights area has certainly had its share of urban neglect, especially after WWII, but development dollars have been sent in its direction in recent years. This is the same area into which Nathan Harrington, who teaches at Moten Elementary School, decided to move. By the way Nathan also is involved as a tour guide, gardener, and community activist.

Nathan says about his home purchase, "I purchased a modest home in Congress Heights to share with friends. Part of my intention in choosing to live there was to challenge the deeply engrained racial and geographic division of Washington, DC."

It wasn't long before CONGRESS HEIGHTS COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION came calling. That's when he became chair of the project to RESTORE SHEPHERD PARKWAY. The majority of the work so far has been in educating the community about what has happened to the parkway, along with ambitious plans to restore it to the point that it would include a three-mile system of hiking trails, actually in this park at the south end of DC.

A winter scene that shows the beauty of the parkway.

But much work is needed before that can happen. There is that trash that needs to be removed. The project has actually moved to the trash removal stage. With the help of the NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, which oversees this city park, a schedule of trash removal events has been posted on their website. Both the blog for the Shepherd Parkway restoration and their facebook page solicit volunteers to help with the clean-up, after the door-to-door engagement process that led the way to community engagement. Of course, the project does accept monetary donations, too, on their blog pages.