California Preservation Foundation and the National Park Service Join Efforts to Conduct Historical and Cultural Resources Survey on Route 66

SAN FRANCISCO, May 18 /PRNewswire/ -- One of America's legendary highways, Route 66, will soon be put on the road to securing its rightful place in the cultural landscape of American history.

With the earliest statewide history completed in Arizona in 1989, California is the final state out of the eight states along the storied Route 66 to complete a historic context for the National Register. Through a dynamic partnership formed in 2009 between the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program (NPS) and the California Preservation Foundation (CPF), an ambitious effort was launched to synthesize previous studies that will be incorporated with new research into one comprehensive document on the history of Route 66 from its early days until it was decertified in 1980s.  

CPF recently selected Mead & Hunt, a multidisciplinary engineering and architecture firm with offices throughout the United States, from a group of sixteen qualified firms, to help prepare the comprehensive history of Route 66 in California.  In mid-June, strategic planning meetings will be held with community leaders, city, state and federal organizations along Route 66 to kick-off the project.

At the end of the process, expected to complete in early 2011, NPS and CPF will submit a Multiple Property Documentation Form to the National Register.  This is part of an ongoing effort to document the history and significance of Route 66 to National Register standards, and to support preservation efforts in California.

The Multiple Property Documentation Form provides the historical and architectural context and registration requirements to nominate individual Route 66 properties in California to the National Register, the United State's official list of historic places worthy of preservation.  The study will not only document the highway's history in California, but its larger importance to Route 66 as the western terminus of the highway.

For more information on this project and to find out when the Project Team will be visiting Route 66, please contact Jennifer Gates, Field Services Director for the California Preservation Foundation at 415-495-0349 or by email at [email protected], or go to California Preservation Foundation's website at www.californiapreservation.org.

SOURCE California Preservation Foundation