Thomas F King - Saving Places that Matter

A Citizen's Guide to Using the National Historic Preservation Act

Thomas F. King

First published 2007 by Left Coast Press, Inc.

Published 2016 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:
Saving places that matter: a citizen's guide to the National
Historic Preservation Act / Thomas F. King.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59874-084-4 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-59874-085-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. United States. National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.
2. Historic preservationLaw and legislationUnited States. I. Title.
KF4310.A316K56 2008
344.73'094dc22
2007032741

ISBN 978-1-59874-084-4 hardcover
ISBN 978-1-59874-085-1 paperback

Since leaving government in 1989, I've worked as a consultant in "cultural resource management" (CRM). Mostly that's meant helping clients work their way through a complex of government procedures designed to make sure that places thought to have cultural significance aren't ignored when things like highways and power lines are planned. Like most who work in the "CRM'' game, I've mainly had change agents for clientshighway builders, mine diggers, military services personnel, hydroelectric project managers. That is, after all, where the money is.

In the last few years, though, I've found myself working more and more often for and with people who are trying to stop projects, or redirect them. Whatever other interests these clients have had, they came to me because they wanted to save places that play some role in their lives. They've engaged me to advise them about using Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Actthe primary "CRM" law in the United Statesto help protect such special places.

Two things dawned on me as I tried to explain Section 106 to clients and would-be clients. First, the process is pretty complicated, and second, there's nothing in print that helps regular people understand it. Virtually all the books and journal articlesmy own books includedare written for professional practitioners, most of whom get paid to learn about it. About the only exception is the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation's Citizens Guide to Section 106, which is pretty good, but necessarily hews to the government's party line. The Advisory Council can't very well squeal about how its fellow federal agencies subvert the Section 106 process to permit the thoughtless destruction of special places, so it can't tell you what to do in response.

This bookwhich during its composition has passed under such working titles as Section 106 for NIMBYs and How to Monkey-Wrench a Project Using Section 106is my attempt to remedy this deficiency.

I'm especially grateful to my recent non-governmental clients for helping me see the need for such a book, and for helping mesometimes forcing me, and thankfully often hiring meto think through the strategies they can use to make Section 106 work for them. Luis Rosas and Jean Sawyer-Rosas of Dripping Springs Ranch, David Blake and Linda Wright of the Buckland Preservation Society, Geoffrey Sea of SHIP-SONG and Sargent's Pigeon, David Nickell of Between the Rivers, and Kathleen Hayden, Jennifer Foster, and their colleagues of (among other things) the Backcountry Horsemen of California have inspired me immeasurably. For the most part, their stories are not told herenot because they are not worthy but for two other reasons. First, the stories have not yet completely played outLuis and Jean, David and Linda, Geoffrey and David and Kathave not yet vanquished their foes in the railroad industry, the suburban sprawl/highway construction axis, the nuclear waste business, the recreation management bureaucracy, and state park management, respectively. Second, each of their tales is worthy of a book in itself, which I hope someday they'll write.

I'm also grateful, as always, to my Indian tribal, Native Hawaiian, and Micronesian clients, colleagues, and friends, who continue to teach me new ways of looking at preservation/development conflicts and to inspire me with their dedication and wisdom. The Historic Preservation Officers of the governments of Micronesia, the groups and individuals who fight for the cultural rights of Native Hawaiians, and such Indian tribes as the Mississippi Choctaw, the Tuolumne Mewuk, the Big Pine Paiute, the Pitt River Nation, the Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa, the Mole Lake, Bad River and Red Cliff Bands of Great Lakes Ojibwe, the Yuki, the Quechan, the Caddo, and the Fort Mojave Tribe have for many years kept me largely out of the increasingly polluted mainstream of CRM-for-profit, and taught me a great deal about special places and their care. I am only beginning to understand how much I owe them.

My friend and sometime co-author Greg White, archaeologist at California State University, Chico, has graced the pages of the book with his sprightly line drawings, and made it immeasurably more human in the process; for this I'm very much in his debt. I'm also grateful to photographer Tom Semple, to Anita Canovas of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and to Massachusetts State Historic Preservation Officer Brona Simon for the images they contributed.

Finally, I'm thankful to Mitch Allen of Left Coast Press, Inc. for investing in another of my books, to both Mitch and Joan Gatterer for critical reviews and comments, and to Carol Leyba for her skillful copy editing and production work.

You've probably opened this book because a place that's important to you is threatened. Maybe your home, your neighborhood, your farm, your village+ Maybe a treasured landscape or stretch of shore. Maybe a hill or mountain, a forest, a piece of desert+ Maybe a spring, or a trail, or the place where your ancestors are buried, or the place you collect mushrooms or maple sap or arrowheads+ You're trying to save it from some threatened changeurban sprawl, a highway, a power plant, a national parkor from some change in the policies of a government agency+