Touching the Past:
Practicing History in the Real World
The study of history is of profound importance, and our understanding of the past must not be limited to our efforts in formal classroom teaching / learning environments. Both the audience for understanding history and the venue in which we practice it are much broader. That is where, in fact, the intersection of past and present takes on concrete form, where the abstract past and the real world converge.
History is all around us and it shapes who we are and the way we relate with each other and the rest of the world. There are many ways in which we can explore the past so that history can help guide us, help us understand where we are today and how we got here.
(Some years back I explored some of the potential and richness, as well as importance, of the physical elements of Wyoming history that are left and how we can protect them. This essay, "Touching the Past in Wyoming," was published as the Foreword to On the Road to Preservation: Wyoming’s Comprehensive Statewide Historic Preservation Plan, 2007-2013 (Cheyenne, Wyoming: State Historic Preservation Office, 2007). Available on the World Wide Web at http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/Preservation/PreservationPlan.pdf.)
One way to connect with the past in our own neighborhoods and communities is the National Register of Historic Places. The National Register is the official, institutional framework for understanding and managing the remnants of the past around us.
History is all around us and it shapes who we are and the way we relate with each other and the rest of the world. There are many ways in which we can explore the past so that history can help guide us, help us understand where we are today and how we got here.
(Some years back I explored some of the potential and richness, as well as importance, of the physical elements of Wyoming history that are left and how we can protect them. This essay, "Touching the Past in Wyoming," was published as the Foreword to On the Road to Preservation: Wyoming’s Comprehensive Statewide Historic Preservation Plan, 2007-2013 (Cheyenne, Wyoming: State Historic Preservation Office, 2007). Available on the World Wide Web at http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/Preservation/PreservationPlan.pdf.)
One way to connect with the past in our own neighborhoods and communities is the National Register of Historic Places. The National Register is the official, institutional framework for understanding and managing the remnants of the past around us.
Historical Significance and the National Register of Historic Places
About the National Register of Historic Places
Officially, and here I quote from the NR documentation, “the National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources.” The program is administered by the National Park Service and each state has a State Historic Preservation Officer who oversees the program in that state. The State Historic Preservation Offices draw upon their own staff and also a volunteer board of professionals who review nominations of resources to the National Register. (For more information about the National Register, go to http://www.nps.gov/nr/.)
A property listed on the National Register is one that has been determined to be of significance and that possesses integrity. Listing does not limit the ability of owners to use, manage, or alter properties although it does provide recognition and provides one basis for some tax credits and certainly encourages preservation of historic resources. It does provide some protection from federal government actions that would have an “adverse impact” on the resource, but even then the requirement is that the property be managed appropriately, not that it be preserved at all costs; the technical language is to require federal agencies to “take into account the effect of the undertaking.” Those adverse impacts can sometimes be mitigated.
The key to the National Register is the concept of significance. Not everything that is “old” is historically significant. How do we determine what is significant and what is not? The National Register applies four criteria to buildings, structures, sites, objects, and districts to determine if they are eligible for inclusion on the list—the National Register of Historic Places. If they meet any one of the four criteria, and possess necessary integrity (generally if they are authentic and convey their historical significance), they will be eligible for listing. A property can be significant locally, state-wide, or nationally, and that geographic significance must be justified.
Note the criteria by which they are evaluated. This is the official language:
The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and:
A. That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or
B. That are associated with the lives of significant persons in or past; or
C. That embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or
D. That have yielded or may be likely to yield, information important in history or prehistory.
Criterion A obviously addresses the historical significance of a property. Criterion B has to do with the association with a particular individual, and generally must show that the particular individual was significant, and also that that this particular property is the best place associated with that individual to show that significance. Criterion C has to do with the architectural or engineering features and workmanship of the resource. Criterion D is usually reserved for resources of archaeological significance.
In the vast majority of cases Criterion A, the historical significance, for understandable reasons, is used to determine whether a property is eligible for the National Register. Often, in the case of notable architecture or engineering structures, Criterion C will be used, although even then Criterion A is also addressed.
