By Kevin Coughlin
Talking with Park Rangers is among the highlights of most visits to a National Park. And such conversations now should be easier for visitors to the Washington’s Headquarters Museum in Morristown, thanks to newly completed renovations.
Rangers will welcome visitors from a gift shop window created in the foyer. Previously, guests had to wander around a corner inside the museum to buy admission tickets, a confusing jog for some.
“It’s critical,” Tom Ross, superintendent of the Morristown National Historical Park, said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday. “That’s what visitors expect when they come to a National Park. They want the experience of meeting a Park Ranger.”
The $20,000 renovations, which included a slight enlargement of the gift shop, were funded by a $10,000 donation from Eastern National — the association that manages souvenir sales for the park — and a matching National Park Service Centennial Grant.
This work is a precursor to a $2.7 million Discover History Center planned at the museum by The Washington Association of New Jersey.
The nonprofit association had hoped for completion of that 2,500-square-foot project — featuring interactive exhibits about the “hard winter” endured here by Washington’s troops during the Revolution–last year. Fundraising has taken some time, however.
Ross said the new target date is mid-2017.
The National Park Service is celebrating its centennial this year; it will be commemorated over the July Fourth weekend on the Morristown Green, which is marking a 200th anniversary of its own.
Established in 1933 as America’s first “historical” park, the Morristown national park actually comprises four sites: The Washington’s Headquarters Museum, which includes the Ford Mansion where George Washington spent a wartime winter; Fort Nonsense, a sentry post overlooking Morristown; the Cross Estate; and Jockey Hollow, where the Continental Army wintered.
Re-enactors will stage an encampment, with musket- and cannon demonstrations, at Jockey Hollow this weekend, April 17 and 17, 2016. Admission is free.
Morris Tourism Director Leslie Bensley hailed the museum upgrade for making the system more visitor-friendly.
“You’re greeted by a real person who wants to make sure your visit is as good as it can be,” Bensley said.
Assemblyman Anthony M. Bucco (R-25th Dist.) also attended Friday’s ceremony. He remembered visiting the museum as a boy.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is old!’ But the older you get, it doesn’t seem as far back,” Bucco said with a laugh. He said he’s grown to appreciate the region’s history.
“It’s good stuff. We’re lucky to have it.”