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.
(This is a story of) Americans wanting to have an impact and do something at great peril to themselves and their family, Howard said. It’s a story of people who loved America when America didn’t necessarily love them, but they wanted (more rights) for their children.
Howard is in the process of looking for funding to preserve the homes. Their inclusion in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list could be a gamechanger for their efforts; Malone-France said since the nonprofit’s first list came out more than 30 years ago, they have lost less than 5 percent of the more than 300 endangered places named since.