It is important to use Criterion A meaningfully and thoughtfully, to draw upon all the resources and tools of the professional historian to determine if something is historically significant; if we don’t, we run the risk of history just being colorful backdrop to other considerations. Just keep in mind that we are talking about the National Register of Historic Places, not the National Register of Fancy Buildings That Happen To Be Old.
A property listed on the National Register is one that has been determined to be of significance and that possesses integrity. Listing does not limit the ability of owners to use, manage, or alter properties although it does provide recognition and provides one basis for some tax credits and certainly encourages preservation of historic resources. It does provide some protection from federal government actions that would have an “adverse impact” on the resource, but even then the requirement is that the property be managed appropriately, not that it be preserved at all costs; the technical language is to require federal agencies to “take into account the effect of the undertaking.” Those adverse impacts can sometimes be mitigated.
The key to the National Register is the concept of significance. Not everything that is “old” is historically significant. How do we determine what is significant and what is not? The National Register applies four criteria to buildings, structures, sites, objects, and districts to determine if they are eligible for inclusion on the list—the National Register of Historic Places. If they meet any one of the four criteria, and possess necessary integrity (generally if they are authentic and convey their historical significance), they will be eligible for listing. A property can be significant locally, state-wide, or nationally, and that geographic significance must be justified.
Note the criteria by which they are evaluated. This is the official language:
The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and:
A. That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or
B. That are associated with the lives of significant persons in or past; or
C. That embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or
D. That have yielded or may be likely to yield, information important in history or prehistory.
Criterion A obviously addresses the historical significance of a property. Criterion B has to do with the association with a particular individual, and generally must show that the particular individual was significant, and also that that this particular property is the best place associated with that individual to show that significance. Criterion C has to do with the architectural or engineering features and workmanship of the resource. Criterion D is usually reserved for resources of archaeological significance.
In the vast majority of cases Criterion A, the historical significance, for understandable reasons, is used to determine whether a property is eligible for the National Register. Often, in the case of notable architecture or engineering structures, Criterion C will be used, although even then Criterion A is also addressed.
It is important to use Criterion A meaningfully and thoughtfully, to draw upon all the resources and tools of the professional historian to determine if something is historically significant; if we don’t, we run the risk of history just being colorful backdrop to other considerations. Just keep in mind that we are talking about the National Register of Historic Places, not the National Register of Fancy Buildings That Happen To Be Old.
History and the National Register: Criterion A
As we think about Criterion A, it’s good to remember that this applies not just to famous events but to the “patterns of history” that are important in shaping the world we live in, even at the local level. And we need to take those patterns of history seriously. In this regard, I always emphasize that we are talking about history, not a narrow or bureaucratic kind of history, but history. There is not one kind of history for academics and another kind of history for the National Register of Historic Places. There's not one kind of history for historians and another kind for archaeologists, architects, or buffs; there is history. And we need to use all of the tools at our disposal to make sure that our understanding of the past is complete, is meaningful, and is relevant to the larger purpose for which the study of history is about.
So how do we evaluate a building or other resource for its historic significance?
The starting point is with several admonitions that are familiar enough to historians but bear repeating for anyone who undertakes the assessment of historic properties:
1. Everyone is someone.
2. Every place is someplace.
3. Every place and every person has a story.
4. Every story has a larger meaning if only we look to find it.
It may seem either meaningless or an empty cliché to state that everybody is somebody, but it has only been within the last four decades that historians have systematically directed attention to the men and women who have made up history with sensitivity to their genders and to their different cultures, ethnicities, and social classes. Indeed, older studies of Wyoming ranching and homesteading sometimes conveyed the impression that the area was entirely and exclusively a white man’s domain. Men and women of all colors, of all social and economic stations, in the villages, towns, and cities, and in the countryside, with all kinds of hopes and dreams and fears are part of that history. And they each lived a life, as one person I studied in Wyoming described it, that was a life worth living, and that is now worthy of our contemplation and documentation. Moreover, understanding the relationship between those in power and those out of power ultimately illuminates both populations better.
