Thanks to a $25,000 donation from St. John snowbirds Paul and Nancy Anderson to the Friends of V.I. National Park, the park will make some inroads on replacing its tattered educational exhibit signs.
“After I retired a year and a half ago, I started thinking about different ways to give back,” Paul Anderson said Wednesday at a small ceremony at the Cinnamon Bay Loop Trail that kicked off the replacement project.
He said once he became aware of the financial cuts faced by the park, he realized the need was critical. Anderson said that with fewer rangers on staff, the park can’t run all the guided hikes it previously did.
“The signs become much more important,” he said.
He helped replace the sign that shows visitors the layout of the Cinnamon Bay ruins and the path through the loop trail.
The Friends hope other people will join the Andersons in making donations to help fund projects and repairs the park can’t pay for.
For starters, Friends Development Director Karen Vahling said the Friends are raising $24,000 to replace benches and the sound system at the Cinnamon Bay Campground amphitheater. It’s used for various ranger programs.
Some of the 21 benches have rusted through and are no longer usable, she said. Others have the seats just resting on the supports because the fasteners rusted through.
“And the sound system is all crackly and you can’t hear it anymore,” she added.
Vahling said that so far, the Friends raised $8,000 toward the amphitheater project. She said that people can adopt just one bench for $1,000 and get their name posted on a plaque that will go up near the entrance to the amphitheater.
The old educational exhibit sign at Cinnamon Bay Loop Trail was moldy because it sits in the shade. Park Superintendent Brion FitzGerald said others in the park are cracked from sitting out in the sun. He said the normal life span of a sign is five to seven years.
“The environment is pretty tough on them,” FitzGerald said.
Anderson suggested that the Friends sell the old signs as keepsakes to people. He said that, for example, people might want a sign because they got married near a trailhead.
“If you can get 500 bucks, it’s 500 bucks,” he said.
The park has a total of 67 similar educational exhibit signs, FitzGerald said. Some are large but others are smaller and might, for example, identify a particular type of tree.
Friends President Joe Kessler said apps for cells phones and personal digital devices are the wave of the future. He envisioned that people can look up more information on devices once they see the sign. And he said it’s a way to reach the younger generation of potential park visitors who are electronically savvy.