Sold – The Creation of Rock Creek Park, Washington D.C.

In the 1860’s, the Executive Mansion was smaller and lacked privacy, and accommodated both offices and living quarters. Reclamation of the Potomac flats to fill in the Washington Monument grounds and create Potomac Park was a generation away and the area was home to congestion and waste. When President Abraham Lincoln needed a break, he would spend time at the Soldiers Home, beyond the old Washington city limits. To create more pleasant surroundings within the city, on June 25, 1866, the Senate directed its Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds "to inquire whether a “tract of land…can be obtained for a park and site for a presidential mansion.” Maj. Nathaniel Michler, a West Point graduate, was chosen to draw up a proposal. The park, he wrote, should be separate from the mansion and generally accessible. The valley of Rock Creek in the District of Columbia, Michler suggested, lent itself admirably to park treatment: “All the elements which constitute a public resort of the kind can be found in this wild and romantic tract of country.” He estimated the costs at approximately $1,000,000. Many in Congress objected to the expenditure. Although the Senate passed the bill the next day by a vote of 28 to 7, the House would not even consider it.

John J. Hemphill, a member of Congress from South Carolina, was a close friend of Charles Glover, descendent of General John Glover of Revolutionary War note and prominent Washington banker. Hemphill was also Chairman of the House committee devoted to the federal interests in the District of Columbia. On August 13, 1888, he brought a bill to the floor to reconsider a park and to take in hand Michler’s recommendations. It met with opposition, again due to the expenditure. Working with Hemphill, local interests, led by Glover, went on the offensive. That Thanksgiving, Glover led a team of civic leaders through Rock Creek valley. He was soon thereafter appointed to the permanent executive committee to officially lobby for passage of park legislation. His involvement would prove instrumental. Though the bill failed in the House at that time, Glover had succeeded in bringing opinion to the side of establishing a park.

He was again the driving force in forcing the debate to the front of the legislative session in the next Congress. On December 4, 1889, at the start of the 51st Congress, the bill was re-introduced and it passed both chambers in 1890. President Benjamin Harrison signed the bill into law on September 27, 1890, three days before Hemphill wrote this letter to Glover to congratulate him on the victory that had been decades in the making.

Autograph Letter Signed of Hemphill on House letterhead, Washington, September 30, 1890, to Charles Glover. “The bill to establish the Rock Creek Park, which passed Congress, and after the most strenuous efforts has been approved by the President and is now a law. As it was at your request that this bill was introduced, setting aside this beautiful section of country as a park for all time, I desire to congratulate you on the final approval of the measure, and to say that without your… continued efforts during the entire contest if would in my judgment have failed to become a law. Your notable work on behalf of this great…ground at the National Capitol ought to be known and long remembered by the many thousands who should hereafter enjoy it. “

Today, Rock Creek Park is the second largest urban park in the nation and a centerpiece of the District’s landscape.