Abstract
The research underway has three principal objectives. The first of these is to expand the knowledge of the existing vegetation of the site. The site has almost quadrupled in size (to 836 acres) and only portions of the original site have been investigated (Davis, 1959; Johnson, 1978). The second objective is to develop an understanding of the historic vegetation of the area. National Park Service (NPS) plans for the interpretation of the site call for an historic time frame of the 1870's but the diverse uses of the property over the past century have created vegetation distributions that are not congruent with that time period. The third objective is to develop a vegetation management plan for the site that will convert the existing vegetation into an approximation of the historical vegetation and provide guidelines for maintaining that appearance.