Contrary to historians of generations ago and some outside the profession who believe that history is just the record of the literate classes--those who leave written records--the history of what is sometimes called “the inarticulate” has flourished so that the masses of people are no longer in any sense either anonymous or voiceless. They paid taxes, they were listed in the census, sometimes they owned or leased land, they often joined churches and clubs, they attended and participated in specific forms of recreation, their activities were mentioned in newspapers, and they were sometimes involved in court proceedings. The historical record is far broader than was previously conceived, and even the most conventional sources can reveal far more than their creators intended. Everybody is somebody, and it is possible to find out who the person was who was associated with a specific property.
Likewise, every place is someplace. Any place where there was a structure built for a specific use, or any place that has otherwise shown the marks of use, as in a trail that has worn into the soil, or even a place where the human footprint has been light, but still served human purposes, as in a natural landmark, that place has entered into human history. It then becomes incumbent upon the researcher to identify the role that structures or sites played in the lives of earlier generations of people who used that place. It is, thus, not only the palatial houses and barns which remain that convey information about the past, but also the remnants of dugouts, of ranch roads, of watering troughs, of windmills, of dams, and even of fences that need to be examined and assessed.
And every place has a story. Every one of these stories has a beginning, a middle, and an end. What is the origin of that structure? Was it built at a time when people were moving into the county and into Wyoming in a noticeable trend? How did its use change over time? Why did people quit using it, quit living in it? What is the end of that story? Was it abandoned? Why? What were the circumstances that caused its occupants to move away? Were they foreclosed? Did they acquire other properties and use this set of structures in a different way? And how did it get from its origin to its end? The building or structure has a life, an evolution. It is not frozen in time. It is not timeless. It changed over time. Those changes are the reflection of history. The task of the site evaluator is to understand that story so as better to understand the resources left on the ground. And understanding is different from categorizing or pigeonholing something. Each resource needs to be explored. In this way, the resource can even shed light on the larger historical context and cause it to be modified.
And these stories have a larger meaning, and that meaning can be found if we place into context. Without context we are left with the dry and pointless collections of dates and facts that drive people away from the study of history and that trivialize the past.
The great promise of the National Register of Historic Places is that it is a tool that helps us to understand the history around us, the world we have inherited from generations before, and then, using the physical resources around us as evaluated by the criteria set forth so that we can manage and preserve the physical resources left behind by people who came before us, by people leaving their marks on the world we inhabit.
For further discussion of the opportunities presented by the National Register of Historic Places and the role of a state SHPO, communities, and cultural resource professionals, see my Foreword to On the Road to Preservation: Wyoming’s Comprehensive Statewide Historic Preservation Plan (1907).
So how do we evaluate a building or other resource for its historic significance?
The starting point is with several admonitions that are familiar enough to historians but bear repeating for anyone who undertakes the assessment of historic properties:
1. Everyone is someone.
2. Every place is someplace.
3. Every place and every person has a story.
4. Every story has a larger meaning if only we look to find it.
It may seem either meaningless or an empty cliché to state that everybody is somebody, but it has only been within the last four decades that historians have systematically directed attention to the men and women who have made up history with sensitivity to their genders and to their different cultures, ethnicities, and social classes. Indeed, older studies of Wyoming ranching and homesteading sometimes conveyed the impression that the area was entirely and exclusively a white man’s domain. Men and women of all colors, of all social and economic stations, in the villages, towns, and cities, and in the countryside, with all kinds of hopes and dreams and fears are part of that history. And they each lived a life, as one person I studied in Wyoming described it, that was a life worth living, and that is now worthy of our contemplation and documentation. Moreover, understanding the relationship between those in power and those out of power ultimately illuminates both populations better.
Contrary to historians of generations ago and some outside the profession who believe that history is just the record of the literate classes--those who leave written records--the history of what is sometimes called “the inarticulate” has flourished so that the masses of people are no longer in any sense either anonymous or voiceless. They paid taxes, they were listed in the census, sometimes they owned or leased land, they often joined churches and clubs, they attended and participated in specific forms of recreation, their activities were mentioned in newspapers, and they were sometimes involved in court proceedings. The historical record is far broader than was previously conceived, and even the most conventional sources can reveal far more than their creators intended. Everybody is somebody, and it is possible to find out who the person was who was associated with a specific property.
