Just one month after Valley Forge became a national park, the National Park Service's Mid-Atlantic regional director (whose name, coincidentally, was Chester Brooks) stated that within three years the National Park Service would prepare a new master plan, a document required by the National Park Service to outline the reserved land's long-term development and use and to act as an operations handbook. [27] This process began in the fall of 1977, but the plan was not published until 1982. The general management team leader recalls that the committee did read the state park's recently published plan but went through the entire National Park Service planning process anyway, gathering input from the public and circulating a draft document for public review to incorporate all the best ideas and create a consensus for future direction. [28]

The final General Management Plan acknowledged Valley Forge's widespread use as a regional recreation area but stated that new emphasis would be placed on preserving and maintaining the historical setting. Attempts were made to achieve a compromise that would accommodate the most popular kinds of recreation while protecting sensitive areas. The final result was the most recent expansion of the park in 1984 on ground north of the Schuylkill, where it was hoped more intensive forms of recreation could be transferred. This plus the 1978 acquisition of the holdings of the Keene Corporation (formerly the Ehret Magnesia Company), which had become completely surrounded by land acquired by the park, brought the park roughly to its current dimensions.

Fig. 29. General Von Steuben takes a ride. This statue, originally located on Outer Line Drive, was moved in 1979 to the Grand Parade so the general could look down on the place where Washington's army once drilled. This is one of many changes made in the park after it became a national park. (Courtesy, Valley Forge National Historical Park)

Although the authors of the General Management Plan had solicited input from park users, it took a while for the plan's implications to sink in. Early in 1985, the park superintendent denied a request to allow thousands of Boy Scouts to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of scouting by camping at Valley Forge and holding an elaborate jubilee, originally planned to include concession stands, fireworks, hot-air balloons, helicopter rides, and skydiving demonstrations in a part of the park that had just been reserved for light recreation only. [29] When the organizers of this event used political influence to overturn the denial, the park superintendent was faced with the challenge of getting them to use the land north of the Schuylkill, in which cause he had the support of a number of conservationist and preservationist groups, [30]

Even after the jubilee organizers agreed to move north, the problem was not resolved. Some of the property acquired in 1984, known as Walnut Hill, was believed to have been somehow associated with the encampment, but its value as a resource was unknown because no professional surveys had yet been made. The National Park Service's regional archaeologist and its regional historian protested that the Valley Forge administrators planned to locate certain jubilee activities on precisely this unsurveyed area. [31]

Although the jubilee was held in October 1985 and park administrators reported that little damage had been done, [32] many of those whose priority was preservation continued to be concerned. The following year, voices were raised in protest when the Boy Scouts were permitted to use the same unsurveyed area a second time for a winter pilgrimage. [33] The protesters questioned the value of having a General Management Plan if its provisions could not be enforced in the face of political pressure exerted by well-connected groups and individuals who continued to look on Valley Forge as primarily recreational greenspace, a dispute that would not be completely resolved even after another decade had passed.

The trend toward a more professionalized interpretation of the Valley Forge encampment after the park's transfer to the National Park Service was more the result of the administration's new emphasis on research than the result of the General Management Plan. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several major research projects would be carried out, including an architectural analysis of structures in the park, a major historical research project, and a major archaeological survey.

In 1978 and 1979, a broad-scale survey of Valley Forge was conducted by the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA) at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. This was a comprehensive multidisciplinary project designed to gather information about structures and topographical features at the park. Various new archaeological prospecting techniques were used, including aerial photography and geophysical surveying. [34]

Archaeology was not new at Valley Forge, but previous park administrators had made no attempts to coordinate the programs of outside experts or to produce a long-term plan for future archaeological research. As late as 1960, a park commission report told how a John J. Smith, identified as an "authorized relic hunter," had been permitted to search unsupervised for buttons, buckles, and musket balls. [35] Only in the 1960s were all such ad hoc individual authorizations revoked by the park commission, [36]

The park commission had slowly adopted the better policy of allowing recognized archaeological scholars to create their own agendas. Duncan Campbell, who had worked with Brumbaugh in excavating the "lost redoubt," returned with small groups in 1962, 1966, and 1975. [37] In 1966, Dr. John L. Cotter, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a regional archaeologist for the National Park Service, conducted summer classes there for Penn students. [38] This group excavated hut depressions in a wooded area near the Wayne statue; they identified several hut sites, unearthed the remains of fireplaces, and collected various artifacts. [39] Cotter again conducted summer classes at Valley Forge in the summer of 1972, then digging along the outer line, where troops from Virginia had encamped. His project brought new insight into how hut designs had varied among and even within brigades. [40] Cotter's work overlapped work done in 1965, 1972, and 1973 by Vance Packard Jr., staff archaeologist for the William Penn Museum, who excavated several areas, including some near Washington's Headquarters, Varnum's Quarters, the schoolhouse, and the building known as the site of Huntington's Quarters. [41]

After the transition to the National Park Service, objects recovered in archaeological digs were increasingly prized for their interpretive value. Back in 1973, one park commissioner had questioned their worth, writing: "$10,000 has been spent and we have seven rusty nails, 200 bags of broken arrowheads from a prior era, one cannonball and some fish bones, reported to our local papers on this tremendous 'find.'" [42] As material culture became a more common basis for interpreting the lives of people who left few or no records, encampment remains were studied for the insight they could provide into the life of the ordinary soldier, while other finds provided information on the occupations of persons living and working at Valley Forge both before and after the Revolution. [43] In 1978, the park acquired the Neumann Collection of Revolutionary War artifacts, now on display in the Visitor Center, where visitors can form their own conclusions about camp life from material objects.

One thing the archaeologists never found was evidence of human graves at Valley Forge. Duncan Campbell had sought graves near the Waterman Monument but found only offal pits instead. [44] Subsequent research among primary source materials revealed very few references to soldiers being buried at Valley Forge, but many references to the need to dispose of the remains of butchered cattle and dead horses. A 1983 survey listed eleven to fifteen areas previously marked as grave sites, but how these had become identified as such was not known. [45] A decision was made to preserve the presumed grave sites, but the park is certainly not being interpreted as a mass burial ground today. Says park historian Joseph Lee Boyle, "No substantiated human graves have ever been found in the park," which is a significant shift in interpretation from what was being written at the turn of the century. [46]