News Release

National Park Service awards $743,531 to help preserve history in Underrepresented Communities

The City of Portland will receive funding to complete a survey of the history of Portland’s LGBTQ+ community. The Other Inn, pictured here, is one of Portland's earliest gay venues.

Photo courtesy of Don Horn

News Release Date: August 11, 2021

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WASHINGTON – The National Park Service today announced the award of $743,531 to 17 projects in 14 states to support diverse communities identify and nominate sites to the National Register of Historic Places. The Underrepresented Community Grant Program focuses on work towards diversifying the nominations submitted to the National Register of Historic Places.

“Through these grants to our state, Tribal, and certified local government partners, the National Register will continue to expand to help tell our nation’s diverse history,” said NPS Deputy Director Shawn Benge.

Projects receiving grants this year include:

• National Register nomination for Detroit’s Vaughn’s Bookstore, one of the nation’s most significant publisher of black poets in 1965.
• Survey and nominations for women’s suffrage sites in Colorado, which was the first state in the US where women won the vote by popular referendum.
• National Register nomination for the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians’ Chemehuevi Cemetery, a Tribal cemetery on lands the Tribe was removed from in the early 1900s, which has recently been given back to the Tribe.

Applications for $1 million in FY2021 funding will be available in the fall of 2021. Eligible applicants include state and Tribal historic preservation offices and certified local governments.

Learn more about the Underrepresented Community Grant Program. For more information about NPS historic preservation programs and grants, please visit nps.gov/stlpg/. 

The Historic Preservation Fund (HPF) uses revenue from federal oil leases on the Outer Continental Shelf, assisting with a broad range of preservation projects without expending tax dollars, with the intent to mitigate the loss of a nonrenewable resource to benefit the preservation of other irreplaceable resources.

Established in 1977, the HPF is authorized at $150 million per year through 2023 and has provided more than $2 billion in historic preservation grants to states, Tribes, local governments, and nonprofit organizations. Administered by the NPS, HPF funds may be appropriated by Congress to support a variety of historic preservation projects to help preserve the nation’s cultural resources. 

Underrepresented Community Grant Award Recipients

Total funds awarded: $743,531

Underrepresented Community Grant Award Recipients

State	City	Project Title	Grantee	Award

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About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 423 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.nps.gov, and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.