Montana Preservation
It was always going to be tricky—adopting the State Historic Preservation Office into the Montana Historical Society’s established family. But needed. For a decade the Parks Division of the Department of Fish and Game had given the young program a chancy home. Managing it with guys who wanted to be game wardens. Hiring a Wyoming shyster to write a preservation plan. Skimming off Federal grant money for state parks.
So when Federal preservation overseers came to scrutinize Montana’s preservation program, they called a halt to the negligence that the SHPO (pronounced “ship-o”) had experienced.
Move it to the Montana Historical Society (MHS), they recommended. Place it with its philosophical kin, its siblings who will understand its purpose and its professional requirements.
The legislature did just that in 1977. But no part of the adoption went smoothly. Turns out those siblings were reluctant to share their parent organization. And, as the Preservation Office grew, SHPO staff, with some regularity, questioned whether they belonged.
The Montana Historical Society boasts early origins: first such society of its kind west of the Mississippi River. Born in gold camp Bannack in 1865, the Society became a state agency in 1891, just after Montana achieved statehood. In the early 1950s, it acquired its own building and most of its current functions.
In the 30 years prior to SHPO’s arrival, the Society had achieved some serious maturity. Exhibits; archives, library, and museum storage; reading rooms; an award-winning magazine; and offices occupied the modern building. The Society enjoyed the adulation of scholars, visitors, and art aficiondos who gobbled up Custer and Charlie Russell stories. Into that comfortable arrangement, the Preservation Office arrived– young, unsure of its place—or the manners it might need—or even how best to tackle Montana perceptions.
You see, Montanans readily understood that Indian War battlefields and Copper King mansions and Virginia City might be historically significant. But really, were shabby homestead remnants or Boulder Hot Springs’s crumbling edifice significant? Weren’t there serious dangers to designating a historic property? And did the Society want to upset the apple cart of good relationships with power companies and subdivision developers just to send some archaeologist out to find ubiquitous tipi rings?
I arrived in 1980 in the Preservation Office’s early Society years (see Off to an Inauspicious Start). 41 years later, in 15 of which I served as State Historic Preservation Officer and another ten in education and administration, my perceptions of whether SHPO belonged in the Society hold steady. Of course! Of course, even in the face of tempting and not altogether irrelevant arguments to the contrary. Here’s why.
SHPO does exactly, precisely what the Museum and Library and Archives do. We (I still think of myself there—in that office) encourage the preservation of historic buildings, sites, and places of significance to Montanans. Period. Archivists and curators encourage the preservation of artifacts and documents and books and artwork of significance to Montanans. Period.
The Museum, Archives, and Library have the authority and the space to acquire and hold some of the materials they focus on. But they cannot acquire every single artifact or document that’s important. No such facility could be big enough. The SHPO is not empowered to own property. Nor could or should it “move” important buildings and places into one warehouse as a form of preservation.
So, all Society programs, to a greater or lesser extent, rely on spreading information and enthusiasm to preserve in place, on site, in the right contexts—Montana’s various historically significant items and resources. Ownership is only a question of more or less. The goal is the same: get Montanans to value the physical remnants and information that help us understand and appreciate our past.
The similarities end, though, when it comes to rules and funding. The national historic preservation movement emerged in the face of massive 1950s, federally funded development: interstate highways demolished whole neighborhoods; housing programs that did the same. Preservationists realized that the country was losing—not the obvious landmarks—but the historic fabric of towns and cities and the prehistoric sites and farms of the country. Hence, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 required federal agencies to evaluate and at least consider the significance of resources that would be harmed by their actions. And the same law created a network of SHPOs to help identify sites and buildings that might be important to their communities.
So, federal law, federal money, and federal programs constituted the foundation on which Montana’s SHPO was built. Therein lay the biggest challenges to the Society’s enthusiastic adoption of this new program. As well as SHPO’s periodic battles with its new home.
Other Society programs, even with shared motives and advocacy for their work, weren’t based on federal regulations. So, whereas, the Preservation Office confronted red-faced mining agents bellowing about why the Forest Service had to consider %%**## sites in the permit area, the Archives and Museum programs faced no similar regulation-based fury. Where would such fury end, those programs wondered.*
The federal money awarded to the SHPO had different ramifications. When it was plentiful in the early 1980s, other programs envied us. SHPO received state funds too—half and half—for staff and office support. Sheer luxury.
Then in the late 1980s when its revenue plummeted, the state began whacking away at all agency budgets. Because the SHPO had federal money, along with state funds, the Society could sacrifice SHPO state dollars without eliminating staff. The SHPO was “invited” to fill in behind the losses with their federal funds. The feds accepted in-kind match rather than actual cash. The Society continued to nibble away at our state dollars. The SHPO staff felt rightly and unduly put upon.
In that mindset, SHPO staff began to dream about what it might be like to be their very own entity. Some SHPOs were just that. But, at least from where I sat, that way was folly. The Society provided a host of administrative services, kept us legal when contracting or hiring, lobbied for us, and, frankly, stood as a buffer against political and business whims. Not a single director sold us out to development interests. They did what it took to keep the agency whole—even if not always with the vigor we craved. Even when we were welcomed more for our money than our mission, we weren’t facing hurricane force winds alone. We were part of a generally beloved family.
The fact of the matter is that we were good for each other. Because SHPO worked with property owners and state and federal agency staff all across Montana, we had a statewide presence. Before other programs did. Over time, we got to know local historical societies and county commissioners and architects. All too often seen as the Helena Historical Society, MHS could piggyback—if they chose—on our statewide work. Consider our National Register of Historic Places interpretive sign program. For just $25, owners of listed properties can get a lovely, permanent marker that credits MHS for the sign and the listing.
Significantly before the rest of the agency understood how critical it was, SHPO established strong and warm relationships with tribal culture committees and First Peoples preservation advocates.
Though slow to be seen as such, the information about Montana’s history captured in National Register of Historic Places nominations and in broad historic and archaeological surveys is invaluable to researchers. Likewise, the library and archives’ historic newspapers and photographs and original documents are critical fodder for people writing Register nominations. More symbiosis.
Finally, as the Society began to expand its K-12 education efforts statewide, SHPO’s National Register materials, contacts, and philosophies have become the basis for heritage education lessons.
I still like the analogy of a family with a surprise baby—a-late-in-life arriving kid. Siblings rarely get along sweetly and enthusiastically all the time—however and whenever they arrive. We fight to establish who mom and dad love best. But, when the chips are down and sometimes when we’ve grown up a bit more, we gain the wisdom to understand that we flourish as a family. ©
*State antiquities regulations mimic some—though not all—federal preservation regulations.
