When I last gazed back East towards Valley Forge National Historical Park, the Philadelphia Inquirer was calling on Pennsylvania's governor to demand that the federal government return the park to the state because it was doing a poor job managing it.
        Well, now it seems that Governor Ed Rendell has taken up the newspaper on its suggestion and asked Interior Secretary Gale Norton to let the state of Pennsylvania oversee the battlefield.

    Apparently Rendell’s letter to Secretary Norton last month stemmed, in part, from the federal government’s decision not to move forward with plans by a private group to build a sprawling museum devoted to the Revolutionary War at Valley Forge.
    The museum is the brainchild of the American Revolution Center, a non-profit group. The group notified the Park Service on Halloween that it would end its partnership with the agency on February first in part because the Park Service wanted to cut the size of the museum in half. In Rendell’s letter, which was released by the non-profit, the governor told Secretary Norton that the state would be willing to take over management of Valley Forge and asked that the Park Service hand 100 acres of the 3,000-acre park over to the state for use by the American Revolution Center.
    I can’t wait to see how Secretary Norton responds.