As DC resident Sarah Wagner tried to jog around the Tidal Basin on a sunny weekday afternoon in early March, she relished the monumental setting but noticed that she couldn’t actually use the paved path.
Wagner and other springtime visitors to the Tidal Basin have experienced twice-daily flooding to the pathway at high tide, an increasingly visible indication that the area is in desperate need of repair. The Save the Tidal Basin initiative, jointly launched last year by the Trust for the National Mall and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, aims to help support the National Park Service in what could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in needed repairs. It remains to be seen, however, how much more damage the Tidal Basin — named one of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2019” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation last May — must bear until repairs come.
“It’s not able to support the foot traffic,” local tour guide Anita Ehler said of the paved area. “And our most prized possession, the cherry blossoms, aren’t protected because people have to walk to a dry spot,” bringing them near the trees.
The annual National Cherry Blossom Festival commemorates the gifting of the Yoshino cherry trees from the mayor of Tokyo in 1912 and has become one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions. While official festival events have been canceled this year due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus, the trees have now reached peak bloom and many Washingtonians and tourists have visited them despite increasingly vigorous efforts to discourage the crowds.
SunnyDandthePurpleStuff