We Were on Fox News Last Week

Fox News did a special report on the Maryland State Park Curatorship program last week. Our house was one of the featured houses. The state park system has about 200 houses that were acquired as part of land acquisitions. Many of these houses are historic and the park system does not have the finances to restore and maintain all of these houses. Historic houses tend to be more expensive to maintain, and it does not cash flow for them to spend the money to restore the houses and maintain them with the rental income they would receive. The curatorship program was started in which private individuals, such as ourselves, agree to restore and maintain the house. In exchange we receive a lifetime lease. It is our retirement property. It is a win-win situation for all parties. The state park system gets the houses restored and maintained for free, there is no cost to the tax payers, and the curators get the privilege to restore and live in a historic house in a state park without having to pay rent or property taxes.

We do pay rent in that we have to pay for the restoration and maintenance on the house. However, most of the work in restoration is labor with low material costs.


The right section of our house is a log cabin, built around 1850. The section on the left was built around 1900.


This is the girl’s bedroom in the upstairs of the log cabin section of the house. We removed the old plaster and exposed the log walls.


The kitchen is in the log cabin section of the house. We are looking forward to the next stage of the renovation when we remove the plaster and expose the log walls. The ceiling has nice beams that were covered with plaster. There is a stone fireplace hidden behind the wall where the stove is.

The link to the Fox News story:
http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/maryland/maryland-families-conserve-historic-homes-in-resident-curatorship-program-070510

Link to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Curatorship program and a list of the houses available for curatorships:
http://www.dnr.maryland.gov/land/rcs/index.asp

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