parida cave rehab project

Amistad National Recreation Area near Del Rio, Texas once again participated in the national Take Pride In America campaign by organizing the Parida Cave Rehab Project in September 2004. This national program provides small grants to participating parks to develop specific natural or cultural resource projects staffed entirely by volunteers working under the supervision of park staff. Although deserving, many such projects would never reach fruition were it not for the Washington office seed money to buy supplies and develop recruitment strategies targeted at local groups who previously had never done volunteer work in their local park.

Our park is no stranger to the Take Pride In America program. In 1988, and again in 1994, the Washington Office of the National Park Service recognized the volunteer program associated with the park’s cul-tural resources program as being among the most active and productive in the Park Service. In 2004, the cultural resources program chalked up over 4,000 hours of volunteer service in such areas as arch-eological surveys, school education programs, public outreach projects, museum collections management, digital archive projects, and the annual Archeology Fair held in conjunction with Texas Archeological month.

In 2004, after suffering through a long regional drought that reduced Amistad Reservoir to less than 20% of its capacity, the lake has made a remarkable comeback and is now at almost 75% of design capacity. The forests of new trees that sprung up along dry lake shorelines are now almost totally reinundated and previously inaccessible back country interpretive sites such as Parida and Panther Caves are now again available to the boating public. “Parida Cave is one of the central archeological sites in south Texas and in an area we administer. Essentially this area has been off limits for the past ten years and we’re excited that it will be accessible to the public again. We wanted to get in there and make it presentable,” said Rick Slade, the park’s Chief of Education and Resource Management.

The Parida Cave Rehab project of 2004 was designed to restore this interpretive site to national prominence as had been done before in 1988. The project sought to construct a log trail into the cave, install new educational and interpretive signage, adjust and re-level nearly 300 feet of protective rubber matting and trails, and tame the vegetation that had almost completely prevented access along the shoreline below the cave.

After nearly 200 hours of back-breaking work, Parida Cave is once again presentable and available to the public. Much of the work was accomplished by a dozen or so dedicated volunteers –among them were pilots and their spouses from Laughlin Air Force Base, college students, local teachers and several Student Conservation Corps members. Park Archeologist Joe Labadie, who planned both the 1988 and 2004 Parida Cave projects, noted “Once again, volunteers have made a significant contribution to our park and have accomplished a Herculean task that was beyond the meager resources of the park. We are indeed fortunate to have a local community that is willing to pitch in and make their park all that it can be.”