To celebrate National Historic Preservation Month this year, we will highlight the two 2024 Community Initiative Award winners with their own blog posts. In this week’s post, I asked Bruce Markovich with the Lansford Historical Society in Lansford, Carbon County about their work preserving the Welsh Church, which will celebrate its 175th anniversary this year. Continue reading
Category: Carbon (Page 1 of 2)
May is Historic Preservation Month! PA SHPO traditionally kicks off the month by announcing the newest Community Initiative Award winners.
For 2024, the awardees are two organizations whose projects demonstrate the importance of embracing and preserving local history and the places that help tell their communities’ stories.
(… Or is it?)
As 2024 winds down and all the social media platforms and streaming services summarize and wrap-up the year, the Pennsylvania Above Ground Survey (PAGS) program has the opportunity publish its BASELINE WRAPPED for 2020-2024.
Baseline Wrapped is going to summarize the changes in technology, highlight certain municipalities, provide some numbers, and even hint at what’s to come next..!
“This bridge will triumphantly typify the trail-blazing strategy…” so said Pennsylvania Governor John S. Fine in 1954 about the soon to be constructed Hawk Falls Bridge, finishing with “that took the Pennsylvania Turnpike System across streams of great width and turbulence…and through the rocky cores of mighty mountains.”
The Pennsylvania Baseline Survey Team is thrilled to share the final year of findings from the Pennsylvania Baseline Survey. From June 2022 to March 2024, Year 3 of the Baseline Survey took place in 20 counties. To date, over 6,854 new resources have been recorded in 503 municipalities thanks to the efforts of our Baseline Survey Teams!
The PHMC has been a steward of archaeological site information in Pennsylvania since the late 1920s.
Continue reading2019 was a BIG year for the National Register program in Pennsylvania. Since our last update, 16 listings have been added or updated.
Continue readingEach year, the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO) recognizes the hard work and dedication of outstanding organizations, municipalities, agencies, and individuals whose work embodies the theme of Pennsylvania’s statewide historic preservation plan, #PreservAtionHappensHere, with a PA SHPO Community Initiative Award.
Continue readingYour State Historic Preservation Office has been hard at work since our last Just Listed column appeared on this blog. Since that post , the National Park Service has approved over 30 Pennsylvania listings (!) for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Continue reading

Preservation in a Changing Economic Climate
Many of Pennsylvania’s communities face the challenging task of adapting to a vastly different economic climate than the one that led to their historic growth and development. This new economic reality of dramatically reduced population, deindustrialization and loss of tax base has resulted in historic downtowns and residential neighborhoods pockmarked by disinvestment and vacant properties. Abandoned, demolished or marginally repurposed historic churches, schools and factories are especially vivid reminders of changing times and the large social and economic forces at work. Continue reading
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