Blog of the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office

Month: December 2015

What is your most amazing discovery?

by Christine Davis, Christine Davis Consultants, Inc.

After 30 years of excavating archaeological sites in Pennsylvania, I’m often asked about my most amazing discovery.  I would not hesitate for a moment to say it was our large-scale excavation of the Freeport Site in Freeport Township, Greene County, which revealed an extraordinary Native American archaeological site dispersed across 11 acres of land above the Monongahela River.

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Spotlight Series: Preservation At Work in Bradford

45 communities in Pennsylvania have a formal working relationship with the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO) on a variety of preservation-related programs and projects.

Known as Certified Local Governments (CLGs), these communities represent a broad geographic, demographic and economic swath across the Commonwealth. From Philadelphia (Pop. 1.5 million) to Mercersburg, Franklin County (Pop. 1500) and located in over a third of Pennsylvania counties, the CLG program provides exclusive funding and technical assistance for local governments.  As you may remember from this post a few months ago, the CLG program is one of several federal programs administered by the PA SHPO; in this case, the National Park Service provides guidance, rules and funding for the CLG program.

Three CLG communities in the PA SHPO Western Region provide a glimpse into the range of preservation activities CLGs can sponsor. Over the next few months, we’ll illustrate how the City of Bradford, Moon Township and the City of Pittsburgh have used the CLG program to leverage their preservation programs.  We’ll turn our spotlight on Bradford first.

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5 Things To Know: Section 106 and Consulting Parties

Arguably, like most any full-time hard working adult, there aren’t enough hours in the day to absorb all of the informative blogs and interesting articles regarding Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966 that traverse the “intra-web.” So no surprise, I recently came across a blog a mere 6 months after its initial posting that immediately grabbed my attention. On March 6, 2015, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Leadership Forum posted Elizabeth Merritt’s “Worst Practices for Section 106 Consultation.” Her blog very candidly captures the 10 worst approaches to Section 106, noting instead that Section 106 should in fact be a “team exercise, with all parties working together to come up with an agreed-upon solution.” Recognizing that historic preservation is a public interest, Section 106 is inherently a consultative process. But who should be included in that process or, in other words, who should be getting the invite to the party (after all, they are called consulting parties)? This blog hopes to provide some guidance on answering that question. Continue reading

Farms + Family = Heritage

It’s that time of year again . . . . . not holiday shopping, but Farm Show planning! That’s right, the Pennsylvania Farm Show will be taking place soon, January 9-16, and the SHPO will be there for the whole week. 2016 marks the 100th time Pennsylvania has celebrated agriculture and farmers with a multi-day exhibition in Harrisburg. Building on the number 100, this year we’re partnering with the Department of Agriculture’s Century Farm Program to recognize farms that have been owned and operated by members of the same family for at least 100 years. Our theme this year is “Farms + Family = Heritage.”farm show blog title Continue reading

December’s SHPO Shout-Out

It’s hard to believe that a month has gone by since our first ever SHPO Shout-Out! I’ll give my own Shout-Out to everyone who liked, posted, shared, tweeted, and emailed our November post to spread the word not only about the great projects I featured but also to let people know that we’d like to crowd-source candidates for future posts.  The number of emails I got from readers with ideas for candidates were low – like zero! – but I understand that you’re all just getting used to the idea, right?!  I can’t possibly know about all the good preservation victories across the 46,055 sq. mi. that make up Pennsylvania and I need your help!

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