Likewise, every place is someplace. Any place where there was a structure built for a specific use, or any place that has otherwise shown the marks of use, as in a trail that has worn into the soil, or even a place where the human footprint has been light, but still served human purposes, as in a natural landmark, that place has entered into human history. It then becomes incumbent upon the researcher to identify the role that structures or sites played in the lives of earlier generations of people who used that place. It is, thus, not only the palatial houses and barns which remain that convey information about the past, but also the remnants of dugouts, of ranch roads, of watering troughs, of windmills, of dams, and even of fences that need to be examined and assessed.
And every place has a story. Every one of these stories has a beginning, a middle, and an end. What is the origin of that structure? Was it built at a time when people were moving into the county and into Wyoming in a noticeable trend? How did its use change over time? Why did people quit using it, quit living in it? What is the end of that story? Was it abandoned? Why? What were the circumstances that caused its occupants to move away? Were they foreclosed? Did they acquire other properties and use this set of structures in a different way? And how did it get from its origin to its end? The building or structure has a life, an evolution. It is not frozen in time. It is not timeless. It changed over time. Those changes are the reflection of history. The task of the site evaluator is to understand that story so as better to understand the resources left on the ground. And understanding is different from categorizing or pigeonholing something. Each resource needs to be explored. In this way, the resource can even shed light on the larger historical context and cause it to be modified.
And these stories have a larger meaning, and that meaning can be found if we place into context. Without context we are left with the dry and pointless collections of dates and facts that drive people away from the study of history and that trivialize the past.
The great promise of the National Register of Historic Places is that it is a tool that helps us to understand the history around us, the world we have inherited from generations before, and then, using the physical resources around us as evaluated by the criteria set forth so that we can manage and preserve the physical resources left behind by people who came before us, by people leaving their marks on the world we inhabit.
For further discussion of the opportunities presented by the National Register of Historic Places and the role of a state SHPO, communities, and cultural resource professionals, see my Foreword to On the Road to Preservation: Wyoming’s Comprehensive Statewide Historic Preservation Plan (1907).
Understanding and Documenting the Physical Past Around Us
There are different forms of National Register recognition and documentation, including:
- · listing on the Register individually or as part of a Multiple Property Nomination
- · National Historic Landmark status
- · Historic American building Survey / Historic American Engineering Record (HABS / HAER)
- · local or statewide surveys of potentially eligible properties, determinations of eligibility.
Multiple Property Documentation
One of the most interesting and most demanding forms of historic resource documentation is that which attempts to include a whole set of properties that may, in fact, be quite dispersed, over hundreds or even thousands of miles, but which share common historical qualities. That is, they may be separated on the ground but are connected in time by the historical forces that brought them into being or shaped their function. The National Register tool of Multiple Property Documentation allows for the development of a historic context statement that explores the social, economic, and political developments that show the connections, that allow the researcher to see an evolution of the built environment, and to evaluate buildings, structures, and objects to see where they fit into the patterns. By using the Multiple Property Document that has been approved by the State Historic Preservation Office and the Keeper of the National Register, future properties that are identified as importantly associated with the themes and patterns in the historic context can be better evaluated. This is especially important since to prove the historic significance of something it is not necessary to start at scratch each time to discuss the larger pattern to which it belongs--that has been done in the historic context. The historic context statement and the specification of registration requirements for eligible properties thus become critical frameworks for adding future properties. Most of my work in recent years has focused on developing multiple property nominations / historic context statements. I have developed historic context studies for Multiple Property Documentation Forms on a statewide basis for:
- Farming, Ranching, and Homesteading in Wyoming, 1860-1960
- Route 66 in Oklahoma (See below, Surveys of Potential Historical Significance)
- Route 66 in the United States
Individual National Register Nominations
The preparation of a nomination of a property to the National Register of Historic Places involves the completion of a form that requires a complete description of the property and that makes a pointed argument justifying its historical (or architectural) significance. Obviously, most of the properties I have nominated have been under Criterion A, although some have also been under Criterion C. One was under Criterion B. In the past fifteen years I have successfully nominated between 35 and 40 individual properties to the National Register in both Oklahoma and Wyoming.
