National Preservation Month, National Park Service

National Preservation Month
This Place Matters: Preservation is the backbone of sustainable communities. It enhances the sense of community, energizes local economies, and renews existing resources.

Do It Yourself

Understand your historic building

Keep your historic building in good repair from the roof down

Learn how to rehabilitate your historic building
from A to Z

Preserve your community with local historic districts

Make a historic lighthouse your own

Find funding for your historic property

Preserve a historic cemetery

List your building in the
National Register of Historic Places

Fast Facts

Your Federal Historic Preservation Program
at work:
• $50.8 billion in private investment through Federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits
• $1.4 billion in historic preservation grants
• 187,088 units of low and moderate income housing
• 83,884 listings in the National Register of Historic Places
• 60,000 jobs created annually through rehabilitation projects
• 27,000 historic structures and 68,000 archeological sites cared for by the National Park Service
• 2,461 National Historic Landmarks
• 1,661 Certified Local Governments, local partners in the Federal preservation program
• 40 National Heritage Areas
• 800 million acres of land surveyed for historic properties
• 3 million Federal undertakings reviewed for their
impact on historic properties

Inside Story

Discovering Historic Places in Brownsville, Texas. Preservation increases pride in local culture and historic sites. The City of Brownsville used a Preserve America grant to create a multimedia tour, signage, brochures, and kiosks highlighting the city's historic places. The project promotes Brownsville's history and encourages heritage tourism.

Hay Street Bridge

Welcome to the Preservation Technology Podcast, the show that brings you the people and projects that are advancing the future of America’s heritage. Listen to a podcast Patrick Sparks talks about Texas Dancehall Preservation and the Restoration of Hay Street Bridge.

Stories

The citizens of Dubuque, Iowa, have made preserving their history a priority, and in the process, the city has become one of the National Park Service's most successful local partners. From recognition as a Certified Local Government in 1985, to listings in the National Register of Historic Places, to three National Historic Landmarks, Dubuque has leveraged the Federal preservation program not only to save its history but to share it as well. Dubuque County was awarded a Save America's Treasures grant to stabilize the foundation of their unique Egyptian Revival jail built in 1857. Meanwhile, under the same grant program, construction continues on the Dubuque Shot Tower to stabilize it and reconstruct the historic access stair. Preserve America grant funds developed the Dubuque History Trail, as well as an exhibit and education program at the Mines of Spain, a National Historic Landmark with archeological sites related to the mining of lead, an industry started in 1788 by French trader Julien Dubuque.

more stories...

Places

Meridian Hill Park, Washington, DC
In 1914, the Department of the Interior hired landscape architect George Burnap to design a grand, formal park to model Renaissance and Italian gardens. Generally, formal gardens of this magnitude were reserved for aristocrats. Meridian Hill, developed over the next 22 years, was a product of democracy, open to all. It was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994. The Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) documented its elaborate architectural composition and landscape. Meridian Hill is now part of Rock Creek Park and anchors the revitalization of the surrounding Northwest Washington, DC neighborhood.

more places...

People

National Park Service historical architect Penelope Hartshorne Batcheler, helped to restore Independence Hall.

Preservation Craftsmen at Tumacacori National Historical Park work under the philosophy that "preservation will always depend more on a respect and knowledge of the building's materials and for the place itself, than on a new technological breakthrough."

Historic preservation specialists at the Historic Preservation Training Center and the Western Center for Historic Preservation care for the National Park Services's historic structures and train future preservation craftsmen.

Collections

Collections can be integral to historic places. At Bandelier National Mounument, a Save America's Treasures grant helped to identify and catalog the architectural finishes and furnishings created by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.

Cilvilian Conservation Corps objects from Bandelier National Monument

The Heritage Documentation collections, known as HABS/HAER/HALS, capture America's historic places through approximately 40,000 recorded structures and sites, from American Indian cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde to space-age technology at Cape Canaveral.

For Teachers

Federal Courthouses and Post Offices: Symbols of Pride and
Permanence in American Communities
Teaching With Historic Places Lesson Plan

The Great American Landmarks Adventure
Printable coloring pages present a walk through time

Learn More

The National Park Service supports preservation in a variety of ways. To learn more, visit History and Culture.

Route 66 - the "Mother Road" - was the first all-weather highway linking Chicago to Los Angeles. Officially begun in 1926, it is 2400 miles long and is famous as the migration path of “Okies” in the 1930s and as a cross-country vacation spot in the post-WWII years, when the journey mattered as much as the destination. Even now, you can still “Get your kicks, on Route 66!” The Route 66 Travel Itinerary will be added to the Discover Our Shared Heritage travel itinerary series later this year.