The National Park Service and Historic Preservation: An Introduction

Abstract

WHY HAVE a special issue devoted to the role of the National Park Service in historic preservation? It would be easier to ask, why not? For the Park Service currently manages over 13,000 historic structures, 26 million objects, and many thousand more archaeological sites. These resources are scattered throughout more than 300 units that stretch from the San Juan National Historic Site in the Caribbean to Cape Krusenstern along the Chukchi Sea in Alaska. Other Park Service people manage initiatives like the National Register of Historic Places that now exceeds 46,000 entries, the Tax Act program that yearly processes nearly 20,000 applications which result in nine billion dollars of rehabilitation work, and the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record that has since the 1930s been recording and documenting our built environment. Cultural resource responsibilities have been part of the Park Service's mandate since its establishment in 1916. Besides the crown jewels like Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Glacier, the incipient service had management responsibilities also for the pristine Anasazi archaeological sites of Mesa Verde (Colorado) and Chaco Canyon (New Mexico). The ruins stabilization program at the Colorado Park and the excavations at the New Mexico site were the beginnings of an expanding preservation program. It was not until 1930, though, that the Park Service was able to acquire historic sites like George Washington's birthplace and the Colonial Complex in Virginia that tied Jamestown and Yorktown into the expanding private preservation effort at Williamsburg. The acquisition of nationally significant sites continued unabated into the thirties. Park Service responsibilities were considerably heightened