A farm property where civil rights protesters once camped during the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama Cheryl Gardner Davis
From the Alabama farms where civil rights marchers once camped to a Utah trading post for Navajo communities, the National Trust for Historic Preservation today detailed the sites that have been selected for its annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The list underlines the trust’s commitment to illuminating neglected corners of history especially African American and Native American history and the need to move swiftly lest crucial landmarks be lost.
“Finding places that will tell the full history of our country is a priority in all of our work,” said Katherine Malone-France, chief preservation officer for the trust, in an interview. This year, she adds, the organisation received 120 nominations from 40 states and Puerto Rico before narrowing the list to 11 places.
Editor s note: This article is a part of a series reviewing Utah and U.S. history for KSL.com s Historic section.
BLANDING, San Juan County A significant Navajo Nation trading post at the heart of Monument Valley in southeast Utah received major recognition Thursday as efforts begin to save it before it s possibly lost forever.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Oljato Trading Post one of its 11 most endangered historic sites in the United States this year, which highlights it as one of the more important historic sites in desperate need of rehabilitation to preserve it.
The listing comes as members of the Navajo Nation and also historians have started to look into ways to rehabilitate the structures tied to the trading post and turn them into a new community center and tourism destination at the center of growing popular outdoors spots like Monument Valley and Bears Ears National Monument.
Utah State Historical Society
Originally published on June 3, 2021 11:38 am
An unassuming roadside motel that s a spiritual home to the blues. A crumbling Navajo trading post standing right by Monument Valley, and an old filling station that offered refuge to Black travelers during Jim Crow. Campsites for crusading civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s and ones that housed Chinese railway workers a century before.
These are among the most endangered historic sites in the U.S. right now, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Every year, the organization issues a list of buildings and other places threatened by development, climate change or neglect.