Leahy And Jeffords
Secure $750,000
For Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Park

WASHINGTON (Tues., Nov. 4) – Sen. Patrick Leahy and Sen. Jim Jeffords have secured $750,000 to restore the historic Wood Barn and Mill Complex at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park (NHP).  The Vermont senators secured the funds in the annual budget bill for federal natural resource agencies, including the National Park Service, which the Senate passed Monday night. The bill now goes to President Bush’s desk for his signature.  The senators said the President is expected to sign it.

The funds will be used to provide new educational space and restore the 2,700 square-foot Wood Barn built by Frederick Billings in 1876 which is now badly deteriorated.  The restored Wood Barn will house a new exhibit on sustainable forestry and serve as a visitor orientation gateway to the 20-mile system of historic carriage roads and trails through Mt. Tom, the oldest planned and managed forest in the United States.   Sixteen historic carriages, original to the property, will also be preserved and for the first time open for public viewing.

“Vermont’s only national historic park is a window into our state’s past,” said Leahy, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.  “This is an exciting new project that will reverse the effects that age and weather have had on the barn.  It will keep open this window into our past, for many years to come.”

“These funds will make more of the Park available to the public,” said Jeffords.  “The role of the park to display these historic treasures will be expanded without expanding its boundaries.  This investment in our past is also an investment in our future.”

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP opened in 1998 and welcomes more than 70,000 visitors a year.  The park was named after three of Vermont’s leading conservationists, George Perkins Marsh, Frederick Billings and Laurence S. Rockefeller.  Laurance and Mary Rockefeller donated the estate's residential and forest lands to the National Park Service in 1992.

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Related Links:

Senator Leahy's Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Homepage