The Claude Moore Colonial Farm at Turkey Run in McLean, Virginia, is a living history museum depicting the typical tenant farm in late colonial Virginia on the eve of the Revolution.  This gem, a favorite among children and their parents and schools in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, was a casualty of the Government shut-down.  The National Park Service ordered the Farm to close on October 1st.

The Farm is located on land that it leases from the National Park Service.  It is privately funded, deriving its operating expenses from admissions fees and proceeds from its various programs.  Its staff are employees of the Farm, not of the federal government.  Although it has from time to time benefitted from federal grants for capital improvements or operating expenses, the National Park Service had informed the Farm earlier this year that it would receive no federal funds for the Government’s Fiscal Year 2014 which began on October 1st.

The Farm believed that as an independent entity that relied on no federal funds for the current fiscal year, and no services from the Park Service even for access to the facility because the Farm lies on a road open to the public and essential for access to two federal agencies, it should not be subject to the order to shut its gates.  The Farm turned to GeyerGorey attorney Phillip Zane, a veteran of many lawsuits between private entities and the federal government, and the father of one of the Farm’s junior interpreters, as well as Scott Helsel, its regular counsel from Walton & Adams in Reston, Virginia.  Mr. Zane engaged attorneys of the Office of the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, which has responsibility for the National Park Service, in week-long negotiations and fact-finding.

Through the efforts of Mr. Zane and others at the Farm, notably Farm Director Anna Eberly, officials of the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service were convinced that the Claude Moore Colonial Farm should not be subject to the Government shut-down.  After eight dark days that threatened the Farm’s busiest fund-raising season and its largest annual event, the Park Police removed the barricades from the Farm’s entrances and the Farm reopened on October 9th.

For more information about Claude Moore Colonial Farm, please visit www.1771.org, or attend its Fall Market Fair on October 19th & 20th.  For more information about GeyerGorey llp’s experience handling federal litigation and investigations, please contact Mr. Zane at 202-644-8731, or any of his colleagues at GeyerGorey at 888-486-3337, or [email protected].