The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) has not yet issued comment about a request by Virginia lawmakers earlier this month for the federal agency to accept donation of Fort Monroe property.
It isn't clear what the DOI's decision will be as the request by lawmakers, in a Sept. 17 letter, is the second time such a request was made and the department turned down the earlier request.
U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner shaking hands with constituents during a Black History Month event in 2018
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The lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria and Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, hope this second request will be the charm.
"The addition of this land would accomplish a longtime goal of connecting the eastern section of the property and would help protect the monument for future generations," the lawmakers said in their letter.
No one doubts that Fort Monroe, the former U.S. Army base, is an important historical landmark.
“Fort Monroe holds a special place in Virginia and our nation's history that tells a unique, complicated, and diverse story," the letter said. "Despite the expected additional modest federal financial responsibility that would be expected from a land donation, we believe the cause of protecting and enhancing Fort Monroe is worth the Park Service’s additional investment."
Fort Monroe includes the public Outlook Beach, which extends for miles and is surrounded by water on all sides and provides some of the area's best views of Chesapeake Bay. Visitors to the beach enjoy swimming, sunning and relaxing sunrise to sunset with lifeguards present much of that time.
Fort Monroe was built between 1819 and 1834 to protect the entrance to Hampton Roads and has been the site of numerous historic events. During the U.S. Civil War, Major General Benjamin Butler issued his famous "contraband decision" at the fort, declaring that escaped slaves who reached Union lines could not be returned into bondage. That earned Fort Monroe its nickname "Freedom's Fortress."
Fort Monroe has caught DOI's eye over the years. DOI Secretary Ken Salazar, along with National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis, toured Fort Monroe ahead of a public listening session in late June 2011 with an eye toward how to preserve the historic site.
"You can read many chapters of our nation's history in the stones of Fort Monroe, which is one of the many reasons people feel so passionately about the protection of this special place," Salazar said in a press release at the time. "This stone fort is one of our nation's special historic and cultural treasures, and we must work together to ensure this place is preserved for future generations."
That same year, then-President Barack Obama designated Fort Monroe a national monument.
In 2019, at the Trump Administration didn't accept the land donation, Warner and Kaine introduced legislation, the Fort Monroe National Monument Land Acquisition Act, to add 40 acres to Fort Monroe in an effort to unify two divided sections and form an unbroken coastline along the Chesapeake Bay. The legislation never made it to the Senate or House floor.
This past February, the DOI applauded the fort's designation of Fort Monroe by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a "Site of Memory" for its association with the former slave route. Fort Monroe is located where the first enslaved Africans arrived in North American in 1619 and is one of about approximately 50 sites identified with the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
