Save America's Treasures

The Federal Save America’s Treasures program is one of the largest and most successful grant programs for the protection of our nation’s endangered and irreplaceable and endangered cultural heritage. Grants are available for preservation and/or conservation work on nationally significant intellectual and cultural artifacts and historic structures and sites. Intellectual and cultural artifacts include artifacts, collections, documents, sculpture, and works of art. Historic structures and sites include historic districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects.

Selecting the Projects

Selection criteria require that each project be of national significance, demonstrate an urgent preservation need, have an educational or otherwise clear public benefit, and demonstrate the likely availability of non-federal matching funds. Each grant requires non-federal matching funds, which has stimulated contributions from states, localities, corporations, foundations and individuals who value our shared heritage.

Grants are awarded to Federal, state, local, and tribal government entities, and non-profit organizations through a competitive matching-grant program, administered by the National Park Service in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

A Few Recently Funded Projects:

B &O’s Railroad Locomotives, Baltimore, Maryland The B&O Railroad Museum showcases the evolution of American steam locomotives from their beginning in 1827 to the end of the steam era in the 1950s. Grant funding in the amount of $500,000 will focus on saving four historically significant 19th century B&O locomotives that were severely damaged by the collapse of the museum's roundhouse in 2003. In-house restoration efforts will address the immediate threat to the locomotives, as well as serve as a model that will benefit future preservation and conservation efforts.

Old Fort Niagara
Youngstown, New York

The French, the British, the United States, and the powerful Iroquois Confederacy devoted lives and treasures for control of the Old Fort Niagara site during the French & Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812. Old Fort Niagara has a number of serious threats to the structures throughout its historic complex, which includes six original 18th Century military structures. Grant funding in the amount of $150,000 will address structural repairs to this National Historic Landmark.

Slater Mill
Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Slater Mill, a National Historic Landmark, was the first water-powered cotton-spinning mill in the country, and the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. Slater Mill and the surrounding site face severe and imminent threats from flood, fire, and deterioration. Grants funds in the amount of $300,000 will be used to mitigate these threats by repairing and restoring the mill’s headrace and waterworks.

For more information contact:
NPS_treasures@nps.gov
(202)354-2020, extension 1

Or visit:

the National Program Web Page
www.nps.gov/history/hps/treasures