During a career day held recently at Boonsboro High School, students were able to get first-hand information from rangers with Antietam National Battlefield and Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park.
According to a Nov. 16 National Park Service news release, Ranger Joshua Baldwin from Antietam National Battlefield and Rangers Jay Copper and Jim Nichols from Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park attended the career day, offering courses on how to create a resume, a discussion on college life, life in the military and financial courses.
“I think we were successful in introducing the younger students to the National Parks in the area and showing them the various jobs that NPS Rangers do,” Cooper said in the release. “The high school students also got to see the varied public safety career opportunities in their own county.”
According to the news release, first responders and law enforcement also took part in the career day, providing a first-hand account about those professions.
According to the NPS website, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park traces its origins back to 1825, with the start of the authorization by Congress for the "Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company to build a canal alongside the Potomac from Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland, thence over the mountains to the headwaters of the Ohio.”
Citing a passage from "Chesapeake and Ohio Canal: The Making of a Park" by Barry Mackintosh, the website noted the company started work July 4, 1828, and President John Quincy Adams turned the first shovel of dirt. That same day, according to the website, work started on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
In 1938, plans for a new national park kicked off when President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his approval for the purchase of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, according to the NPS website, and the deal was completed with public works funds.
The first of two Civilian Conservation Corps camps assigned to the canal was established June 18, 1938, and operated until April 1, 1942, according to the NPS, the second opened in the fall of 1938 and operated until Nov. 15, 1941.