Surveys of Properties of Potential Historical Significance
One valuable approach to uncovering historic resources is through the development of a survey in a defined geographic area (for example, a downtown or a neighborhood, a county, or along a specific roadway) to identify resources that meet the requirements of the National Register. Those properties will then be recorded on a form determined by the state or local historic preservation authority--the SHPO or the Certified Local Government. These surveys involve site visits, descriptions, photography, and historical research. While often these surveys provide the basis for future National Register nominations (with additional documentation), they do not constitute nominations themselves. In any case, however, they are valuable for providing information about the possible historic resources within that geographic area.
I have provided links to several surveys below. While the lists vary according to the forms used in reporting the surveys, and while I have not been able to provide samples of each resource surveyed, the following links should provide links that indicate the kinds of resources that were included and also some samples of the survey process.
National Historic Landmark Recognition
The designation of a historic property as a National Historic Landmark represents one of the most difficult and daunting of all National Register documentation efforts. According to the National Park Service, "National Historic Landmarks are nationally significant historic places designated by the Secretary of the Interior because they possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States. Today, fewer than 2,500 historic places bear this national distinction." Please note several aspects in that description: (1) They must be nationally significant; (2) they must possess exceptional value or quality; (3) there aren't very many of them. As of January 2013, the two states where I mainly work have a small number of these: Oklahoma (21) and Wyoming (24). The review process is rigorous. Work with the National Park Service throughout is important. After the nomination is reviewed like other national register nominations (SHPO and State Review Board and Keeper of the National Register), it then goes before an additional review panel in Washington, DC, the Landmarks Committee of the National Park System Advisory Board. And, once the nomination for NHL designation passes all those reviewing agencies, it must go to the Secretary of the Interior for final approval before the process is complete. This process is not for the faint of heart or the impatient.
I am pleased that I was able to nominate successfully the Murie Ranch Historic District as a National Historic Landmark and the Secretary of the Interior signed the documents designating it as a National Historic Landmark on February 17, 2006.
I am pleased that I was able to nominate successfully the Murie Ranch Historic District as a National Historic Landmark and the Secretary of the Interior signed the documents designating it as a National Historic Landmark on February 17, 2006.
Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record (HABS / HAER)
The Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record program is a cooperative endeavor of the National Park Service and the Library of Congress and actually predates the National Register of Historic Places. In 2000, these two programs were supplemented by the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS). The collections document important "achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies." Once again, this is a demanding form of recognition and documentation and involves intense research and photography and a closely-focused review process. It also requires the production of measured drawings of the features to be designated.
There is a problem, however. The HABS / HAER / HALS is a great program and we have thorough (or relatively thorough) documentation of many buildings and engineering features (and possibly landscapes too, but I have no actual experience with that) that we would not otherwise have. But, this level of documentation is often invoked as a mitigating measure when the historic property is about to be destroyed. How many HABS / HAER properties still exist? I don't know. My fear is that it's not very many. HABS / HAER is, at any rate, too often the kiss of death. Maybe that's all we can get, but I'm not sure.
In 1993 I prepared the HAER documentation for a coal mine in western Wyoming, Sublet Mine No. 6, just north of Kemmerer, Wyoming. After the documentation was approved and recorded in the Library of Congress, the site was demolished, the buildings razed, and all traces of its existence erased from the landscape. Only the documentation remains. A sobering thought on a couple of levels.
Click on the following button to see a discussion of this HAER property.:
There is a problem, however. The HABS / HAER / HALS is a great program and we have thorough (or relatively thorough) documentation of many buildings and engineering features (and possibly landscapes too, but I have no actual experience with that) that we would not otherwise have. But, this level of documentation is often invoked as a mitigating measure when the historic property is about to be destroyed. How many HABS / HAER properties still exist? I don't know. My fear is that it's not very many. HABS / HAER is, at any rate, too often the kiss of death. Maybe that's all we can get, but I'm not sure.
In 1993 I prepared the HAER documentation for a coal mine in western Wyoming, Sublet Mine No. 6, just north of Kemmerer, Wyoming. After the documentation was approved and recorded in the Library of Congress, the site was demolished, the buildings razed, and all traces of its existence erased from the landscape. Only the documentation remains. A sobering thought on a couple of levels.
Click on the following button to see a discussion of this HAER property.:
