The Origins of the National Park Service's Vanishing Treasures Program

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Vanishing Treasures Program: Celebrating 20 Years of National Park Service Historic Preservation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the mid-1990s, the National Park Service sought to upgrade its architectural preservation programs at about 40 arid-lands parks, which were facing the loss of significant numbers of retiring preservation craftsmen who had been working to preserve resources since the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, the cultural resources of the Southwest were deteriorating at a rate that outstripped the traditional available funding allocation. The Vanishing Treasures (VT) program was designed to augment the existing level of stewardship resources by adding emergency project funding and training new personnel, mostly at the park/monument level. As the VT program took flight, staff selected from among the NPS parks viewed it as a bridge from reaction to proaction. Tactics included the hiring and training of new permanent preservation workers and developing standards and guidelines that also applied new technology and new skills in addition to making traditional brick-and-mortar repairs.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Vanishing Treasures Program: Celebrating 20 Years of National Park Service Historic Preservation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23322